Balfourville, Scotland
As part of a British nation made greater than ever by its tremendous colonial expansion, Scotland found itself relegated to the status of an exotic and historic place, the Celtic hinterland. What would have made for a decent touristic incentive, however, fell short in regards to those of the colonies. As citizens turned their eyes to the Equator and beyond, the former great kingdom fell behind economically speaking, nothing seemingly liable to take it out of the stereotypical image of “kilt country” that bogged it down.
One man, however, was putting the name of Scotland on many people’s lips, and that man was Gordon Balfour. As the engine he designed quickly turned out to be one of humanity’s greatest inventions, it seemed that there was room for the nation to find its place alongside the greater contributors to industry and progress, perhaps even as the economic core of Great Britain. Yet, the engine was being manufactured all over the world, yielding technological and financial assets not only to the Empire, but to rival nations as well.
The situation was viewed by many as an opportunity slipping through the fingers of Scotland and more specifically Glasgow, where the last pieces of the Balfour Engine had been put together. James Ewing, a native of the city, was very aware of this fact. In 1832, 25 years after a locomotive had first been seen taking to the air of Glasgow, the then lord provost of the city submitted to king William IV his 12-year plan for the subsidization of a great Balfour factory in Bearsden, in the outskirts of the city.
It was not the first time that a Scottish representative has presented the state with the issue of the Scottish economical future and the missed opportunities surrounding the success of the Balfour engine. Previous projects had been brushed off as “unnecessarily ambitious”, “failing to understand the economic situation of the time” or even as “post-Celtic lunacy”, emphasizing that the input of the constituting nations of Great Britain was unwelcome at a time of expansion and domination. That year however, the situation had become quite different.
With the French invasion of North Africa and the occupation of Egypt and Palestine by Great Britain, matters in Africa and the Middle East were quickly evolving, making the Empire wary of new conflict zones. At the same time, the end of the Ottoman conflict gave it more free rein to safely consider daring ideas.
Thus it was that in 1835, the Empire decided to grant Ewing his wish, endowing the city of Glasgow with a stunning £300,000 in funding for the construction and initial maintenance of a Balfour factory, surpassing the works simultaneously undertaken to modernize the city’s water supply. The funds also allowed for the creation of a residential area and a few services in order to provide for the workers’ needs, a neighborhood that would soon be known colloquially as Balfourville to the locals. It would start operating at surface level in 1841.
The implantation of the factory was successful, with 600 men and women joining the workforce in the year following inauguration, and this number would grow exponentially. Initially meant to compete in the Balfour market quantitatively, the factory was soon able to provide valuable innovations as well, proving itself essential to the perfectioning of aeronautic and aethereal engineering over the years. It provided the incentive for some of the Glaswegian population to establish commerce in Balfourville, yielding profit in addition to the unexhausted funding. This constant money flow remarkably led to the quality of life of Scottish Balfour workers being higher than the British average, in turn increasing the attractivity of the city.
This virtuous circle continued to contribute to the development of both the factory and the city until both were definitely (and literally) put on the map. In 1877, the Balfourville factory was rightfully granted monopoly in the production of several key components of the Balfour engine and derivatives. By 1938, Balfourville’s population equaled that of Glasgow, the “Balgow” agglomeration totalling just about one million inhabitants.
Although Ewing’s name is rarely associated with Balfourville, it is by his doing that Scotland managed to reclaim the Balfour engine as its own, as well as most of the prestige and profitability associated with it. Nowadays, the country is proudly known and recognised not only as a part of The British Empire, but also as a strong economic nation, and a land of progress.
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