That is not in fact the case. The first navigation canals that were deliberately started as such began around then, but canals actually got going in England about a century earlier, as drainage works and/or water supplies. The two blurred, since a canal designed for one reason often provided function of the other sort as well.

Mr. Selgin misses my point. Certainly, Birmingham had a certain measure of local gain and advance in specialised skills and trades before the canals – but so did many other places like Dunster in the West Country, which has a claim to inventing the self winding watch. Certainly Birmingham’s success could not have happened without those things as well as canals – but without the canal hub it would have been overtaken by whichever centre did get it, and there was no shortage of tradesmen to head for whichever centre turned up (e.g. James Watt, from Scotland). If you like, it was Britain‘s freedom that mattered, not Birmingham’s. Those features like the lack of a cathedral reflected its position as not being important in former times; for every feature that looks like a plus that way, there’s another that works as a minus, like the lack of political representation.

See Disraeli’s Sybil for a fictionalised description of the place in the early 19th century (it’s the place where the lock makers worked).

The secret of Birmingham’s success was location, location, location. Never mind that it had poor natural water resources, why did the canal go there at all? There were poor natural water resources because it was on higher ground than some other places, but the canal had to go there – or somewhere like there – to get to the other side. Not just one canal either, so it became a natural junction dictated by the location of other centres. It was being a hub that did it, nothing to do with freedom at all. If the canal network had intersected elsewhere, that place would have had the same boost.