The City at the Turn of the 20th Century - Essay Example

London: The at the Turn of the 20th Century Jerry White d in his book London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People that “London could genuinely claim, at the century's end, to be of the world's greatest cosmopolitan cities..London was seen as a successful cosmopolis” (143-144). When the 19th century ended and the 20th century began, the city was defined by its cultural adaptations and rich diversities that define a cosmopolitan center of human population. Throughout the 20th century, the city continued to evolve as a city that housed a diverse population of cultures that come together to form a larger population and culture that defines the Londonite, but has the beauty of individuated cultures from which to create a melting pot of ethnicities and backgrounds which contribute to a multi-cultural unity. In the book The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon, a story of West Indian migrants is told where the issues of acculturation are explored. Coming to London is seen as a move towards opportunity. One of the people in the book, Moses, holds a transitional role for the other from his culture. He helps migrants from West India as they try to learn how to function within their new environment. Selvon states “And so like a welfare officer, Moses scattered the boys around London” (25). The purpose of spreading them throughout the city was so that acculturation could be better achieved and so they would not congregate in such a way as to create an ethno-centric population that could cause problems in relationships between the many cultures that are in London. Moses has described this world of London for its varieties of cultures as it “divide up in little worlds, and you stay in the world where you belong to and you don't know anything about what happening in the other ones except what you read in the papers” (Selvon 60). This essentially describes the nature of loneliness and social division that occurs in a city that has been culturally enmeshed by a series of cultures that through their existence, affect the overall nature of the social intercourse. The society within London does not have a specific type, but is made up of a range of cultural types that reflect the many cultures that have created the cosmopolitan nature of the city. Through the opportunities that exist in a large city within a successful, Western country, an attraction occurs to those who live in places that do not have the same level of opportunity. After World War II, the colonized nations under British rule who had sent men to fight the war found an opportunity waiting for them at the end of the service as they discovered that Britain considered the people to be citizens of their society, thus allowing them to freely move to London, if that is what they wished. Jamaica, a country that has seen a great deal of hardship, found that many of her citizens were willing to move to England to take advantage of whatever opportunities they could find there. The novel, Small Island by Andrea Levy follows the lives of four people as they navigate issues of multi-ethnic acculturation during the aftermath of World War II. The nature of a city in which the many different culture collide, changing one another and developing something new in each incarnation is explored through the tales of four people who intersect during that time period. Queenie, a character from the book by Levy, begins the story with a tale from her childhood. She states “I thought I’d been to Africa” (Levy 1). This story that she relates as it reveals an episode in her life where there had been an exhibition within Britain that provided for the recreation of the countries of the world so that as you turned each corner you felt you were experiencing another culture. She thought she had actually been to Africa, the nature of the culture impacting her in such a way as she read it as a state of existence rather than as a geographic place. This understanding of how a culture is not a geographic location is basic to understanding the nature of acculturation and how a city becomes more than the culture of the inhabitants that one more often thinks of as being of that nation. One can not look at Prince William, now Duke of Cambridge, and say “He represents what it means to be from London” because he is representative of only a portion of the Londonites. He is potentially the future king, but even he does not represent all of London through the culture of his existence. In fact, Prince William more than likely does not represent anyone else as his upbringing was a culture of preparation that was intended to provide him with the skills needed to be a King of England. The point being made is that culture is relevant to experience, not to visual physical characteristics or to geographic locations. A person can have similar characteristics to another and live in the same geographic location, but their culture is defined by their beliefs and traditions as shared with a community, and that does not necessarily happen in one location by people who share physical attributes. However, a group who represent a culture will gravitate towards one another providing for a recreation of a home culture within new boundaries and limitations. As an example, Jamaican people who come to London will gravitate towards other Jamaican people and form a community. Within that community, old beliefs and old traditions will be practiced giving them a sense of community and culture. The interesting thing that will happen, however, is as cultures are introduced to the new traditions and beliefs of their new location, subtle, and even sometimes dramatic, changes within the cultural system that they have brought with them to a new location. With migration will come changes in the nature of