ABSTRACT
The very size of the city and the wealth of information available for it mean that studies which focus on London often illuminate more general phenomena in urban, economic, social and cultural history. The organisation of London’s trade is not well understood, but it has become apparent that in its complexity and market orientation it probably more closely resembled city commerce in the central and later middle Ages than the model of a gift- and tribute-based economy proposed a few years ago. A corollary of the archaeological discovery of London’s early trading settlement has been a new understanding of the restoration of the city of London which King Alfred of Wessex undertook at the end of the ninth century in response to those invasions. Politically London occupied a marginal position, and its control was contested by kings whose main seats of authority were distant from the city.
