History of London
The history of London spans around 2000 years. A Celtic settlement is unsafe. Around the year 50 AD the Romans founded the city of Londinium . After the end of the Roman Empire, the city was destroyed during the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Great Britain . London was re-established at the end of the 9th century.
After the Norman conquest in 1066, London became the capital of the Kingdom of England instead of Winchester . In the Middle Ages, the city suffered plundering by insurgent peasant armies several times. The reformation broke the power of the church, which until then owned around half of the land; the redistribution of ecclesiastical goods ushered in an era of economic growth and London became a leading trading city.
With the Great Plague and the Great Fire , two disasters that followed each other marked the years 1665 and 1666. But the city quickly recovered from these setbacks and continued to grow in importance in parallel with England's increasing influence. During the 19th century London developed into the largest city in the world and the capital of the global British Empire ; within a few decades the population multiplied.
The expansion of the traffic connections in the first half of the 20th century led to an almost unchecked expansion of the built-up area and London grew far beyond its historical limits. During the Second World War , large parts of the city were destroyed by German air raids. After the war ended, the population dropped considerably as many Londoners settled in new satellite cities. In 1965, the Greater London administrative region was created, encompassing the entire metropolitan area. An extensive urban development program began in the 1980s in the fallow docklands , and many new high-rise buildings and skyscrapers were built.
Founding legends and prehistory
According to the Historia regum Britanniae , the medieval mythology of Geoffrey of Monmouth , London was founded by the Trojan Brutus after he defeated the giants Gog and Magog . Allegedly the city was first called Troia Nova , which later became Trinovantum (the Trinovantum were a Celtic tribe that settled in the area). Monmouth told of numerous legendary kings and adorned his work with fictitious stories about prehistoric London. King Lud is said to have renamed the city CaerLudein , from which London was later derived. Allegedly Lud was buried under the Ludgate, the west gate of London.
Despite extensive excavations, archaeologists have so far not discovered any traces of a prehistoric British settlement. There are some scattered finds of agricultural implements and graves, as well as traces of settlement, but these are not of major importance. Today it is considered unlikely that a city existed in pre-Roman times. Excavations by the Department of Urban Archeology of the Museum of London since the 1970s have failed to establish the existence of a significant settlement prior to AD 50. However, the discovery of further traces of settlement cannot be ruled out, since even the Roman city has only been explored in part.
Insightful finds such as the Battersea shield in the Thames near Chelsea indicate that the surroundings of the later city had a certain meaning. The remains of villages near Egham and Brentford and the ruins of a hill fort in Uppall have been discovered, but no town in the area of what is now the City of London . Several wooden piles found in 1999 in the Thames opposite the Secret Intelligence Service building suggest the existence of a bridge or boat dock some 3500 years ago.
Romans
The Romans conquered what is now England in AD 43 during the reign of Emperor Claudius . Archaeologists now believe that Londinium emerged as a civilian settlement a few years after the invasion. A wooden sewer pipe was discovered along the former east-west Roman main road when building No 1 Poultry . The dendrochronological examination showed that it dates from AD 47; this is considered the most likely year the city was founded.
It is believed that the place name is of pre-Roman origin, although the exact meaning is unclear. The linguist Richard Coates assumes that the place name was derived from the pre-Celtic ( Ur- European) word Plowonida , which roughly means "settlement on the broad river". Another theory is that the place name is of Celtic origin and refers to a previously existing farm. The syllable Lond means "wild" in the sense of "overgrown" or "wooded". Inscriptions and wall drawings suggest that Latin was the official language. It can be assumed that the locals spoke a British dialect. The city was about a mile long and half a mile wide.
In 60 or 61 Londinium was amended by Queen Boudicca listed tribe of Iceni ambushed. A layer of red ash discovered during excavations suggests that the city was set on fire and destroyed. After the bloody suppression of the Boudicca uprising , Londinium was rebuilt in a short time and grew steadily in the following decades. Londinium replaced Camulodunum ( Colchester ) as the capital of the province of Britain and around the year 120 the population peaked with around 60,000 inhabitants. Londinium had its heyday around the middle of the 2nd century. The city had the largest basilica north of the Alps, a government palace , thermal baths and a large fortress for the city garrison. There were also several temples; the remains of a Mithras temple on Walbrook Street, discovered in 1954, are considered the most important archaeological find of Roman times. The distances to other Roman cities are said to have been measured from the London Stone . Below the basilica, which was begun in the year 100, there was a fresco in 21 Lime Street in 2016, a large part of which, measuring 2.5 by 1.5 m, could be lifted.
Londinium did not long remain the capital of all of Britain. This Roman province was divided into the provinces of Britannia superior (Upper Great Britain) and Britannia inferior (Lower Great Britain ) with the capital Eboracum ( York ) in 197 . Around this time the London Wall was built , a fortification on the north side facing away from the river. The wall defined the expansion of the city for centuries, some remains have been preserved.
