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London History
Roman Londinium
There is evidence of scattered Celtic settlements along the Thames before the arrival of the Romans in 43 AD but no firm proof that central London was permanently settled by the Celts. Camulodunum (Colchester) to the northeast was the principal settlement of the Romans while Londinium (London) was established as a permanent military camp, and became an important hub of the Roman road system.
In 60 AD when queen Boudicca (or Boadicea) reigned, the Iceni tribe rose up against the invaders and Londinium and Camulodunum were burned to the ground. According to Tacitus- a Roman historian the inhabitants were "massacred, hanged, burned and crucified" but the Iceni were eventually defeated and Boudicca committed suicide. The aftermath saw Londinium emerge as the new commercial and administrative, though not military capital of Britannia. To protect against further attacks, fortifications were built which were three miles long, fifteen feet high and eight feet thick. Also built were an imposing basilica and forum, a governor's palace, temples, bathhouses and an amphitheatre.
Saxon Lundenwic And The Danes
By the fourth century, the Roman Empire was in its last phase of rule and in 410 AD the Romans officially abandoned the city when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. The country and Londinium were left at the mercy of the Saxon pirates who controlled most of southern England by the sixth century. Initially it appeared that they settled to the west of the Roman city.
The Anglo-Saxons decided to reoccupy the walled Roman city probably in response to Danish Viking attacks on London in 841 and 851 AD. After numerous sporadic attacks, and an odd extended sojourn, the Danish leader Cnut (or Canute), became King of All England in 1016, and made London the national capital, a position it has held ever since.
The Danish rule lasted 26 years and with the accession of Edward the Confessor who ruled from 1042 till 1066 AD, the court and church moved upstream to Thorney Island. Here a grand palace was built by Edward so he could oversee the construction of his “West Minster" (later to become Westminster Abbey). So it was due to Edward that the geographical separation of power took place with the royal government based in Westminster , and commerce centered upstream in the City of London .
From 1066 To The Black Death
On his deathbed Edward appointed Harold, Earl of Wessex, as his successor. Harold was crowned in the new Abbey- establishing a tradition that continues to his day. He was however defeated by William of Normandy also known as William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. On Christmas Day, 1066, William crowned himself king in Westminster Abbey. He granted the City numerous privileges and as a precautionary measure also constructed three defensive towers, one of which still survives as the Tower of London
Over the next few centuries there were continuous struggles for independence and self-governance with the monarchy and in the Magna Carta of 1215 AD, London was granted the right to elect its own sheriff, or Lord Mayor.
1348 AD saw the outbreak of the worst natural disaster in the entire history of London- the Black Death. This bubonic plague carried by black rats, and transmitted to humans by flea bites, wiped out something like half the capital's population in the space of two years.
Tudor London
London’s population of 50,000 which remained constant since the Black Death almost trebled in size under the rule of the Tudor Royal Family.
English Reformation - the separation of the English Church from Rome was the most crucial development of the sixteenth century. A far-reaching consequence of this split was Henry's Dissolution of the Monasteries , begun in 1536 in order to bump up the royal coffers. This dissolution changed the entire city. Previously dominated by religious institutions, London's property market was suddenly flooded with confiscated estates, which were quickly snapped up and redeveloped by the Tudor nobility.
Henry VIII was a religious conservative inspite of having started the English reformation and he executed as many protestants as catholics in the last ten years of his reign. Henry’s son Edward VI who ruled from 1547 till53 AD followed an even more staunch anti-catholic policy and by the end of his reign London's churches had lost their altars, paintings, relics and virtually all their statuary. Following Edward's death, the religious pendulum swung the other way with the accession of " Bloody Mary " (1553-58). This time, it was Protestants who were martyred with abandon at Tyburn and Smithfield.
The Tudor economy remained in good health and reached its height in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) inspite of all the religious strife. Thomas Gresham a millionaire merchant erected the Royal Exchange in 1572 which established London as the premier world trade market and epitomized its commercial success. An English Renaissance flourished in the 45 years of Elizabeth's reign, especially in the field of literature. Brilliant works were brought out by Christopher Marlowe , Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare , whose plays were performed in the theatres of Southwark, the city's entertainment district.
