Remains of dwellings and tombs have been found, but nothing that suggests a large settlement. It is possible that there was a pre-Roman city, of which no traces have yet been found, but this hypothesis remains to be verified .
Your respect for the creators , e.g. their sponsors, is one of several characteristics that many "reaction- themed " RU-vidrs can learn from you, respect
@@L.J.Designs Indeed, though I tend to use that time to read through comments rather than miss some of the narration of the video (& some of which the Reactor is saying) and in this (& some other videos) I can, when necessary, catch the mispronounced names / words too...and there are often too many to ignore, even without passing comment upon those irritating details. Self-scrolling (as suggested?!) isn't necessary with the Reactors who do that for us though, and I appreciate those who do, (like: 'Not An Industry Artist'),
Whenever a bridge was proposed there was a petition against it from watermen and the ferry-owner and that was one of the reasons London Bridge remained the only crossing until the early 18th century. If a bridge was built, large amounts of compensation were paid by the bridge owner to the Watermen’s Company to be distributed to its members, and perhaps to a ferry owner
18:17 That still happens today. Ferry companies will fight to stop bridges being built - and if they are built, they might demand compensation for lost revenue or demand that toll prices to cross that bridge are kept so high, that alternative ferry routes have a chance of competing. We've seen that happen here in Denmark.
36:41 in fact the most historically correct definition for that period is "mercantilism" not capitalism (which concerns the ownership of the means of production not just the sale of goods produced by others)
Hi Connor, love you interest in the United Kingdoms history. You have a great inquiring mind, which contributes so much enjoyment to your blogs. Don't apologise for interrupting, it what makes the blogs so interesting. 👍
@15:00 I agree that it's special to have a building as old as the Tower of London that can still be visited today. I've impressed American friends looking across from Tower Hill tube station that "they started building that in the 1070s", but there are also fragments of the Roman wall a few yards from the station that are 2000 years old. The picture in the video at this point also shows why the central part of the Tower complex is referred to as "the White Tower", as it was originally coated with lime whitewash.
Popular misconception, King John didn't "sign" the Magna Carta in the true sense i.e. wrote words in ink, instead, he put his wax Royal Seal on the document so the image of him holding a quill is incorrect.
18:17 Yes, they still do. The guilds(Wherrymen(mini ferry-taxis) are members of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen which has existed since 1700 but I assume it was made from merging other, older guilds), they hold some power still but they used to be very very powerful and held off new bridges for centuaries. There was only 1 bridge crossing the Thames untill 1729 and then it was outside the city limits and was tolled, 1750 saw the begining of many more bridges being built (and the decline of ferrys and wherries)
The Romans did settle around the London Bridge area, of course, but before then they were in an area called Dowgate, where the River Fleet (now hidden underground) flowed into the Thames - just west of London Bridge.
@@woodencreatures Interesting thought it was earlier, as there were some crowing ceremonies that argueably were not coronations - Henry II (or some such number)?
Connor. What is known as the 'Old London Bridge' was in existence for over 600 years, survived two great fires and had buildings-shop premises on it. Take a look at the history of the bridge itself when you've a chance.
@@markmuller7962 Unfortunately it fell into disrepair and the buildings on it were regularly damaged by a series of fires. To get some idea of its appearance, you could look at the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, and there are many surviving illustrations of it.
Based on first hand experience, I would strongly recommend a visit to the Museum of London if you happen to be visiting in person, but unfortunately it's closed at the moment due to a relocation. When it reopens at the Smithfield site in 2026, the plan is for it to be called the London Museum. Keep an eye open for it then.
Little plug for my home town. St Paul's Cathedral is made from Portland stone. It's from the Isle of Portland, a little island hanging off the south west coast.
Hi neighbour I have spent many lovely days over the years in Portland, climbing over the big rocks and taking photos of the lighthouse etc ..... I'm just further along the Jurassic coast. I could look this up but while I think of it now, is Portland cement actually from our part of the world or just called that? Obviously Purbeck stone is local to here but I have wondered before about the cement. I love where we live and wouldn't move anywhere else. Sorry for the long comment.
