Fortress of Identities: The Tower of London and the Shaping of Immigrant Belonging in Tudor

Abstract

This article interrogates the entangled relationship between the Tower of London-a quintessential symbol of Tudor sovereignty-and immigrant identity formation in late medieval and early modern England (1350-1603). Moving beyond traditional architectural or penal interpretations of the Tower, the study reimagines it as a socio-political crucible: a site where foreign-born subjects were simultaneously surveilled, employed, patronized, and symbolically assimilated into the structures of Englishness. Employing an interdisciplinary methodology that fuses traditional archival analysis with digital humanities tools-particularly Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping and network graph visualizations-the research traces the evolving interactions between immigrant artisans, clerics, merchants, soldiers, and the Crown. This multifaceted approach unpacks how the Tower served not only as a locus of incarceration and spectacle, but also as a vector for the negotiation of legitimacy, identity, and institutional power. By re-centering immigrant actors within the historiography of Tudor London, the article advances a novel theoretical framework that conceptualizes 'institutional belonging' as a dialogic process: one mediated through spatial proximity to sovereign power and sustained by transnational patronage networks. In doing so, it illuminates how immigrant communities-often rendered as passive recipients of hospitality or suspicion-actively reconstituted their own terms of loyalty and inclusion within the urban-political fabric of early modern England. The findings challenge static binaries of foreignness and nativeness by illustrating the Tower's role in generating fluid, performative modes of belonging that were contingent on professional utility, religious alignment, and political exigency. In an era when immigration is once again central to political discourse globally, this historically grounded study offers a template for rethinking how civic identity and legitimacy have long been shaped by the interplay between institutional architectures and marginalized populations. The article thus contributes new knowledge not only to the historiographies of immigration and Tudor governance but also to contemporary theories of spatial justice, migrant agency, and the symbolic economies of power.

Keywords: Medieval Immigration, Royal Patronage, Tower of London, Digital Humanities, Urban Identity Formation