London

city · earth

London is the capital of England and of the United Kingdom, a settlement of Roman foundation on the tidal Thames that became, from the seventeenth century, the administrative and financial centre of a global maritime empire. Its institutional density — the chartered companies, the docks and warehouses, the auction rooms, the insurance and banking market, and Parliament and the Treasury — meant that decisions taken in a few square miles set prices and policy across continents. In this Journey it appears as the place where Chinese tea was auctioned and taxed, where the East India Company was governed from Leadenhall Street, and where Assam's first chests were sold in 1839. It is a canonical city object and is not defined by the tea trade.