Metropole
The metropole, from the Greek Metropolis for 'mother city' (polis, from the Greek for city, is understood in this context to indicate a city state, and is hence also used for any colonizing 'mother country'; in ecclesiastical usage, metropole usually denotes an archbishopric having precedence over the suffragans in its ecclesiastical province) is a term used to indicate the British metropolitan centre of the British Empire, i.e. the United Kingdom itself. It is sometimes extended even further, in the sense of London being considered the metropole of the British Empire, insofar as its politicians and businessmen determined the economic, diplomatic, and military character of the rest of the Empire. By contrast, the periphery was the rest of the Empire, outside the United Kingdom itself.
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