Stuart London
1603 AD saw the beginning of the Stuart dynasty with James VI of Scotland becoming James I of England (1603-25). This led to unison of two crowns. James I intended to exercise religious tolerance but it was thwarted by public outrage which followed the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes, in cahoots with a group of Catholic conspirators, was discovered attempting to blow up the king at the state opening of Parliament.
Under James's successor, Charles I (1625-49), the bitterness between the parliament and the crown turned into a civil war. Since London was the key to victory for both sides and a stronghold of parliamentarians it came into immediate attack from the royal forces. In spite of having defeated the Parliamentary forces to the west of London in 1642, Charles did not attain victory as he hesitated to attack further and withdrew to Reading. After a series of defeats in 1645, Charles surrendered to the Scots, who handed him over to Parliament. In January 1649 he was tried and executed in Whitehall and England became a Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. London was now subject to Puritan laws which closed down all theatres, enforced observance of the Sabbath, and banned the celebration of Christmas, which was considered a papist superstition
Charles II (1660-85) arrived in power and was received ecstatically by the people as he announced restoration of the monarchy and the "Merry Monarch" immediately caught the mood of the public by opening up the theatres and concert halls. 1665 saw the onset of the Great Plague which claimed 100,000 lives. The following year also saw the Great Fire, which razed eighty percent of the city to the ground and more than 100,000 were left homeless. However within five years, 9000 houses had been rebuilt with bricks and mortar as timber was banned and within fifty years almost all of the city’s churches including the first Protestant cathedral, St Paul's had been rebuilt single-handedly by Christopher Wren. The Great Rebuilding , as it was known, was one of London's remarkable achievements, and extinguished virtually all traces of the medieval city.
Georgian London
The first of the Hanoverian dynasty began with the accession of George I (1714-27). London’s economy boomed as very fashionable goods were stocked in shops especially of the newly developed west-end, the population approached one million as it became the largest city in the world and a huge market was created along with a building boom.
Inspite of all the wealth and prosperity, London experienced the worst mortality rates since record due to abundance of diseases but more than that due to the intake of gin! At its height from 1720 to 1751, gin consumption averaged two pints a week especially among the poor. This led to a burial rate exceeding baptism rate by more than two to one. Eventually the government passed an act that restricted gin retailing and halted the epidemic
Policing the metropolis also came into vogue with the government as capital punishment was introduced for the most minor dismeanours. In spite of this crime continued unabated as prison population increased, transportations to the colonies began, and 1200 Londoners were hanged at Tyburn's gallows. Rioting became a popular form of protest among the poorer, the most serious insurrection being the Gordon Riots of 1780, when up to 50,000 Londoners went on a five-day rampage through the city
The Nineteenth Century
London emerged as the capital of an empire that stretched globally in the nineteenth century. From just over one million in 1801 the population increased to almost seven million in 1901. The world's largest enclosed dock system was built in the marshes to the east of the City, and the world's first public transport network was created, with horse-buses, trains, trams and an underground railway. But there were cons of industrialization as well as it brought pollution and overcrowding, especially in the slums of the East End. Diseases like smallpox, measles, scarlet fever and cholera killed thousands of working-class families. It is this era of slum-life, and huge social divides, that Dickens evoked in his novels.
The country's international standing reached unprecedented heights and as a result Queen Victoria who gained accession in 1837 till 1901, became a national icon just as Elizabeth I. The spirit of the era was perhaps best embodied by the Great Exhibition of 1851, a display of manufacturing achievements from all over the world, which took place in the Crystal Palace erected in Hyde Park.
1855 saw the establishment of the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) which led to the arrival of the local government. This was followed in 1888 by the directly-elected London County Council (LCC). The achievements of the MBW and the LCC were immense, in particular those of its chief engineer, Joseph Bazalgette, who helped create an underground sewer system, much of which is still in use, and greatly improved transport routes.
While half of London was drowned in debt and disease the other half enjoyed the fruits of the richest nation in the world. Luxury establishments such as the Ritz and Harrods belong to this period, personified by the dissolute Prince of Wales, later Edward VII (1901-10).
The first "Test" cricket match between England and Australia took place in 1880 at the Kennington Oval, and during the following 25 years, nearly all of London's professional football clubs were founded. The masses too enjoyed new entertainments as music halls boomed and public houses prospered.