Due to political instability and ongoing economic crises, a gradual decline began in the 3rd century. Around the year 300 the provincial division of Britain changed again; Londinium was now the capital of the province of Maxima Caesariensis . At the end of the 4th century, London was still a relatively wealthy city with a declining population and an additional wall on the river side. The Romans officially declared the end of the occupation in 410 and withdrew their legions . The people of Britain were now left to their own devices. A small number of wealthy families were able to maintain the Roman lifestyle until the mid-5th century.
After the end of the Roman Empire, the Celto-Roman population of Britain was increasingly defenseless against the raids of Germanic tribes. According to Beda Venerabilis, these were the Angles , Saxons , Jutes and Frisians . There is little evidence of what happened during this period. Londinium was possibly the seat of a post-Roman administration. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that the Britons fled to Londinium after being defeated by the Jutes at the Battle of Creganford (possibly Crayford , c. 457 AD). At the end of the 5th century, the city was an uninhabited cluster of ruins.
Anglo-Saxons
The strategically favorable position on the Thames remained unused by the Anglo-Saxons for several decades . The immediate vicinity of the destroyed city of Londinium was initially not populated. In the hinterland on both sides of the river, however, individual small villages emerged. In the middle of the 6th century the area was integrated into the Kingdom of Essex , which later included all of Middlesex and possibly Surrey . In 604 King Sæberht converted to Christianity and in the same year Mellitus , the first historically verifiable bishop, settled in London. He laid the foundation stone of what would later become St Paul's Cathedral ; According to legend, this is said to have been built over the ruins of the Diana Temple (even if Christopher Wren found no evidence of this during the new building). It is unclear which Londinium Beda Venerabilis (II. 3) meant in his laconic description of London on the occasion of the visit of the Archbishop of Britain in 604, in which he lists a trading center of many peoples: “Lundonia ciuitas est, super ripam praefati fluminis posita, et ipsa multorum emporium populorum terra marique uenientium ”. However, this has not yet been proven archaeologically.
In the later 7th century the Anglo-Saxon village of Lundenwic ("London Settlement") was founded about a mile west of Londinium, which the Anglo-Saxons called Lundenburgh ("Fortress London"). The village was not far from what is now Charing Cross station . The mouth of the River Fleet likely served as a port for merchant ships and fishing boats. Recent excavations have shown that another village existed near Covent Garden as early as the early 7th century. Lundenwic came under control of the Kingdom of Mercia around 730 , which had expanded at the expense of the Kingdom of Essex. In 825, the Kingdom of Wessex took control.
Viking attacks became more common from around 830 onwards. Raids are documented in the years 842 and 851. In 865 the invasion of East Anglia followed and in 871 the Vikings had reached London; however, it is not known what exactly happened then. In 878, however, Wessex under King Alfred the Great was able to defeat the Vikings led by Guthrum and force a peace agreement. During the ten years that followed, the area within the Roman city walls was repopulated. The new city was called Lundenburgh , the city wall and defensive moat were restored. When the settlement focus shifted back to the original location, the older village Lundenwic was given the name Ealdwic ("old settlement"); from this the name Aldwych developed over time .
In 886 Alfred the Great appointed his son-in-law, Duke Æthelred of Mercia, as governor . To control the bridge, which was then rebuilt, he had the fortified settlement of Suthringa Gewarc (" Defensive Structure of the Men of Surrey") built on the south bank , today's Southwark . In the same year, what would later become the City of London on the north bank received the right to self-government. After Æthelred's death in 911, London came under the direct rule of the English kings. By the early 10th century, London had become a major trading center. Even if Winchester was the capital of the Kingdom of England at the time, London's political importance steadily increased. Æthelstan held numerous meetings of the Witenagemot in London, passed laws here and granted the city the right to mint its own coins. King Æthelred preferred London as his main residence.
During Æthelred's reign, the Vikings , led by Sven Gabelbart , began raiding again. In 994, London successfully resisted an attack, but numerous forays into the area followed. In 1013 London was besieged and Æthelred fled to Normandy . Three years later, Sven's son, Knut the Great , managed to conquer the city. In 1042 the Anglo-Saxons took over again when Knut's stepson, Edward the Confessor , ascended the throne. After his death, the succession to the throne was unclear. His cousin, Duke William of Normandy , laid claim to English royal dignity. The Witenagemot, however, appointed Edward's brother-in-law Harold Godwinson as king, who was then crowned in Westminster Abbey . In response, William sent his army to conquer England.
middle Ages
The Norman conquest of England in 1066 marked the final end of Anglo-Saxon rule. Harold Godwinson's army, greatly weakened by the Battle of Stamford Bridge against the Vikings, was defeated in the Battle of Hastings ; the king died on the battlefield. Wilhelm had Southwark burned down but spared the city. Instead, he gathered his troops in north-west Berkhamsted and waited for the city councils to recognize him as king. He was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066 .
