A Look at the History of London

Whether or not you are an accomplished international traveler, you no doubt know where London, England is. We all know that across the pond there lies quaint Britain - the original mother country. While visiting the city it is easy to tell that London is no longer the small Medieval capital of story, but now a bustling metropolis and one of the cores of all modern global economy.

However, if one takes a more radical view of history, London may very well be one of the keys to understanding how the modern era came about...

In AD 42 the Romans, under Emperor Claudius, began a full-scale exploration and assimilation of Britain, known to them in Latin as "Britannica," hence the modern name, and claimed the island as a province of Rome. The natives of the British isles were, at the time, remnants of older Celtic and some Angle and Saxon tribes.

Most people do not realize that the Romans did not simply claim Britain but build all over the southern half of the island - supplying continental Europe with a vast amount of tin and other materials abundantly native to the British isles. The Romans were afraid to expand north, into modern Scotland, for fear of the Picts and other seemingly savage Scottish tribes.

Where London comes into play, however, may very well have changed the face of the earth. When Claudius' Romans approached the Thames, the major river of England, they took delicate measures to cross the waters and explore the northern banks. The Roman soldiers tested the depth of the river until they found a stretch shallow enough to cross to the other side. Once there, they probed the river bed searching for a gravel surface.

Bridge-building, at the time, was not sophisticated enough to build on a mud foundation, so when the Romans finally found a solid gravel surface they took great strides to build a bridge spanning the Thames. Little did these Roman explorers know that their bridge would later be known as the famous "London Bridge" and would be the focal point of British expansion and power.