From World War I To World War II
World War I (1914-18) saw London experience its first aerial attacks, with Zeppelin raids. Around 650 people died and so did the respect of the majority for the ruling class.
Population still boomed reaching close to nine million in 1939 but there was a market shift in population out into the suburbs. After the boom of the "Swinging Twenties", the economy collapsed with the crash of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929. The Jarrow Hunger March, the most famous protest of the Depression years, shocked London in 1936, the year in which thousands of British fascists tried to march through the predominantly Jewish East End, only to be stopped in the so-called Battle of Cable Street .
London was more or less unprepared for the aerial bombardments of World War II (1939-45). The bombing campaign, known as the Blitz , began on September 7, 1940, and continued for 57 consecutive nights. Further carnage was caused towards the end of the war by the pilotless V1 "doodlebugs" and V2 rockets, which caused another 20,000 casualties. In total, 30,000 civilians lost their lives in the bombing of London, with 50,000 injured and some 130,000 houses destroyed.
Postwar London
The Festival of Britain was staged in 1951 to life the country from postwar gloom. This was held on the south bank of Thames and was eventually transformed into the South Bank Arts Centre. Many people turned up at this technology fair. However people were leaving the city to settle elsewhere and the slow process of population decline kept happening. The consequent labour shortage was made good by mass immigration from the former colonies, in particular the Indian subcontinent and the West Indies. The newcomers, a large percentage of whom settled in London, were given small welcome, and within ten years were subjected to race riots, which broke out in Notting Hill in 1958.
The riots were believed to have been carried out by working-class lads from London's slum areas and new housing estates, who formed the city's first postwar youth cult known as the Teddy Boys. Subsequent cults with accompanying music turned London into the epicenter of the ‘Swinging Sixties’. The Teddy Boys were replaced by the Mods in the early 1960s whose sharp suits came from London's Carnaby Street. Fashion hit London in a big way, and - thanks to the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Twiggy - London was proclaimed the hippest city on the planet on the front pages of Time magazine.
Thatcherite London
In 1979, Margaret Thatcher won the general election for the Conservative Party which stayed in power for seventeen years and steered the country through a great period of social polarization. While taxation policies and easy credit fuelled a consumer boom for the professional classes (the "yuppies" of the 1980s), a calamitous number of people ended up trapped in long-term unemployment. The Brixton riots of 1981 and 1985, and the Tottenham riot of 1985, were reminders of the price of such divisive policies, and of the feeling of social exclusion rife among the city's black youth.
There was a sharp decline in the labour party nationally but it won through a narrow victory led by the radical Ken Livingstone , or "Red Ken" as the tabloids dubbed him. Under Livingstone, the GLC poured money into projects among London's ethnic minorities, into the arts, and most famously into a subsidized fares policy for public transport. Such schemes endeared Livingstone to the hearts of many Londoners, but it was too much for Thatcher, who abolished the GLC in 1986, leaving London as the only European capital without a citywide elected body.
The tensions between the poor and rich boroughs increased and homelessness returned in a big way since the Victorian era. The underside of Waterloo Bridge transformed into a "Cardboard City" sheltering up to 2000 vagrants. Also took place the ‘Big Bang’ which abolished a whole range of restrictive practices on the Stock Exchange and fuelled the building boom in the reclaimed Docklands. This was very visibly a part of Thatcherism. Stocks and shares reached new heights but shortly after crashed leading to a recession which continued for ten years.
Millennium London
The twenty-first century London has seen redevelopment at a new pace. A lot of this has been possible by money from the National Lottery, which has funded a series of prestigious new millennium projects that have changed the face of the city. A new pedestrian bridge now spans the Thames, leading to the new Tate Modern gallery, spectacularly housed in a converted power station. Numerous other national institutions have transformed themselves, too; among them the British Museum, the Royal Opera House, the Science Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Maritime Museum. And last, but not least, there's the controversial Millennium Dome, built and stuffed full of gadgetry for £750 million, but which has yet to achieve the sort of success predicted by its backers.
The creation of the Greater London Assembly (GLA) and an American-style Mayor of London, both elected by popular mandate has been the most significant political developments for London.
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