British “Exceptionalism” and the City of London

Abstract

The City of London is “exceptional.” Anyone who has ever walked its famous square-mile would be prepared to agree. Few who have ever read the newspaper and seen the bonuses paid each year to its personnel would doubt the City is exceptional. However, the notion of “exceptionalism” we take into account here is a bit more profound. By saying that the City of London is exceptional, we do not mean only that it is difficult to find any similar conglomerate of financial markets and institutions in many other parts of the world. Most importantly, according to the theoretical perspective adopted in this book, we refer to the fact that the City of London embeds, symbolizes, and ontologically defines British “exceptionalism.”