Abstract
Before any attempt can be made to examine and assess the City, it is necessary to define the term in reasonably precise language, and in a way that covers its existence from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. To the Victorian such a definition was simple for they associated the City with a particular part of London, and so the City was the collective term for all the activities that took place there. Such was the diversity of these that it was necessary to employ a geographic term, as no other sufficed to encompass them all and their apparent lack of unity. However, even at that time the ramifications of the City could not be confined to one part of London, as it was ceasing to be an area where people lived and worked and becoming one where they only worked. In order to accommodate the expansion of business in the City, residential accommodation was gradually replaced by offices, warehouses and other premises. It was no longer possible for people to afford rents in the City and so homes were turned over to other uses or removed to make way for commercial premises. By the 1860s it was estimated that only 113,387 people lived in the City of London while 283,520 worked there for at least part of every day and another 509,611 were regular visitors as clients or customers.1 This trend continued so that only 27,000 lived in the City in 1901 compared to 359,000 who worked there full-time.
The City is a world within itself centered in the heart of the metropolis …
The City, or the Physiology of London Business, London 1852, p. 1
The City of London is a function, no longer a postal address. The function is finance and it does not have to be applied only in the square mile.
Financial Times, 27 February 1987
Although this [the City] cannot be defined with precision, it is interpreted here as a group of institutions and not as a geographical place. The institutions concerned are located largely within the geographic City and account for a large proportion of its economic activity, but there are exceptions, for example, some insurance companies, pension funds and miscellaneous financial institutions although included … are located outside the City, while some overseas earnings generated within the City are excluded. Examples of the latter are those of professions such as accountants, actuaries, solicitors and barristers.
UK Balance of Payments: the CSO Pink Book, London 1989, p. 36
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Notes
B. Scott, A Statistical Vindication of the City of London, London 1877, ch. II.
J. Plender and P. Wallace, The Square Mile: A Guide to the New City of London, London 1985, preface.
J. Coakley and L. Harris, The City of Capital: London’s Role as a Financial Centre, Oxford 1983, p. 2.
See also D.K. Sheppard, The Growth and Role of the UK Financial Institutions 1880–1962, London 1971, pp. 11–2
H. McRae and F. Cairncross, Capital City: London as a Financial Centre, London 1984, p. xli
A. Hilton, City within a State: a Portrait of the Financial World, London 1987, pp. vii, 1–2
M. Reid, All Change in the City: the Revolution in Britain’s Financial Sector, London 1988, p. 21
Calculations from tables in C.H. Lee, British Regional Employment Statistics, 1841–1971, Cambridge 1979.
P. Draper, I. Smith, W. Stewart and N. Hood, The Scottish Financial Sector, Edinburgh 1988, ch. 1.
cf. M. Collins, Money and Banking in the UK: a History, London 1988, pp. 214, 357–8
J.H. Dunning and E.V. Morgan, An Economic Study of the City of London, London 1971, pp. 31–2.
C.H. Holden and W.A. Holford, The City of London: a Record of Destruction and Survival, London 1951, p. 173.
Corporation of London, City of London Population Census 1981, Department of Architecture and Planning, London 1981, p. 7.
R. Spiegelberg, The City: Power without Accountability, London 1973, p. 247
L. Hannah, The Rise of the Corporate Economy, London 1976, p. 3
M. Collins, Money and Banking in the UK: a History, London 1988, pp. 358, 405, 407, 411, 503
W.M. Clarke, The City’s Invisible Earnings, London 1958, p. 93
W.M. Clarke, The City in the World Economy, London 1965, p. 137;
W.M. Clarke, Britain’s Invisible Earnings: The Report of the Committee on Invisible Exports, London 1967, pp. 37, 92, 256
‘The Overseas Earnings of UK Financial Institutions’, BEQB, vol. 8, 1968, p. 407
D. Liston and N. Reeves, The Invisible Economy: a Profile of Britain’s Invisible Exports, London 1988, pp. xix, 15, 20
W.P. Kennedy, Industrial Structure, Capital Markets and the Origins of British Economic Decline, Cambridge 1987, p. 24.
M.R. Greenberg, ‘The United States and the World Services Trade’, p. 408 M. Feldstein (ed.), The United States in the World Economy, Chicago 1988;
and G.R. McCulloch, ‘International Competition in Services’, pp. 388, 392–3, in M. Feldstein (ed.), The United States in the World Economy, Chicago 1988;
R.E. Rowthorn and J.R. Wells, De-Industrialisation and Foreign Trade, Cambridge 1987, pp. 124–7, 133, 136, 156
P. Bareau, ‘The International Money and Capital Markets’, in E.V. Morgan et al., City Lights: Essays on Financial Institutions and Markets in the City of London, London 1979, p. 68
B. Widlake, In the City, London 1986, p. 315
G. Hodgson, Lloyds of London: a Reputation at Risk, London 1986, pp. 16, 141
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© 1992 Ranald C. Michie
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Michie, R.C. (1992). Composition and Chronology. In: The City of London. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12322-3_2
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