ABSTRACT
Compared to the end of the eighteenth century and first fifteen years of the nineteenth when Britain was heavily involved in the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars with France, the first half of Victoria’s reign was remarkably peaceful. At the beginning of Victoria’s reign it was considered vitally important to safeguard her country’s maritime trade from Russia’s territorial ambitions in India and the Near East. While the larger manufacturers in Victorian London normally chose a riverside location, there were major exceptions. With the substantial increase in overseas trade in the decades following the Napoleonic wars, there was a need in London for new port facilities. Unlike mid-nineteenth century Paris, where most urban development was government-planned under the direction of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann, the growth of mid-Victorian London occurred under laisser-faire conditions tempered only by a succession of railway Acts.