The new king (now called "the Conqueror") had three fortresses built on the Thames ( Tower of London , Baynard's Castle and Montfitchet Castle ) to protect the city from further attacks by the Vikings and to prevent possible uprisings by the locals. In 1067 he gave the city a formal town charter and confirmed the privileges acquired during the rule of the Anglo-Saxons. His son Wilhelm Rufus ordered in 1097 the construction of the "Westminster Hall". This hall in upstream Westminster became the main residence of the king and is the oldest part of the Palace of Westminster .
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In 1189, King Richard the Lionheart appointed the city's first Lord Mayor . The construction of the London Bridge began in 1176 and lasted until 1209. This bridge lasted for more than 600 years and was the only one over the Thames in what is now the city center until 1750. The next bridge upstream was the one in Kingston upon Thames . A peasant revolt led by William FitzOsbern was quickly put down in 1196. In 1212 or 1213 a devastating fire broke out on London Bridge, with more than 3,000 deaths reportedly (this figure given by contemporary chroniclers is now considered to be greatly exaggerated). In 1199 and 1215 King John Ohneland granted the City of London the privilege of electing its mayor.
In May 1216, during the First Barons' War , London was occupied for the last time by troops from continental Europe . In this conflict, the French King Louis VIII sided with the English nobles, who rebelled against Johann Ohneland . He took London and was proclaimed the new ruler of England in St Paul's Cathedral. But after Johann's death in October 1216, Ludwig lost the support of the English nobility and had to give up his claim to rule over England almost a year later in the Peace of Lambeth .
Trade and industry experienced an upswing during the Middle Ages and as a result the population rose rapidly. Around 1100 around 15,000 people lived in the city, two hundred years later there were already 80,000. The trade was under the influence of several guilds , which in fact controlled the city and since 1215 also elected the Lord Mayor from their ranks. Medieval London was made up of narrow, winding streets and most of the houses were built of easily combustible materials such as wood and straw. The hygienic conditions were poor: the " Black Death ", which reached London in November 1348, claimed around 30,000 lives. Fifteen more plague epidemics followed by 1666 .
During the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, insurgent troops under Wat Tyler briefly occupied the city. A group of peasants stormed the Tower of London and executed the Lord Chancellor , Archbishop Simon Sudbury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Meanwhile, the city was ransacked and numerous buildings set on fire, including the famous Savoy Palace . Outside the city, negotiations with King Richard II broke out. Tyler made derogatory remarks, whereupon Lord Mayor William Walworth drew his sword and seriously injured him. A squire of the king killed the rebel leader and the rebels withdrew.
In the summer of 1450, London was again the target of a peasant revolt, this time led by Jack Cade . Around 20,000 rebels from Kent gathered southeast of the city and crossed the bridge on July 3rd. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and other confidants of King Henry VI. were captured and beheaded. The insurgents looted the city and retreated across the river before dark. When they tried to penetrate the city again the following day, they were stopped on the bridge by the city militias and after a battle lasting several hours they were driven away.
Richard Plantagenet , the 3rd Duke of York, marched troops towards London in 1455, but was stopped at St Albans ; this was the beginning of the Wars of the Roses between the House of Lancaster and House of York . His ally Richard Neville took London without a fight in July 1460 and the Duke of York first publicly claimed the royal dignity. But at the end of December 1460 he fell at the Battle of Wakefield . Instead, his son Edward IV ascended the throne.
The Wars of the Roses ended in 1485 with the Battle of Bosworth Field and Henry VII's accession to the throne . The new ruler extended the power of the crown and carried on the royal tradition of borrowing from the City of London for wars against France. He paid off his debts on time, which was extremely unusual for the time. In general, however, he paid little attention to the expansion of the urban infrastructure. However, the comparatively stable rule of the House of Tudor led to a revival of trade and increased growth of the city.
The impostor Perkin Warbeck pretended to be Eduard V's younger brother in 1497 . Insurgent troops allied with him, chiefly from Cornwall , gathered at Lewisham with the intention of overthrowing the king. The townspeople panicked at first, but then the defense was organized. The rebels fled after the lost battle of Deptford Bridge .
16th Century
The Reformation , which took place in the 16th century, was relatively calm in London, as most members of the upper social classes readily switched to Protestantism. Before 1535, almost half of the area of London was owned by monasteries and other religious institutions. The abolition of the monasteries ordered by Henry VIII resulted in almost all church real estate and lands being expropriated by 1538. These fell into the possession of the crown, the city or to nobles who were in the favor of the king. Henry VIII, for example, had a leper hospital demolished and built St James's Palace instead . He also expropriated York Palace, the residence of Archbishop Thomas Wolsey ; through remodeling and several extensions, the Palace of Whitehall , the new main royal residence, was created. The Hyde Park and St. James's Park , previously owned by Westminster Abbey, were now royal hunting grounds.
