In the mid-20th century, as the embers of the British Empire began to sputter out across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, few anticipated that the United Kingdom would reinvent itself as an empire of an altogether different kind. The City of London—ancient, cloistered, and fiercely independent—became the epicentre of a new form of global power. Instead of gunboats and Redcoats enforcing imperial will, carefully crafted legislation and an intricate network of offshore satellites would help transform Britain into the planet’s premier hub for secretive finance and money laundering.