Introduction: ‘The Capital of the Human Race’: The City as the Centre of Modernity

Abstract

The nineteenth century was London’s century. In the same way that the twentieth century may be said to have belonged to Washington, and the eighteenth century claimed by Paris, the hundred years between 1815 and 1914 were London’s period at the top of the urban hierarchy. Sandwiched between the two, the British capital lacked the emotional resonance and passion of the Parisian artistic and literary scenes, and certainly never commanded the same raw economic and military power later enjoyed by the United States. London had its charms, to be sure, but they were frequently understated, muted, and modestly tucked away down side streets and back alleys. Indeed, it was not the city as an urban centre which drove the attraction so much as the city as an idea, a representation of some greater theme. London’s popularity centred on its being attached to a specific vision: a beacon of modernity, a crossroads with history, a portent of industrial discontent, or perhaps a loosening of restrictions. London, in this reading, is therefore not just one city, it is many; always shifting, often competing and sometimes overlapping. The nineteenth century was London’s century, and charting how these imagined Londons came to exist forms the main theme to this work.