After the death of Edward VI. in 1553, Lady Jane Gray was received as the new queen at the Tower of London. But after a few days the Lord Mayor and the councilors changed their minds and took the side of Maria Tudor . Maria's decision to marry King Philip II of Spain sparked an uprising in January 1554, led by Thomas Wyatt . His troops moved from Kent towards London, but could not pass the London Bridge, as it was held by troops loyal to the king. They crossed the river at Kingston upon Thames and turned back east of the city. Wyatt's hope for an uprising in the City of London was not fulfilled and he surrendered.
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During the reign of Elizabeth I , London's importance among European trading centers increased significantly. The numerous businesses flourished, especially the weaving mills. Trade relations were extended beyond Western Europe to Russia , the Levant and America . During this period of mercantilism and monopoly trading, the Muscovy Company (1555), the Royal Exchange (1566) and the British East India Company (1600) were founded. In contrast, the Hanseatic League lost its privileges in 1598. After the destruction of Antwerp by the Spaniards in 1572, London became the most important North Sea port . In 1530 London had around 50,000 inhabitants, in 1605 there were already 225,000.
The late 16th century was a heyday of culture when William Shakespeare and many other artists lived and worked in London. However, the city authorities hampered the development of the theaters . In her opinion, public events attracted crowds that could easily get out of hand; the Puritans , who were against worldly pleasures of any kind, also exercised a certain influence. For these reasons the theaters were built outside the control of the city authorities, mainly in Southwark. The most famous theater of the time was Shakespeare's Globe Theater .
17th century
At the beginning of the 17th century, only a narrow strip of land along the north bank of the Thames was built over between the City of London and the City of Westminster . The area immediately north and east of the City of London was not yet considered suitable to be settled, as the area was partly swampy and diseases could break out there. To the north were the Moorfields , which were then drained and then used for agriculture for more than a century and a half. To the north of the Moorfields bordered the Finsbury Fields, a popular practice area for archery. Mile End to the east was a large commons on which maneuvers often took place. Preparations for James I's coronation celebrations in 1603 were interrupted by a plague epidemic that left around 30,000 dead. The Lord Mayor's Show was suspended for a few years and only performed again from 1609 at the request of the king.
The most popular meeting place for Londoners at that time was the nave of the partially crumbled St Paul's Cathedral . Traders went about their business in the side aisles, and people paid at the baptismal font. Lawyers met their clients at the pillars, and the unemployed looked for employment there. The churchyard was the center of the book trade and the nearby Fleet Street was an entertainment district. The theaters continued to gain popularity, especially Blackfriars established itself as the new theater district. During the reign of Charles I , numerous representatives of the landed aristocracy moved with their families to the city and settled in representative houses in the West End . So they could participate in the social events at the royal court.
In January 1642, Charles I ordered the arrest of several opposition MPs, who escaped and found refuge in the City of London. In August 1642 the English Civil War began and the city sided with Parliament. In November the royal troops won the Battle of Brentford , just a few kilometers west of London. London quickly raised its own army and the royalists withdrew. An extensive system of fortifications was then built to protect not only the City of London, but Westminster and Southwark as well. As the war progressed, London remained untroubled by fighting, and the financial support the city gave to the parliamentary army contributed significantly to its victory. After a high treason trial, Charles I was beheaded on January 30, 1649 in front of the Banqueting House in Whitehall .
During the years of the English Republic , in which Oliver Cromwell ruled the country as Lord Protector , large parts of cultural life in London largely came to a standstill. So the victorious Puritans closed all the city's theaters. The baroque attitude towards life first found its way into the city with the Stuart Restoration under King Charles II . The London naval officer Samuel Pepys created a unique chronicle of this time with his secret diary, in which he also described the two great catastrophes that struck London in the 1660s: the plague and the great conflagration.
The Great Plague of London in 1665 and 1666 was the last and at the same time one of the most momentous plague epidemics in Great Britain. Around 70,000 residents of London died, which was about a fifth of the population. Another catastrophe followed immediately after the plague epidemic: From September 2nd to 5th, 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed around four fifths of the city, including most of the medieval buildings. 100,000 residents were made homeless, but according to official information, only nine people are believed to have died in the flames. An inscription on the fire monument , which indicated the alleged guilt of the Catholics for the fire and a conspiracy of the Pope , was only removed in 1831.
Just a few days after the fire, King Charles II was presented with three different plans for rebuilding the city. The plans of Christopher Wren , John Evelyn and Robert Hooke were basically similar and provided for wide boulevards and squares in the Italian style. But as early as mid-September, the King, Parliament and the Corporation of London agreed that a plan that did not take into account existing land ownership was too expensive and therefore impracticable. The new houses were built along the existing and slightly widened streets, but only stones and bricks were allowed as building materials.
