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What was the largest English-speaking city outside Britain in 1750?
Question
#14972. Asked by Ruben Sandringham. (Dec 14 01 9:16 AM)
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Stevo
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Philadelphia. At this time, it was second only to London within the British Empire. About 40,000 English speakers, which shows how few large cities there were in those days.
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Son of The Household Cavalry
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According to most records it wasn't until about 1775 that Philadelphia become the largest.
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Ruben
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Clue: It was not a city in the area that is now occupied by the United States of America.
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Tabby Tom
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Depending on how you intepret 'Britain', the answer might be Dublin.
England and Scotland were united as Great Britain in 1707, but Ireland, though subject to Great Britain, was not regarded as part of the {kingdom;} it was seen as a separate realm until the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was created by the Act of Union of 1800. Dublin was certainly a fairly substantial city by the standards of the time.
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Ruben
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It was outside the British Isles.
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Tabby Tom
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One possibility might be Calcutta, which grew very quickly after its foundation by Job Charnock in about 1690. It may have had a population of 100,000 or more by 1750. But although English must have been widely spoken among the Indian population, I'm not sure whether it qualifies as an 'English-speaking' city.
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Moleman
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I believe it is Bridgetown, Barbados, there was a huge British/slave presence to support and run the sugar/rum industry as well as to protect the valuable resouces from the French and Spanish. It had a population of around 100,000, as mentioned early much it would have been much larger than Philadelphia and it was almost exclusively English-speaking unlike the cities on the Indian sub-continent.
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