As a regular visitor to London, it still surprises me to turn a corner and see a roman wall or a Christopher wren church, or recently a roman amphitheatre under the guild hall - and under the recently built Bloomberg building a temple to Mithras from roman times.
I was working at the victotia and Albert museum doing Air conditioning when I was in my 20's and the labourers literally unearthed a perfect Roman tile floor mosaic. It was crazy.
yeah the Ampitheatre is a "recent" thing as in It wasnt around in the 1980s when I was in London, Mithras bit has managed to be relocated three or four times - it was outside Bucklersbury House from the late 1960s
@@highpath4776 I think it suggests that the land wall around the city wasn't mainly defensive. Otherwise why would they leave the riverside completely 'open' for so long?
Another old and interesting city is Paris, France. It has been around longer than London. I first realized how old it is when I was watching a video about Ceasar's war to conquer Gaul, and it mentioned Paris because Ceasar's army had camped near it when in that part of Gaul.
Interesting!- My own home Town - Leicester as already a regional capital for almost 1,000 years before the Romans came, and the oldest town in the UK -Amesbury, has been occupied for over 11,000 years.
The southwest peninsula that the Romans never conquered includes Cornwall, and parts of modern day Devonshire. That said, much of Devon was settled by the Romans and there numerous visible remnants and archeological sites in Devon's capital, Exeter. However, archeologists also keep finding evidence of Roman 'reach' further west throughout the county. Basically, the Roman influence on 'Celtic' Britain was minimal. The Celtic concentrations largely comprised Southwest England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
The population of Greater London is 8,866,180, the population of the London metropolitan area is 14,900,000. The population of New York City is 8,258,035, the population of the New York metropolitan area is 21,859,598.
no youve got the idea of capitalism wrong, its not about trading and maximizing profits, they mean capitalism in terms of banking and the transition from coin to paper money which led to expanding money supply and more money lending and economy growth.
Yeah, and in particular the abstracting of money supply via *central* banking. That didn’t really start until the founding of the Bank of England although it was building on the earlier Venetian innovations. It’s arguable that the real kicker for it was the power game that Walpole played during the South Sea Company crisis as that underscored the importance of a central bank for managing money supply when dealing with the high risk ventures typical for worldwide empires and later nation states. That said, the evolution from mercantilism to capitalism took a long time, and even today there are plenty of people who want to take us back to the old system through high tariffs and other protectionist policies.
@@productjoe4069 No, the Bank of England was the product of the Dutch Republic's invasion of 1688, that had enjoyed a de facto central bank and fully fledged capitalism since 1608. To shift from mercantilism to capitalism you have to be competitive in trade as a country, England wasn't until the Bank of England got interest rates down.
Capitalism is a particular form of economy heavily relying on banking which was strongly developed in the Italian Renaissance cities and maritime republics (especially Venice and Florence). Then the Dutch perfected it and subsequently it was made a global economic model by the British empire. The oldest bank of the world is considered the "Monte dei Paschi of Siena" (Tuscany) but Florence was considered the city of banks (and extremely rich for the time, landing money to the monarchies of all of Europe)
London was influenced by the Hanseatic League who bought wool from us in huge quantities and created great wealth in East Anglia. There is a Hanseatic Warehouse still standing in Kings Lynn. London copied and improved on a lot of their ideas.
The narrator is under the impression that nothing of London existed before the Romans and that Britons would not be intelligent enough to realise that this was the narrowest point to cross one of the largest rivers in Britain. This is nonsense of course , particularly as archaeology has shown that the ancient Britons were far more sophisticated than initially assumed by our Victorian historians , and London was more likely to have been an established crossing point . During the Anglo Saxon period the town of Dunwich in Suffolk was the capital of East Anglia and during its height was much larger than later 14th Century London and was a very busy port . Dunwich fell into decline and was eventually destroyed in a storm in 1286 . As a Londoner of some 60+ years that travelled the capital as soon as I could walk , through the Red Rover transport period to later working in the region , I can categorically state that the current diversity of population is a recent experiment that has gone tragically wrong . An inn has accommodation, a tavern can be anything from a tent to a hut to a small house that supplies refreshments only .