Almost all of the aristocratic residents moved away from the city for good and had new representative houses built in the up-and-coming West End, for example on Piccadilly . This marked the final separation between the merchants of the City of London and the nobility and the royal court in Westminster. Christopher Wren was unable to implement his rebuilding plan, but he was commissioned to rebuild the destroyed churches and to replace St Paul's Cathedral with a new building. The poorer strata of the population settled in the East End , the area immediately east of the city walls, and earned their living in the rapidly expanding docks and the numerous manufacturing companies that were emerging there.
During the Little Ice Age , a thick layer of ice formed on the Thames in particularly cold winters. The longest “ frost fair ” on the frozen river took place in the winter of 1683/84 and lasted over six weeks. After the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685, many French Huguenots fled to London and their skills contributed to economic growth. At the end of the 17th century, London became the world's most important financial center at the expense of Amsterdam . Lloyd's of London was founded in 1688, the Bank of England in 1694. Around 1700, 80% of English imports went through the port of London , as did 69% of exports and 86% of re-exports.
The new King Wilhelm III from the Netherlands . didn't like London; the smoke from the many chimneys caused asthma in him . After the first fire in the Palace of Whitehall in 1691 (the palace burned down completely in 1698), he acquired Nottingham House, which was located near the then insignificant village of Kensington , and had it expanded into Kensington Palace .
18th century
England's first daily newspaper appeared in London in 1702 ; the Daily Courant's editorial office was upstairs in a pub on Fleet Street . In the following years more and more newspapers were distributed on this street and Fleet Street soon became the center of the British press. These newspapers and magazines were read by the rising bourgeoisie in the numerous coffeehouses that were emerging , where political issues were also debated.
With the Act of Union in 1707, the kingdoms of England and Scotland were united, making London the capital of the Kingdom of Great Britain . In the following year, Christopher Wren completed his most important building, the new St Paul's Cathedral, which became a symbol of the emerging city and is considered one of the most outstanding examples of Baroque architecture.
For centuries the London Bridge had been the only bridge over the Thames, which kept the city's expansion to the south within narrow limits. Only the opening of Westminster Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge made it possible to develop the area south of the river across the board. In the west, new districts such as Mayfair emerged for the rich residents . The poorer sections of the population, on the other hand, were increasingly displaced to the East End, where extensive slums were formed. The crime rate soared that in 1750 Judge John Fielding set up the first police force, the Bow Street Runners . Public executions often had the character of a festival; until 1783 these took place in Tyburn , a small village a few kilometers west of the city, then until 1868 in the courtyard of Newgate Prison .
In 1753 the doctor Hans Sloane bequeathed his large collection of art objects from all over the world to the state. Parliament decided to preserve the collection and set up a museum for it; In 1759 the British Museum was opened, which is considered to be the oldest surviving museum in the world. In 1755, Cogers, the world's first debating club, was founded in the City of London. Between 1760 and 1766 the last remaining city gates and sections of the city wall were razed. King George III acquired Buckingham House in 1762 , which was expanded into Buckingham Palace around 60 years later .
In June 1780 the " Gordon Riots " shook the city. Radical Protestants under the leadership of Lord Gordon wanted to prevent the implementation of a law aimed at the emancipation of Catholics . An incited mob roamed the city, ravaging Catholic churches and setting fire to Catholics' homes. It took two weeks for the army to bring the unrest under control. 285 people were killed and more than 100 houses were destroyed.
Also in 1780, the only American prisoner lived in the Tower of London . Henry Laurens , former chairman of the Second Continental Congress , had successfully sought support in the Netherlands for the American Revolutionary War and was arrested by the Royal Navy on his way home . In December 1781 he was released in exchange for Charles Cornwallis .
19th century
During the 19th century, London developed into the largest city in the world and the capital of the global British Empire . The population increased from one million in 1800 to 6.7 million a hundred years later. During this period, London developed into a kind of “world capital” in the fields of politics, finance and commerce. This dominance remained virtually unchallenged for decades and was only called into question towards the end of the century with the growing importance of Paris and New York . The London Beer Flood occurred on October 17, 1814.
As British possessions expanded around the world, so did London's prosperity. On the other hand, the city was also characterized by extreme poverty. Millions of people had to make their living in the overpopulated and unsanitary slums. The writer Charles Dickens described these conditions in novels such as Oliver Twist . In 1829, London received the Metropolitan Police set up by Prime Minister Robert Peel , a centrally managed police authority that was responsible for fighting crime throughout the metropolitan area with the exception of the City of London. It was the first special purpose association in the conurbation, which was then split up into many small communities. According to Robert Peel, the police officers are still called "bobbies" or "peelers" today.
The urban structure of London changed fundamentally in the 19th century with the railroad . A dense network of railroad lines enabled the formation of suburbs in the neighboring counties, from where members of the middle and upper classes commuted to their workplaces in the city center. The built-up area now extended to once rural areas such as Greenwich , Islington , Paddington , Belgravia , Holborn , Finsbury , Shoreditch , Southwark and Lambeth . The unchecked expansion of the city was accompanied by increased segregation ; practically without exception, the wealthy moved to the suburbs, leaving the inner quarters around the city center to the poor.
