The Empire of “The City”

Here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

Thomas Jefferson 

Summary of The Empire of “The City:”

130 Years of Power Politics of the Modern Era 

By E.C. Knuth

The colored people of the British Empire, comprising 87% of the total population, are the voiceless subjects of the international financial oligarchy of “the City” in what is perhaps the most arbitrary and absolute form of government in the world. This international financial oligarchy uses the allegoric “Crown” as its symbol of power and has its headquarters in the ancient City of London, an area of 677 acres….. This tiny area of a little over one square mile has in it the giant Bank of England, a privately owned institution, which… is not subject to regulation by the British Parliament, and is in effect, a sovereign world power. 

Russia, Turkey, Egypt, India, China, Japan, and South America are probably owned, so far as any nation can be owned, in London or Paris. Payment of interest on these vast sums is secured by the pledging of the public revenues of these countries… In addition, a very large share, if not the major part, of the stocks and industrial securities of the world are owned by those two nations and the policies of many of the world’s enterprises dictated by their financial heads. The world itself, in fact, pays them tribute; it actually rises in the morning to earn its living by utilizing their capital, and occupies its days in making the money to pay them interest, which is to make them still wealthier.

The weapons of the “system” are bully and bluff, bribery and besmear, and the bewilderment of the public by being able through control or intimidation of public sources of information to accuse each of the successive challengers of “One World” of its own ideology of world rule and exploitation; and to convict them of its own lies and crimes.
E. C. Knuth, The Empire of “The City”

“The City of London” and The British Empire

The Empire of “The City” by E.C. Knuth is a short (111 pages) book first published in 1944. I bought the book from of former FBI officer, Ted Gunderson, who recommended it most highly. Although some 64 years have elapsed since this book was first published, it still offers an essential understanding of how “International Finance” came to dominate the world and how it continues to move us ever closer towards a one-world super-government.

“Empire of “The City” describes the “stunning history and legal structure of a sovereign world state located in the financial district (of) the city of London.” Author Knuth reveals that “the malignant disease which underlies modern civilization,” is nothing less than the grand plan to implement a secret British “One World” order. Here, Knuth documents the 130+ years of geopolitical history of the British Empire leading up to the establishment of modern international structures such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1944.

Knuth demonstrates that these international institutions are, in fact, merely extensions of the “secret world super-government,” that is “The City of London,” which, in turn, is run by the Bank of England. The Bank of England in turn has been controlled by the House of Rothschild since 1813. The Encyclopedia Americana notes that the privately-owned Bank of England is not subject to any control by any government agency of Great Britain and is, in fact, above all government. Thus, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George asserted that: “Britain is the slave of an international financial block.”

The British international financial oligarchy has prevailed over many other potential world powers (including France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, China, and Turkey), through a series of planned wars and depressions, broken treaties, and deceptions. Here, we also learn that “the bloody struggle between France and England for world supremacy in what was actually modern World War I, which reduced all Europe into a vast sink of despair and bankruptcy; elevated the House of Rothschild to financial and political domination of all Europe and much of the rest of the world:”

Two-time British Prime Minister (1868 and 1874-1880) and very close friend of Baron Rothschild, Benjamin Disraeli, once stated that the purpose of the British Empire was to:

gain and hold territories that posses the largest supplies of the basic raw materials. Establish naval bases around the world to control the sea and commerce lanes. Blockade and starve into submission any nation or group of nations that opposes this empire control program. 

That “the City” succeeded in these goals is evidenced by the fact that as of 1944;

The City”… controls not only about half of the basic raw materials of all the earth directly, but also has an immense indirect influence over most of the rest of the basic raw materials of the world through its subservient financial interests… The mines, the railroads, the utilities, the plantations, the raw materials, of South America, China, India, Africa, in fact practically of all the world, are controlled by the City.

The United Nations, of course, is the second attempt by International Finance to construct a system of version of international governance. The League of Nations was the first. According to Knuth:

The principal purpose of the League of Nations was to validate Internationalist plunder with a spurious seal of world law and to gain time for its proponents to prepare for the inevitable World War II. The United Nations Organization is a product of the same group, in fact of many of the same men, and its purpose is precisely the same and to prepare for the inevitable World War III. The presumption with which the henchmen of this racket are forcing their agents into control of still not fully subdued sovereign nations of Europe, Asia and South America, provides only a superficial preview of the endless bloody pacification that lies ahead, in which the money of the American taxpayer and the blood of American boys is to carry a large part of the cost.

The House of Rothschild and the British Empire

Thus, Knuth documents that the hidden power behind the British Empire is the “vast, secret world of International Finance.” This “financial oligarchy” seized control of the British Government in 1813, when the House of Rothschild gained control of the Bank of England at the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. Knuth states:

When the conflict with France ended, the House of Rothschild was in control of British finance and was the official banker of the British government. This odd financial octopus was acknowledged to be in some respects the greatest power on earth and was designated by some writers as the “Sixth Great Power of Europe.” Although the treaties of Europe and of the world were made under its dictation for 100 years, it never signed a treaty and it never was bound by a treaty. It’s position was aptly described… by one of its agents and henchmen, Viscount Reginald Escher, as “indispensable to them all, not responsible to any.”
Knuth adds:

The fact that the House of Rothschild made its money in the great crashes of history and the great wars of history, the very periods when others lost their money (and lives and property), IS beyond question.