I was born in Lambeth and later moved to Southwark next door, parts of which were in Surrey until 1965 when they became South East London. I also lived near Crystal Palace Park before moving away to the South Coast
Capitalism is about a collection of disparate people pooling their capital for an enterprise. Instead of a family working together to run a busness, a business is owned by many people who may be very far away from where the business is located and to whom the profits are distributed. As capitalism grows more sophisticed this can (and does) result in people owning a share of a business on the other side of the world, playing no part in the running of the bussiness and maybe not even having a clue what that business does on a day to day basis. This creates a damaging abdication of responsibility for the business owners who are isolated from the evils which might be being perpetrated in their name, and a near impossibility for those damaged by a business to achieve any reparation.
Boudica Queen of the Iceni who were a Celtic tribe from what is now Norfolk, was real, the information about her revolt was recorded by the Romans. The Jutes were from Jutland in Denmark, The Angles and Saxons were Germanic tribes, the Jutes disappeared early on. People make the mistake of saying the French invaded us in 1066, WRONG! it was the Normans (Norse men). who hated the French invaded England.
Hi Connor. Some of the county names of England give a clue to their ancient origins .... Essex (East Saxon), Wessex (West Saxon), Sussex (South Saxon), etc., whilst 'East Anglia' alludes to its ancient occupation by the 'Angles'.
I am absolutely convinced that you know considerably more British History than 99.9% of the British population! Extremely knowledgeable on the topic😀😀😀
The little tail on the low western side of England is CORNWALL. Yes, trading has always been around, but Instead of bartering and trading on a smaller scale, trading was stretching its reach across the world.
Hi Connor. The difference between an inn and a tavern, I would expect to be able to stay overnight at an inn, I would expect to be able to eat and drink in either.
Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or corporations own and operate businesses, aiming to generate profit through trade and competition. Before capitalism, feudalism was the dominant socio-economic structure in medieval Europe, from roughly the 9th to the 15th century. Feudalism organized society through a hierarchical relationship based on land ownership and service: lords owned large estates and granted portions, or fiefs, to vassals, who, in return, provided military service or labor. This structure created a rigid social order and shaped economic and political life.
It is a word, meaning to put a crown on someone’s head during a coronation. However as a Brit I had never heard it until I watched YT videos of Americans reacting to recent coronation.
@@woodencreatures • Me neither. The word "coronated" is still in use, but as an adjective describing the crest on birds and some animals. That was its original meaning as well.
My understanding is that the introduction of credit on a large scale, ie borrowing for overseas trade, trade in cotton from India, to fuel industrialisation in the mills of Manchester etc then in slaves that would produce more cotton to feed demand that overtook Indian production ( plus price fixing that led to mass starvation there) hailed a new form of trade. Watch George Monbiot on origins of capitalism and it's relationship to the gouging out of the Caribbean and other colonies, for resources
Bodica means warrior queen, because her name is not known. Her husband's name is known. It was King Pratagus. So she was real, but her name was not recorded.
hold on, the video said winchester used to be the capital of what was then england?? i thought the roman city of colchester was the capital or am i mad???
That is called Devon and Cornwall, but the rest of the border between Wales and Scotland are wrong, Mercia also had North Wales right up to Rhyl, also the Wirral Peninsula is not shown as a part of England, on top of that the far North Eastern lands of Lothian in present day Scotland are also not shown as being England during the Anglo-Saxon period.