how they practice the beliefs and traditions of their culture and adding to those traditions with the traditions of the country in which they live. Creating the cosmopolitan space, the city with the differing sections that house cultures, dissected by their cultural differences, intersected by their participation in the city, becomes an organic act that evolves through the eruption of populations that have different view points on life. However, most all of these different sectors will have one thing in common - that is they wish to exploit the resources of the city to create a life that gives them the best opportunities. As a city, the policies that govern these spaces must be designed and orchestrated to provide the best possible use for the space that is available. The focus of city policy must be “on the production of cosmopolitan space in cities as a part of urban development” (Binnie 28). Space must be used to bring into harmony all of the different needs that require the use of the city, plus provide for the expansion and development of new spaces. Through the use of space, people are managed and contained, their needs honored and the city thriving under the care that the public policies have provided to accommodate all of the cultures that have come together to live within the location of the city. London is such as place, where cultures have gathered to find communities within communities, the people of the city learning and growing from each other, sometimes painfully, until they have developed a whole new identity within the framework of the nature of the city. People from India, Jamaica, and from numerous other places which were once colonized by the British find a home, their community both infected and uplifted by the exposure that they have had to the originating culture of the British and the numerous other cultures who all hold a presence within the city limits. The London of the 20th century, that has extended into the 21st century is vastly different than the London that existed at the end of the 1800s when the 19th century was about to become the 20th. Colonialism widened the number of cultures within the British landscape. According to McLeod, “It’s transformative potential is adumbrated by the uses the newcomers make of urban space, liming Brixton’s streets and turning the street corners into social sites of community and communication that perhaps recall similar locations in Kingston, Bridgetown, or Port of Spain” (1). In the world of post-colonialism, the colonies are not merely a past possession that exist outside of the culture, but have become a part of the urban context and situated in influential positions in regard to the burgeoning culture. London must be experience for far more than its originating belief systems and traditions McLeod states that “it is important to proceed with an historical understanding of London as a much more complex and conflicted location than that implied by the totalizing and abstract concept of the undifferentiated colonial ‘centre’” (6). Understanding the cultures from which London now hosts generations of people who are experiencing the British social structure from the point of view of their own culture must first be understood through a sense of the transformative nature that colonialism had already imposed upon their nations of origin. Whenever two cultures intersect, they influence one another. The British culture has changed dramatically through being influenced by outside cultures just as much as the cultures of ‘otherness’ have awakened to discover the stark differences that the Western culture holds in comparison to their own (Dench, Gavron, and Young 78). The invasive nature of simple contact with another culture can be deeply transformative, but the colonization of British occupants in outside cultures has infused a multi-national culture within the nation. The citizens of formerly colonized locations have already been changed by the existence of British authority in their region. Coming to London provides a richer landscape for London rather than a fully untouched interaction of first contact. London is a highly successful, rich tapestry of cultural development in which people from the West Indies, India, and Jamaica, to name a few, have come to find their opportunities. In the process, the cultures of these many nations have influenced the British nation, just as the British created influence in their nations when they arrived upon their shores . The influx of immigrants, however, was a much less harsh intrusion, the British creating a great deal of destruction in the wake of their invasions. The immigrants, already used to the idea of colonization and not approaching London through a military advantage, come to the city to integrate rather than to conquer. Therefore, the aculturation is on their shoulders, the influences that their cultures bring not creating a violent context for their infusion into the greater cultural landscape. In bringing the many cultures together and in creating an urban cityscape that provides more than enough space for each community, London succeeds in its cosmopolitan ends. After colonialism came to an end, the multiple cultures that were affected still contain those influences and have made roads to integrate for higher opportunities in the city of London. London is a cosmopolitan city. Works Cited Binnie, Jon. Cosmopolitan Urbanism. London: Routledge, 2006. Print. Dench, Geoff, Kate Gavron, and Michael Young. The New East End: Kinship, Race and Conflict. London: Profile, 2006. Print. McLeod, John. Postcolonial London: Rewriting the Metropolis. Abingdon: Routledge, 2004. Print. Selvon, Samuel. The Lonely Londoners. London: Penguin Books, 2006. Print. White, Jerry. London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People. London: Vintage, 2008. Print. Read More