Commercial Powerhouse

By the time of the Norman Conquest London was already by far the largest and wealthiest town in England. Its wealth was based on trade, and its function as an international entrepôt attracted a growing body of foreign merchants to the city. The wealth and independence of the city’s merchant oligarchy led inexorably to self-government, in the form of a City Corporation led by a Mayor, while the economy was controlled by a rich and powerful network of livery companies. By the fifteenth century a new landscape of commercial power was taking shape in the City. Its primary locus was the Guildhall, surrounded by a constellation of over forty livery company halls. This civic ensemble mirrored the role of St Paul’s as the primary locus of religious power, surrounded by its constellation of parish churches. The Guildhall was intended to be an expression of civic grandeur worthy of the greatest city in the land. It was the second largest structure in the medieval City after St Paul’s, and the second largest civic hall in England after Westminster Hall. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries London presided over a mercantilist economy. This was an intermediate mode of production between feudalism and capitalism, founded on the ideological belief that regulation by the state was essential for trade to be profitable. The alliance between state and commerce boosted overseas trade, opening up new global trading routes and fostering the first wave of colonisation. City merchants celebrated their growing commercial power by constructing the sixteenth century Royal Exchange in a Flemish Renaissance style, modelled on the bourse built by their trading rivals in Antwerp. Britain’s mercantilist system evolved in the eighteenth century into an expansionary form of commercial and financial capitalism founded on international trade, naval supremacy and imperial conquest. Slavery was integral to the process of imperial expansion. To sustain her position as the world’s foremost imperial power Britain developed a new form of fiscal-military state, based upon a formidable government machine organised to fund the nation’s military and colonial adventures through radical increases in taxation and public debt. The City became the world’s leading financial centre, and its institutions used hegemonic building in the classical style to proclaim their power and wealth. The Bank of England and the Mansion House, official residence of the Lord Mayor, joined the Royal Exchange at the hegemonic heart of the City. The Bank was rebuilt after each wave of imperial expansion, culminating in the masterpiece created by John Soane, the nation’s leading Neoclassical architect. At the same time Whitehall was being developed as the hegemonic headquarters of Empire, also in an appropriately monumental classical style. It incorporated new government buildings for the Treasury and Admiralty that looked out over Horse Guards Parade, the principal theatre of military display for the British state.