The “Great Game” and the “Balance of Power”

Defining geopolitics as the struggle for space and power, Knuth outlines the essential details of Britain’s 100+ year struggle for world domination known as the “Great Game,” “the Concert of Europe,” and “the Balance of Power.”

New York University Professor Edwin J. Clapp outlined the “Balance of Power” strategy by which “The City” maintains power through the British Empire:

The Balance of Power is a creation of this financial oligarchy and its purposes are as follows:

1) To divide the nations of Europe into two antagonistic camps of nearly equal military weight, so as to retain for Britain itself the power to sway a decision either way.

2) To make the leading and potentially most dangerous military power the particular prey of British suppression and to have the second strongest power on the other side. To subsidize the “most Favored nations” with financial investments, and to permit them to acquire political advantages under the beneficent protection of the Sea-Power, to the disadvantage and at the expense of the nations being suppressed.

3) To subject the continent of Europe to the “Policy of Encirclement” so as to keep the nations in the continent in poverty and ineffectiveness, and thereby prevent the growth of sufficient commercial expansion and wealth to create a rival sea-power.

4) To retain that complete control and hegemony over all the seas of the world, which was acquired by defeating the allied fleets of its only real rivals, France and Spain, in 1805; and which is artfully and subtly called “The Freedom of the Seas.”

5) To shift this Balance of Power as required so as to be able to strike down friend or foe in the rapidly shifting scene of world power politics, in that inexorable ideology that demands that everything and anything must be sacrificed where the future welfare and expansion of the eventual destiny of the Empire are affected; that eventual destiny outlined by its proponents as the eventual control of All the lands, and All the peoples, of All the world.
Thus, the ultimate goal of “The City” is total world domination.

Secret Societies and the United States as Junior Partner in the British Empire

Knuth reveals the importance of secret international societies, such as the Pilgrim Society, in guiding the world toward “One World” government under British rule. There are countless other secret societies, of course, with basically the same goal. Other, older secret societies with apparently the same objective include the Illuminati, founded in 1776, The Order of Skull and Bones, founded in 1832, and the Masons. According to Knuth:

The Pilgrims were founded in London July 24, 1902, four months after the death of Cecil Rhodes who had outlined an ideology of a secret society to work towards eventual British rule of all the world, and who had made particular provisions in his will designed to bring the United States among the countries “possessed by Great Britain.” … Men of (wealth) here sway the destiny, the life or death of their fellow citizens, with an organization which is subversive to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution of the United States, an organization of which not one in one thousand of their fellow citizens has even heard. The purpose of these men is completely interwoven with the dependence of their own invariably great fortunes on the operations of “The City,” citadel of International Finance. Not only do these men collectively exert a planned influence of immense weight in utter secrecy, but they operate with the support of the immense funds provided by Cecil Rhodes and Andrew Carnegie….

Why is “Empire of “The City” relevant and important to Americans today? Because Knuth documents the extent to which U.S. foreign and domestic policy has been dictated by “The City.” He maintains that Britain has essentially run America’s foreign affairs since 1897.

“The City” administered the coup de grace to the Concert of Europe with the formation of the overwhelming British-French-Dutch-Japanese-American imperialistic combine of 1897, which awarded the Philippine Islands and permission to build the Panama Canal to America as her quid pro quo.

Thus, Knuth contends that the American political machine merged with that of “The City” during the great depression of the 1890’s, at which time Wall Street became essentially “a branch office of the Bank of England.” Shortly thereafter, the U.S. started the Spanish American war and began its own imperial expansion by forcibly taking Cuba, Panama, and the Philippines.

New York Senator Chancey M. Depew described America’s new imperial role in 1900:

What is the tendency of the future? Why this war in South Africa? Why this hammering at the gates of Peking? Why this marching of troops from Asia to Africa? Why these parades of people from other empires to other lands? It is because the surplus productions of the civilized countries of modern times are greater than civilization can consume. It is because this overproduction goes back to stagnation and poverty. The American people now produce two thousand million dollars worth more than we can consume, and we have met the emergency; and by the providence of God, by the statesmanship of William McKinley, and by the valor of Roosevelt and his associates, we have our market in the Philippines, and we stand in the presence of eight hundred millions of people, with the Pacific as an American lake.

Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr., in a speech to the U.S. Senate in 1908, revealed that America’s new imperial role was not the result of the popular will, but rather that:

through interlocking directorates, actually less than one dozen men controlled the business of the (U.S.), and that in the last analysis, the houses of Rockefeller and Morgan were the real business kings of America….
Knuth further notes that:

Impressive historical record and authentic documentation reveal that the American kings of finance of the Rockefeller-Morgan machine entered into a secret agreement with the British-French-Dutch-Oriental combine in the early part of 1897 by which they regulated and allocated the business of the world among themselves much like the racketeers of recent years have split up the illicit liquor concessions in our big cities. Their agreement was particularly designed to destroy the foreign commerce of Germany and of some other unfavored nations.
Indeed, chief robber baron, Andrew Carnegie himself acknowledged in 1886:

Six or seven men can plunge the nation into war, or, what is perhaps equally disastrous, commit it to entangling alliances without consulting Parliament at all.