If you haven't already done it it, Jay Foreman (Map Men) has done a video on London's bridges which I think you'd like (eta: LordRogerPovey's already mentioned it further down the thread)
@CliveBilby • Only a few members of the aristocracy would have drunk wine until very recently. The vast bulk of the British population would have drunk ale, as the water wasn't particularly safe to drink until Victorian times. The difference between a tavern and an Inn is that an Inn provided accomodation, a tavern doesn't.
The oldest dated document found in London is from before Boudicca’s attack. It’s dated 8th January 57 CE in our calendar (“In the consulship of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus for the second time and of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, on the 6th day before the Ides of January”), and fittingly, in regard to London’s future as a financial centre, it’s an IOU from Tibullus the freedman of Venustus, to say he owes Gratus the freedman of Spurius 105 denarii for merchandise sold and delivered.
@20:35 If you want to pick a time in Europe *not* to be alive, I recommend any year beginning with 13. It's amazing that anything got done in the fourteenth century given the series of calamities, natural disasters and constant chaos that plagued that one.
1:15 It _is_ more than NYC city-proper, but in twice the land area. NYC is far more-dense, and the NYC metro area has five million more people than London's, in roughly the same land area. It's also worth noting that NYC is infamously under-counted in Censuses, and we still don't know how "real" or permanent the corona-driven population loss is. The Census Bureau estimated 8.25 million in March 2023, and actually counted 8.8 million in April 2020, but they could be off by a factor of hundreds of thousands (would not be the first time). And, of course, NYC has a massive daily influx of commuters and tourists that bump up the population by another 3 million or so during weekdays. Yeah, London gets that, too, but, again, not on _quite_ the same scale. I don't think these figures really matter until we're completely clear of the corona timeframe. Talk to me in 2030, when we get another proper Census count. Besides, being from NYC, and having spent a _lot_ of time in London, I can say that London doesn't really "feel" quite the same scale as NYC. It's clearly a massive city, but it doesn't have that frenetic energy, or the behemoth architecture and sprawl looming all around you. London feels like a huge human-scale city. NYC feels like a cyberpunk metroplex eating a chunk of the Eastern Seaboard alive. It's apples and oranges, really, outside of them both being hugely important Global Cities (the only ones the GAWC rates "Alpha++," in-fact). Regardless, I think that both cities being cultural and financial centers, and their extreme cosmopolitan natures, with massively foreign-born populations, are what make them both contenders for "unofficial world capital," not their respective sizes.
I know how proud the US is of their win in the War of Independance (and rightly so), but you can see from 2000 years of history, the British don't really give it a moments thought, it's just another episode in a long line of episodes. Very informative and interesting video, thanks.
I think you'll like Samuel Pepys diary. Writtn 1660-1669 mostly in London. 1st hand accounts of the 1665 plague as well as the fire of London 1666.He visited many playhouses and hung out with the highest of and not so of london society. There's a fantastic reading of it by Kenneth Branagh on Audible. 📖
Imo London is no longer the “capital of the world”. If you’re interested where is the new capital of the world is, look at a map of the distribution of Alpha cities according to the GAWC. The conclusion I came to is that London and NYC as equal world capitals in the Alpha++ cities. This led me down a rabbit hole looking at how America and Britain have sort of “divided the world” if you look at a map of ways English words are spelt across the planet. Across the Americas and East Asia, American spelling is dominant, and the same is true for British spelling across most of Eurasia. Shows you how the old world and new world powers work together. Anyway, most of this is opinion rather than fact, so I left where I got the information from so you can have a look yourself.
The original building of London was when the Romans actually turned up in AD 43, this invasion was led by the emperor Claudius. Caesar did start to think about invading Britain and visited Britain twice in BC 55 and 54. The full invasion of Britain did not occur at this this time probably because events within the Roman Empire kept caesar too occupied to complete the invasion.
-wic in Dutch language = -wijk The modern meaning is a town/city area, like a neighborhood/district. It's also used in names, like Noordwijk is the name of a town at the Dutch North Sea coast, similar in that respect to Norwich in England.
