Second city of the United Kingdom

The second city of the United Kingdom is an unofficial claim made at various times by several cities since the establishment of the UK in 1801. Commonly a country's second city is the city that is thought to be the second most important, usually after the capital or first city according to criteria such as population size, economic importance and cultural contribution.

Historically several cities have been considered the "second city of the British Empire". In the early 19th Century, Dublin was considered by many to be the second city; later in the century, Glasgow and Liverpool burgeoned as major industrial centres and had competing claims to be the busiest ports in the world for ship building and freight transport. Calcutta also laid the claim from as far away as India as the most populous city, while in 1911 the editor of the Irish Times laid a second claim for Dublin during a ceremonial visit by George V. Since the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1949 several cities have made claims to be the "second city of the Commonwealth" (often with particular reference to the significance of the Commonwealth Games) in particular Manchester in 2000 and Glasgow again in 2012.

In contrast throughout much of the 20th and 21st Century Birmingham has generally been regarded as the second city of the United Kingdom in terms of populace and GDP while Edinburgh has been promoted as the second city by virtue as the capital of Scotland. Less authoratitive claims have been made on behalf of Cardiff and Belfast due to their status as the respective capital cities of Wales and Northern Ireland.

Since the formation of the United Kingdom, several places have been described as the "second city". Aristocrat-dominated Georgian Dublin was the second most populous city at the time of the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 (it was also the fifth most populous in Europe), and was often described as the second city of the UK. Though it lost that position towards the end of the 19th century as the empire's Victorian cities grew through more rapid industrialisation. Dublin, and the rest of the Republic of Ireland, became independent of the UK in the 1920s.

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