Due to its former importance as the centre of the cloth industry, the Cotswolds have a market tradition that goes back several hundred years, though for some villages, the switch to produce has been a fairly recent one.
The city declined during the Crusades and never regained its former importance.
The town has some fine Georgian architecture, particularly the Court House (1813; restored after a fire) and the Post Office, which reflects its former importance as a shipping point for neighbouring sugar plantations.
While the town is now quite small, its former importance can be seen in its large number of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.
The city is suffused with a powerful sense of its former importance — Argentina was once one of wealthiest countries in the world — even as it recedes resentfully into the distant past.
While the former places importance on interpretation in research, the latter on matters on power relations such as domination, oppression and emancipation.
Comparing Mr Berezovsky to Owen Glendower in Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1, he said: "Mr Berezovsky has found it very difficult to accept that, for all his former importance as a power broker and for all the great wealth that he has obtained by that means, in business terms he was a relatively marginal player.
This great industry was not to last, however; by the turn of the 20th century, its contribution to the state's economy had dwindled to only a fraction of its former importance.
Several authors have pointed out the importance of traditional multiple uses of forests, including agroforestry, and condemn the term minor forest utilisation often used in contemporary forest policy formulation and administration, which ignores its former importance and thus neglects its long-lasting influence on the cultural landscape.
Although Lorraine is one of the most heavily industrialized areas of France, certain traditional activities have lost their former importance.
