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Glasgow Business . 29 www.glasgowchamberofcommerce.com ORWARD


tariffs and abolish smuggling. Te Chamber also fiercely opposed the East India Company’s trade monopoly with India and all territories beyond the Cape. Te Chamber moved to its


current offices in Merchants House in 1877. Looking forward to the next big


event in our city’s calendar, 2013 will be filled with preparation for the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, Homecoming Scotland, and the 40th Ryder Cup, which will be held in Gleneagles. Tis year already, we have seen


construction progress on the new Hydro Arena, which has been described as the ‘most complex feat of engineering in Scotland in 2012’, and will be used as a venue for gymnastics events during the 2014 Games. Also, the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in the east end of the city opened in October 2012 to roaring success which looks set to continue. With the 40th Ryder Cup


being held in Gleneagles, Glasgow will be prepared for the huge numbers of tourists which are sure to set their sights on the city for shopping and recreation away from the golf course. Knowing that 2014 will be a


successful year for the city, we continue to be extremely positive about Glasgow’s bid for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games, and hope


MILESTONES


this will be another event which will enable your city to showcase its full potential. In an address to


Glasgow Chamber of Commerce in 1983, on our 200th anniversary, Margaret Tatcher, Prime Minister at the time, said: “Your forebears were bold, inventive, thriſty and industrious. I am confident that these same qualities will continue to characterise your endeavours in the years to come. “I am confident that whatever


the future may hold, both you and the city of Glasgow will surmount your problems and break new frontiers. “And I am confident that,


when in 200 years’ time your descendants are celebrating the Chamber’s 400th Anniversary, one of my successors will be saying, as it gives me great pleasure to say to you now – Ladies and Gentlemen, let us drink to our forebears, to our great inheritance, and to the prosperity of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce.” Te fact that your Chamber


has come on leaps and bounds in the last 30 years alone, never mind 230, only goes to show that those words ring true.


1783 WAS A BUSY YEAR


Aside from the Chamber establishment, 1783 was a busy year for Glasgow. The year saw the first ever publication of the stalwart paper The Herald, going by the name of “The Glasgow Advertiser” and edited by John Mennons. In the same year, the Royal Bank of Scotland (the largest bank in the country at the time) opened its premier Glasgow branch – its first outside of Edinburgh. These two branches remained the only ones open in Scotland until the first part of the nineteenth century when others opened in Greenock, Dalkeith, Dundee, Port Glasgow, Rothesay and Leith. The year also saw the first ever manned balloon flight by the Montgolfier brothers in the


outskirts of Paris. Air transport, as well as transport in general, is still a major issue for today’s Chamber … even if it has got a bit faster in the past 230 years.


G BACK, KNOW?


DID YOU


From 1674, tobacco from Viginia


began flowing through Glasgow even before the 1707 Act of Union which legitminised trading with English colonies. Evidence of the trade can been seen through the streets of Glasgow today – Jamaica Street and Virginia Street were named during those years, for example.


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