| The City of London, commonly known as the Square Mile is the
world's leading financial business center. It's also the historic mercantile center of
London, with all that that implies. The City of London generates 10% of GDP of the United
Kingdom. Over $500 billion of foreign exchange are turned over every day. We have 56% of
the global equity market, and 400,000 people a day come and work in the city. It has a
busy transport system, it's got retail, and enormous social opportunities. There are more
American banks in London than there are in New York. We have more Japanese banks than
Tokyo. The city of London is the epitome of internationalism. |
"The policy of the British
Empire was to maintain London's colonies in a state of underdevelopment."
“Nations
have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests." (Lord
Palmerston)It may now be said with some
definiteness that we are better off with things as they are today than if the plot of July
20th had succeeded and Hitler had been assassinated... By the failure of the plot we have
been spared the embarrassments, both at home and in the United States, which might have
resulted from such a move, and, moreover, the present purge [by the Gestapo] is presumably
removing from the scene numerous individuals which might have caused us difficulty, not
only had the plot succeeded, but also after the defeat of Nazi Germany |
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“British history is two thousand years old, and yet in a good many ways
the world has moved farther ahead since the Queen was born than it moved
in all the rest of the two thousand years put together.” (Mark Twain at
Queen Victoria's Jubilee 1897) |
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Cities |
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- London (7,172,091)
- Birmingham (970,892)
- Glasgow (629,501)
- Liverpool (469,017)
- Leeds (443,247)
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- Sheffield (439,866)
- Edinburgh (430,082)
- Bristol (420,556)
- Manchester (394,269)
- Leicester (330,574)
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Demographics |
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- Population: 61,113,205
- Life Expectancy: 79.01 years
- Literacy: 99%
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Median Age: 40.2 years
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Suffrage: 18 years of age, universal
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You could say that London has become, for the exponents of radical Islam,
the most important city in the Middle East. A framework of lenient asylum
laws has allowed the development of the largest and most overt concentration
of Islamist political activists since Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Just ask
the French, whose exasperation with the indulgent toleration afforded to
Algerian Islamic activists led them to dub the city dismissively as
“l’antechambre de l’Afghanistan.” They certainly have a point. Many of Bin
Laden’s fatwas were actually first publicized in London. [Jamestown
Fousdation] |
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Geographics |
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- Atlantic Ocean
- English Channel
- Irish Sea
- North Sea
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An-glo-phile
–noun
a person who is friendly to or admires England or English customs,
institutions, etc.
An-glo-ma-ni-a
–noun
an intense admiration of, interest in, or tendency to imitate English
institutions, manners, customs, etc. |
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Stonehenge
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| History |
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- William the Conqueror (1066) welcomes Jews into
Britain, as money lenders to the British Crown
- Anti-Jewish riots and mass suicide of the Jews of
York (1190)
- Jews banned from England by King Edward I,
followed by the confiscation of all their property, known as the
Edict of Expulsion (1290)
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Queen Elizabeth I
sent British slave trader John Hawkins to gather slaves on the vessel Jesus of Lubeck
(1564)
- King James translation of the Bible into English
(1611)
- Cromwell Revolution
- Cromwell Permits Jews to Return to England (1655)
- Bubonic Plague outbreak kills 100,000 (1666)
- Great Fire of London (1666)
- House of Windsor/Hanover Ascends to the Throne (1714)
- American Revolution (1776)
- Jacobin Revolution (1789 - 1794)
- Catholic Relief Act passed, giving Catholics the
same political rights as Protestants (1829)
- Britain Reform Bill of 1832 gives parliamentary
vote to most middle-class men
- Jews Granted the Right to Vote (1835)
- Victoria Rises to Throne, aged 18 (1837)
- Opium Wars - First (1839 - 1842)
- Irish Potato Famine (1845-1852)
- First Women's College Established in London
(1848)
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- Opium Wars - Second (1856 - 1860)
- US Civil War (1860-1865)
- Palestine Exploration Fund (1865)
- Benjamin Disraeli: British conservative leader
grants vote to working class men in 1867
- Boer Wars - First (1880-1881)
- Boer Wars - Second (1899-1902)
- By 1890, the British Empire contained ¼ of the
earth’s territory, and ¼ of the earth’s population. (1890)
- Death of Victoria (January 22, 1901)
- British Invade Tibet, Inventing Independence
Movement (1904)
-
Entente Cordiale
- 1904 (UK,
France)
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Triple Entente
(UK,
France,
Russia)
(1907)
- Married Women's Property Act (1908)
- Sykes - Picot Agreement (1916)
- Bolshevik Revolution (1917)
- British women gain right to vote (1918)
- Weimar Republic (1919)
- American Liberty League Coup (1924-1944)
- Pound Sterling devalued November 1967
- Iranian Revolution (1979)
- Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan (1979)
- Iran - Iraq War (1980 - 1988)
- Lightning strikes Buckingham Palace party, missing
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip by only 150 feet (July 23, 1996)
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Tower of London
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| Language |
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- English
- Welsh (about 26% of the population of Wales),
- Scottish form of Gaelic (about 60,000 in
Scotland)
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Coventry Cathedral
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| Religion |
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- Christian (Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian,
Methodist) 71.6%
- Muslim 2.7%,
- Hindu 1%
- other 1.6%,
- unspecified or none 23.1%
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