The rise of Birmingham from local to national importance was largely an 18th-cent. development, when improvements in roads and canals enabled it to turn to advantage its central situation. The name indicates the ham or settlement of the people of Beorma, presumably a Saxon leader, and at the time of Domesday Book (1086) it was no more than a tiny hamlet. It grew during the Middle Ages, but was overshadowed politically by Warwick and Coventry. By 1700 it had well over 10, 000 inhabitants. It still had no parliamentary representation and no corporation. But by 1830 the Birmingham Political Union had taken the lead in pressing for reform and the town acquired two MPs in 1832 and a council in 1838. Under the mayoralty of Joseph Chamberlain in the 1870s Birmingham became celebrated for municipal enterprise, and Mason's College, founded in 1870, received a charter as a university in 1900. Birmingham's economy diversified, with Cadbury's established at Bournville in 1879, General Electric in 1896, the Dunlop Rubber Company at Castle Bromwich in the 1890s, and the Austin Motor Company in 1905.