11:52 Cornwall! - What you say about them boundaries is very true, the people have their own Celtic type languages. Cornwall has its own language, flag and many people list their nationality in the census as Cornish. MPs have campaigned to get a govenrment in Cornwall like the other celts. Welsh assembly, Scottish Parliament etc.There is also a Cornish Nationalist Party, they have had a few councilors elected in local councils but no MPs.
@9:40 Minor point, but I don't think that was a very good pronunciation of Lundenwic. The ending shouldn't rhyme with brick, but be more like -itch, or -idge.
I'm hostile to capitalism. To me it is when a commercial firm is arranged legally that it is run solely for the benefit of those who put up the initial capital. This excludes the workers.
When we say the introduction of capitalism, we mean it as a system; before this we had feudalism and serfdom. London was the first great capitalist economy in the world.
No, it wasn't. The Dutch Republic had been capitalist for almost a century. The English couldn't compete and started attacking Dutch merchant ships. Later the Dutch invaded for French reasons and turned it into an ally in both religious tolerance and free trade, mare liberum, and founded the Bank of England to help with that.
@@DenUitvreter I'm not referring to Great Britain. I mean London was the first GREAT capitalist economy (a descriptor - not a reference to the island). A lot of historians are in agreement with that in the books I have. I know the Dutch were doing it first - not on the same level though.
@@francisedward8713 When you size up economies by money rather than the number of people involved, there might not be a size difference with Amsterdam big enough to justify the claim to being first the British already so often make lightly. Or not at all, London was 2 to 3 times the size of Amsterdam in 1700 but the per capita GDP of the Dutch was much, much higher, for a large part thanks to modern capitalism in a mercantilistic and feudal world. Being first is always important in capitalism, also with capitalism itself. It also seems a bit problematic to seperate a city from the economy it partially depends on around it, especially in case of it's predecessor. The Dutch Republic was already highly urbanized, almost 50% which is a late 19th century number for highly industrialized countries, while lots of other smaller cities were close and well connected. I believe you have those books, no doubt at all, and that is kind of the issue, it seems like a bit of a 'how can we make this about us too'-stretch by bringin in the population size of single city as relevant for a first.
Fun fact: the first city in the world to reach 1 million people was ancient Rome in around 1AD. The first city to reach 2 million was London in around 1840. Then London was the first to reach 3 million, 4 million, 5 million, 6 million and 7 million... all within a century. Finally it was overtaken by New York in 1925.
Isnt it crazy that the names of the old gates are still used over a thousand years later, despite the fact that nothing of them actually remains.. Aldgate, Ludgate etc...
GPT: Capitalism as a distinct system began to emerge in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly with the growth of international trade, colonization, and private ownership of capital. It focuses on the accumulation of wealth by individuals and companies, driven by free markets, private property, and profit-making. Capitalism encourages competition and innovation but relies on particular structures, like wage labor, investment, and profit reinvestment, that didn’t define earlier forms of trade. So, while trade is ancient, capitalism’s specific way of organizing production and wealth-where private individuals or companies own resources and operate in competitive markets-is relatively new, spreading with European colonization and the industrial revolution.
The Jutes were not from Saxon areas nor were they Angles. Slighly smaller group more from Denmark, in part invited by Celts to help stave off earlier Viking invasions. I think the Jutes settled more in East Anglia, with the Angles in Kent and Surrey, Saxons taking Essex, Middlesex, Wessex but that is very loose divisions that family wise were less delinated
Please, please, don't take my word for it - it's becoming like a RU-vid meme now that London is only 2,000 years old, and was started by the Romans. In fact, not just Neolithic but Mesolithic remains have been discovered there - the earliest settlements going back 6,000 years. By now there must be thousands of people who will swear blind that the Romans, as this vid. states, were the first ever to settle there. I'm only saying this as it blows me away how much you've learnt over the past couple of years; so I'd hate to see you taking misconceptions as as fact (That's why I said "Don't take my word for it." A little bit of rootling around will back this up.
