The aim of this chapter will be to lay the groundwork for the analysis of various aspects of language in Liverpool that will be the central concern of this book. To do this, it will be helpful to begin by outlining how early observers made sense of the enormous economic, social and cultural changes that took place in Liverpool in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Needless to say, the intention is not to render an exhaustive account of the history itself (an impossibility given the space constraints), but to present a sketch of responses to the alterations brought about by the development of the town as a major site of national and global trade and commerce. Of course certain aspects of Liverpool's history are familiar; even the most rudimentary account will draw attention to the town's role in the slave trade and its function as one of the most important centres of immigration and emigration. Less well-known, however, are the ways in which contemporary historians and commentators interpreted and evaluated the results of the change in the town's long-standing status from relatively minor backwater (except in times of war) to its role as a international port that trafficked the oceans. Thus the focus in this first chapter will be on the critical narratives produced by early commentators on the emergence of modern Liverpool. Of particular interest in these first historical accounts is the apparent sense of the town as not just an economic force within the Atlantic and indeed world systems of commerce, but as a location that was both typical and distinctive in relation to the political and cultural effects that the developments of mercantile capitalism and industrialization brought about. For in many respects Liverpool was a place like many others in Britain at this time: it was subject to the consequences of changes in patterns of capital accumulation and distribution, technological developments and their uses, and demographic shifts of an extent previously unknown.