London's first railway line was the one from London Bridge Station to Greenwich , which opened in 1836. Other main railway stations soon followed, connecting London with all parts of Great Britain: Euston (1837), Paddington (1838), Fenchurch Street (1841), Waterloo (1848), King's Cross (1850), Victoria (1858), St Pancras (1863) ), Broad Street (1865) and Liverpool Street (1874). The first tram ran in 1861. Two years later, the Metropolitan Railway followed , the world's first underground train . In 1890, the first electrically powered underground railway, the City and South London Railway, opened . Both railways are now part of the London Underground .
The confusing system of local administration, which dates back to the Middle Ages, increasingly proved to be antiquated for the needs of a metropolis of millions and could no longer keep up with developments. In 1855, the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was founded, which brought about a certain degree of centralization, at least in the area of construction. The County of London followed the MBW in 1889 with a central administration for the entire metropolitan area. In 1899 this administrative county was further divided into 28 metropolitan boroughs .
The unchecked population growth led to severe environmental pollution from around 1850. The sewage was discharged directly into the Thames . As the drinking water mainly came from the river, cholera epidemics broke out regularly , killing over 10,000 people in 1854 alone. After the " Great Stench " in the summer of 1858, when the river literally stank to heaven, Parliament commissioned the MBW to plan and build a comprehensive underground sewer system . Joseph Bazalgette was appointed chief engineer for the largest construction project of the entire 19th century . Under his leadership, 135 kilometers of main sewers and 1,750 kilometers of sewers were built. After the completion of the sewage system, which is still in operation today, all Londoners had safe drinking water and the death rate dropped rapidly.
As the capital of a world empire, London acted like a magnet to immigrants from the colonies and poorer parts of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Irish moved to the city, many of them during the great Irish famine . At one point over 20% of London's population was Irish. The Jews benefited from the advantages of the liberal society and the abolition of trade restrictions. Smaller groups of Chinese and Indians also chose London as their new home. Many of the buildings that characterize London's cityscape today were built during the 19th century. These include Trafalgar Square , the new building of the Palace of Westminster , which was destroyed by fire , the Royal Albert Hall , the Victoria and Albert Museum , numerous institutes of the University of London , the National Gallery and Tower Bridge .
Three events symbolize the London of the Victorian era . In 1851, on the initiative of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , Queen Victoria's husband , the “ Great Exhibition ” took place in Hyde Park , the first ever world exhibition . The glass exhibition hall, the Crystal Palace, achieved world fame . For decades, the nightly attacks of " Spring Heeled Jack " made headlines. The series of murders by " Jack the Ripper " in 1888 also became a legend .
20th century
Until 1945
The population of London continued to grow at the beginning of the 20th century, albeit much less rapidly than in previous decades. The transport infrastructure was further expanded; Thus, most of the railway and subway networks were electrified, numerous new tram lines were built and in 1902 the first motorized bus operated . In 1908, the IV Olympic Games took place parallel to the Franco-British Exhibition .
London continued to be the target of political refugees. Most of them settled in the poor East End, where they could go into hiding with relative ease. They did not always resort to peaceful means to finance their political activities. The best known example is a group of Baltic anarchists. After a series of brutal robberies and murders, Sidney Street was besieged in January 1911 , ending with the death of the anarchists in a burning house. One of the eyewitnesses was the then Home Secretary Winston Churchill , who was sharply criticized in Parliament for the reckless endangerment of his life.
During the First World War, London suffered aerial bombing by the Luftwaffe for the first time , carried out by airships and Gotha double-decker aircraft (see also aerial warfare in the First World War ). The British public called the airships "baby killers"; the destruction, however, was not comparable with that of the summer of 1940. The bombs killed about 700 people; 162 people were killed when a 1,000-pound bomb was dropped on Liverpool Street Station in May 1917 alone .
The interwar period was marked by the expansion of the built-up area to an extent never seen before. In 1898 a Briton proposed the idea of the garden city . The low density of buildings in the newly emerging suburbs with single and especially semi-detached houses gave the Londoners the feeling of living “in the country”. This development was promoted in particular by the Metropolitan Railway with the Metro-land advertising campaign; the increasing number of automobiles also contributed. The new suburbs were almost entirely outside the County of London ; throughout Middlesex , west Essex , north Surrey , north-west Kent and south Hertfordshire .
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, London was also hit by high unemployment. In the East End, extreme parties - right and left - were popular. The British Communist Party won a seat in the House of Commons and the British Union of Fascists also had many supporters. The clashes between the extreme left and the extreme right culminated in the 1936 " Battle of Cable Street ". Many Jews fled the Nazi- ruled German Reich and mainly settled in the West End. On September 29, 1939, the population reached its all-time high: 8,615,050 people lived in today's urban area.