Unfortunately, Knuth finds that these underlying geopolitical realities are not understood by Americans:

The American people lead the world in science and invention, but their geopolitical sense has not kept in step with developments, so there is cause to fear that in that respect the United States is in the precarious predicament of the prehistoric dinosaur whose body grew too large for its head.

Machiavellian principles: “The friend of today is the opponent of tomorrow”

American’s general ignorance of the geopolitical history of the British Empire and indeed, the very existence and central role of “The City” makes America vulnerable to the Machiavellian predations of the international financial elite. Knuth observes:

British tactics have invariably made the friend of today the opponent of tomorrow.
And later:

All these mysterious financial convolutions in the end boil down to the simplest of simple arithmetic; to the continued plunder of the American economic system with the planned purpose of its destruction.

So Knuth offers a basic refresher course in Machiavellian principles:

The power of International Finance rests upon the doctrine of government advanced by Nicollo Machiavelli, which holds that any means, however, unscrupulous, may be justifiably employed in order to maintain a strong central government; and this doctrine has always been used as a vindication and the mandate of imperialists and dictators, and it cannot gain a foothold unless the forces of freedom have become undermined and are no longer able to offer open opposition…

The findings of Machiavelli and other students of power decree that to obtain power it is essential to ignore the moral laws of man and of God; that promises must be made only with the intention to deceive and to mislead others to sacrifice their own interests; that the most brutal atrocity must be committed as a matter of mere convenience; that friends or allies must be betrayed as matter of course as soon as they have served their purpose. But, it is also decreed that these atrocities must be kept hidden from the common people except only where they are of use to strike terror to the hearts of opponents; that there must be kept up a spurious aspect of benevolence and benefit for the greater number of people and even an aspect of humility to gain as much help as possible…. It is held that the vast mass of people are oblivious and gullible, and therefore will believe a lie which is repeated again and again, regardless of how obvious may be the fundamental facts to the contrary…. War, according to Machiavelli, must be applied at almost regular intervals to maintain power…. The Machiavellian methods used in acquiring this power are admitted by Mr. Winston Churchill in his statement that the British Empire was built by the sword and will be maintained by the sword.

And how does “the City” manage to keep Americans in the dark from generation to generation? Because it has almost complete control over world news and the sources of public information.

The Five Ideologies of Space and Power

Knuth’s Chapter XIII spells out the five generally competing ideologies of space and power. These include, in descending order of geographical scope:

1) The secret “One-World” ideology of international finance aimed at the eventual rule over all the world by the British Government. This would consist of world rule by “a closely knit and well-disciplined group of special privilege,” and really is “secret only in the United States, as most European people have a fair conception of its existence and workings.”

2) The “Pan-Slavic” ideology of Russia as originally conceived in the will of Peter the Great. This encompasses the “Bolshevist doctrine of world rule by the proletariat, with death to Capitalism and the International Capitalist.” We may assume that this ideology is more or less synonymous with international communism as practiced in the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba.

3) The “Asia for the Asiatics” ideology of Japan, which would consist of a confederation of Asian nations dominated by Japan.

4) Pan-Germanism, which would include German political control over Europe and the “open door” in world trade and commerce. Might this be synonymous with Hitler’s brand of fascism?

5)Pan-Americanism, in which the United States exerts political control over all the Americas, as outlined in the Monroe Doctrine.

Knuth contends that America subscribed to ideology # 5 (Pan-Americanism) for 75 years between the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 up to 1897, when the American Pilgrim Society and it’s partners adopted ideology number 1 in concert with their British counterparts. He also contends that ideology #1 arose in Britain in the 1890’s and was the expression of the vision of Cecil Rhodes of a one-government, warless world. Integral to this vision is the belief in the racial superiority of white Anglo-Saxons. William Allen White stated: “It is the destiny of the pure Aryan Anglo-Saxon race to dominate the world and kill off or else reduce to servile status all other inferior races.”

The 1897 Alliance between the U.S. and Britain: A “New World Order?”

When the U.S. covertly entered the alliance of 1897 with the British Empire in order to guarantee an overwhelming British control of the Balance of Power, the U.S. also agreed to assist the British Empire in the permanent encirclement and repression of Germany, Russia, and China. At that time, the controlling justification for this alliance was a wide acceptance of the Rhodesian ideology that with such an alliance, “the peace of the world is secure for all eternity.” This fallacy has persisted practically up to the present in an utterly fatuous belief in the eternal omnipotence of the British “sea-power.”

Thus, we see that over the past nearly two centuries, the secret powers of “International Finance” have moved slowly and steadily toward the implementation of their long-held goal- a one-world super-government dominated by the privileged few.