The history of Manchester encompasses its change from a minor township in Lancashire to an industrial metropolis in the United Kingdom and the world. Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The transformation took little more than a century.
Having evolved from a Roman castrum in Celtic Britain, in the Victorian era Manchester was a major locus of the Industrial Revolution, and was the site of one of the world's first passenger railway stations as well as important scientific achievements. Manchester also led the political and economic reform of 19th-century Britain as the vanguard of free trade. The mid-20th century saw a decline in Manchester's industrial importance, prompting a depression in social and economic conditions. Subsequent investment, gentrification and rebranding from the 1990s onwards changed its fortunes and reinvigorated Manchester as a post-industrial city with multiple sporting, broadcasting and educational institutions.