During the attack on Poland , the rulers and the population were glad that Great Britain and France “kept still” (“seated war ”) and that Germany did not impose a two- front war. That is why the Luftwaffe did not attack England (it was also busy preparing for the western campaign , the start of which on May 10th took the Allies by surprise).
When the Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands in May 1940, Queen Wilhelmina came to London. In June 1940, King Haakon VII came to Great Britain on the British warship HMS Devonshire after the Wehrmacht had occupied Norway . In 1941 Peter II from Yugoslavia and George II from Greece came because of the Balkan campaign . Some governments in exile were also in London.
After the unexpectedly quick end of the western campaign ( surrender-like armistice on June 22, 1940) , the Wehrmacht occupied the whole of northern France ; so she had many airfields south of the English Channel and could attack England better (shorter approach time and distance; less advance warning time for British interceptors). For a time Hitler hoped that the Battle of Britain could induce the British government to negotiate peace.
During the Second World War , London, like many other British cities, was attacked by German Air Force bombers. Especially the east of the city was affected by " The Blitz ". Before these attacks began, hundreds of thousands of children had been evacuated to the countryside, and civilians sought refuge in low-lying underground stations. From September 7, 1940, London was bombed for 76 consecutive nights. The attacks continued until May 10, 1941 and then subsided noticeably. A second wave of attacks followed from June 1944 to April 1945 with type V1 and V2 rockets . By the end of the war, almost 30,000 people died and over 50,000 were seriously injured. Tens of thousands of houses (mostly in Docklands ) were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of residents left homeless.
post war period
Only three years after the end of the war - the city had barely overcome the consequences - the XIV Summer Olympics took place; The main venue was Wembley Stadium . The main airport, Croydon Airport , was closed and replaced by the new London Heathrow Airport . Reconstruction progressed slowly in the first few years. The 1951 Festival of Britain was something of a turning point and was seen as a signal for a better future.
Since the early 19th century, Londoners used coal to heat their homes, which resulted in heavy smoke. Due to the frequent inversion weather conditions , the smoke fell over the city like a blanket in winter and combined with the fog. The term smog originated at the beginning of the 20th century. In December 1952, the smog was so thick that over 4,000 people died of lung diseases in just five days (a further 8,000 from the long-term effects). In response to this smog catastrophe , the “Clean Air Act” was enacted, a bundle of measures aimed at sustainably improving the air quality in the metropolis. This kind of winter smog has hardly existed in London since then.
The housing shortage was a serious problem in the first few years after the war, as many houses had been destroyed during the war. The authorities responded by building apartment blocks . Because the height restrictions on high-rise office buildings were lifted, the cityscape of London changed fundamentally. City dwellers were encouraged to visit satellite cities such as B. Harlow , Crawley , Stevenage or Milton Keynes . The population of London fell below 7 million. Further urban sprawl was restricted with rigid planning regulations . Since then, new settlements have only been allowed to be built on the other side of the Green Belt , an approximately 5 to 10 km wide green belt around the built-up urban area, or if existing urban areas are re-used. In 1965 the County of London was dissolved. It was replaced by the much larger administrative region of Greater London .
Since the 1950s, London has become the new home of large numbers of immigrants, mainly from independent Commonwealth countries such as Jamaica , India and Pakistan . London became one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Europe. Especially the black immigrants were affected by racism and were mostly at the bottom of the social structure. The tension erupted in the Brixton Riots in 1981 . From the early 1970s to the mid 1990s, London was repeatedly the target of terrorist attacks by the IRA as a result of the Northern Ireland conflict .
In the post-war decades, London lost its traditional role as an important port, as the old facilities in the Docklands were not suitable for the large container ships and could not be expanded. New port facilities were built further east in Felixstowe and Tilbury . 1981 began a comprehensive urban development program , tens of thousands of jobs to the service sector were from the City of London to the Isle of Dogs relocated or created. In the Canary Wharf was a vast high-rise complex, built in 1991, the skyscraper One Canada Square is the second tallest building in Britain. The Thames Barrier in Woolwich has been protecting the city from spring tides in the North Sea since 1984 . London City Airport opened in 1987 in the eastern part of Docklands . In the mid-1980s, the population began to rise again.
The increasingly violent clashes between the Greater London Council (GLC) led by Ken Livingstone and the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher led to the dissolution of the GLC in 1986. Its competencies were largely transferred to the city districts and partly to the central government. London was the only metropolis in the world without a central administration. This measure, ordered for purely political reasons, turned out to be extremely short-sighted and led to considerable coordination problems. As a replacement for the dissolved GLC, the government of Tony Blair created the Greater London Authority in 2000 after the majority of the citizens of Greater London approved this project in a referendum on May 7, 1998 . Ken Livingstone became the first directly elected Lord Mayor for all of London ( Mayor of London ). In the 2008 elections he was replaced by Boris Johnson from the Conservative Party .
21st century
In order to curb the rampant traffic jams in the city center and to encourage the increased use of public transport, Ken Livingstone pushed through the introduction of the London Congestion Charge in 2003 against bitter resistance from residents and business owners. Since then, the traffic problems have calmed down, as have the initial outrage and headlines about the innovation. The London Plan , published in 2004, estimated the city's population at 8.1 million by 2016. This has now been exceeded, after the Greater London Authority estimated the population at 8.63 million in 2015. This sets the previous high of 1939.
Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , London has been a target of possible attacks by Islamist terrorists , mainly because of the deployment of British troops in Iraq . On July 7, 2005, there were four bomb attacks with 56 deaths and more than 700 injured. In the years that followed, at least two further acts of terrorism were prevented. On August 10, 2006, the British police, with the support of the British domestic intelligence service MI5, thwarted several terrorist attacks on aircraft. As part of the anti-terrorist campaign , Heathrow Airport was partially closed and several suspects were arrested, mainly in London.
In the summer of 2011, London was the starting point for nationwide riots in which there was vandalism and looting in which numerous people were injured. In 2011 the population rose to over 8 million, so that a new high was reached. For the first time in London's history, white British made up less than half of the population. In 2012 the Summer Olympics took place in London . The main venue was the newly built Olympic Park . In 2013 the Shard skyscraper , the tallest building in Western Europe, opened.
In the terrorist attack in London on March 22, 2017 , which the terrorist organization Islamic State claimed for itself, a total of four people died. Eight people were killed and at least 48 injured in the Islamist-motivated terrorist attack in London on June 3, 2017 . The Islamophobic attack in London on June 19, 2017 17 days later claimed one Muslim person dead. On September 15, 2017, an attack was carried out in Parsons Green subway station , in which at least 30 people were injured.
literature
- Peter Ackroyd: London. The biography . Chatto & Windus, London 2000, ISBN 1-85619-716-6
- Arthur H. Beavan: Imperial London . Dent, London / Dutton, New York 1901 ( digital copy, PDF )
- Erich Germer: London. History and cultural sites of the British capital . Neukastel-Verlag, Leinsweiler 1993, ISBN 3-927443-01-8
- Martin Weinbaum: Constitutional History of London 1066–1268 . (= Quarterly for social and economic history; supplements; issue 15). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1929 ISSN 0341-0846
- Jerry White: London in the eighteenth century . London 2012; London in the nineteenth century . London 2007; London in the twentieth century . London 2008
- London. History of a cosmopolitan city 1558–1945 . (= Geo epoch; No. 18). Gruner and Jahr, Hamburg 2005
Web links
- History of London on britannia.com
- History of London on britainexpress.com
- Historical city maps from 1705 ( Memento from April 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- Knowledge of London
- Untold London - the city's multicultural history
- Article in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908)
Individual evidence
- ^ Excavation report ( memento of July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) by English Heritage
- ^ Richard Coates: A New Explanation of the Name of London , in Transactions of the Philological Society , November 1998, p. 203
- ↑ Will Durant: Caesar and Christ. A cultural history of Rome and Christianity from the beginnings to the year 325 AD (= The history of civilization . Volume 3 ). Francke, Bern 1949, p. 547 .
- ^ The discovery of an ornate Roman fresco revealed , Museum of London Archeology, February 2, 2016.
- ^ Roman London - a brief history ( Memento of December 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), website of the Museum of London
- ^ English translation of Book II .
- ↑ Jim Leary: Life and Death in the Heart of the Settlement: excavations at 28-31 James Street , in: Jim Leary, with Gary Brown, James Rackham, Chris Pickard, Richard Hughes: Tatberht's Lundenwic. Archaeological Excavations in Middle Saxon London , London 2004, pp. 6–39 ( online , PDF).
- ↑ Nikolaus Pevsner : London I: The Cities of London and Westminster , p. 48
- ↑ Julia Eichenberg: Power in flight: European governments in London (1940-1944) . In: Contemporary Research 3/2018 ( online )
- ↑ Data London London Data Store: Population Change 1939–2015, accessed August 27, 2015
- ↑ “Census 2011: London's population booms to EIGHT million” , accessed on March 11, 2017.
- ↑ "2011 Census: 45% of Londoners white British" , accessed on March 11, 2017.
- ^ "The Shard - that sting in the city" , accessed on March 11, 2017.
- ↑ Islamic State claims attack for itself . Zeit Online, March 23, 2017.
- ^ The Daily Telegraph : London Bridge attack latest: Terrorists named as police say they were not under surveillance as they posed 'low risk' . Retrieved October 3, 2017.
- ↑ Attack in front of a mosque in London: "I want to kill all Muslims" - Van borrowed in Wales - WELT. Retrieved June 19, 2017 .
- ↑ ZEIT ONLINE : Parsons Green: Great Britain calls out the highest terror warning level after the attack . Retrieved October 3, 2017.
