The last two posts gave a picture of two processes operating in tandem - the re-christianisation of England, now the appropriate name for the land of the Angles and Saxons who had only appeared in force in less than two centuries, and the transformation of the gangster warlord into a 'King'. The sacralisation of the King by the Church is the next natural step. It happens surprisingly quickly for all the reasons we gave in the previous posting.
Raedwald of East Anglia, overlord or bretwalda of England, who probably dies in or before 625 and is associated with the Sutton Hoo burial, is definitely pagan but the 'national' trend is now towards christianisation. The key statelet here is not Kent but Northumbria to whom the overlordship returns under Edwin. The story has it that Eomer, a West Saxon assassin, attempted but failed to kill Edwin. Paulinus, the seasoned missionary who became Bishop of Northumbria in 625, is promised (626) that his new-born daughter will be given to the christian god if Paulinus' prayers result in the defeat of the West Saxons. Cwichelm of Wessex is accordingly defeated and Wessex subjected to Edwin as bretwalda. Edwin's life had already been saved by Paulinus in exile in 616 so a certain personal bond is already in place, a fact made clearer when Paulinus is forced to leave the Kingdom on Edwin's death and return to Rochester (as Bishop) in Kent (633) where he was to die in 644. The baptism of Paulinus' daughter on Whit Sunday in York is a marker that christianity was now imperially associated with at least one bretwalda. The attempt to link overlordship with the christian faith is to be a key war aim of the Roman interest for the next few decades. The next year (Easter 627) Edwin himself is baptised into the Church.
The tide is never certain for Roman christianity though. Edwin's overlordship is clearly resented by some and in 622 or 633, at the Battle of Hatfield Chase, Edwin is defeated and killed by an alliance of the pagan Penda of Mercia and one of the last of the great Cymry leaders of the age, Cadwallon ap Cadfan, King of Gwynedd which was centred on North West Wales. Not only Edwin but his son Osfrith were killed in battle. His other son Eadfrith not long after. Penda becomes the dominant figure in England for the next thirteen years so we have a period when matters were in the balance between christianity and paganism. The pagans almost certainly did not reckon on the statecraft and diplomatic skills of the christian leadership.
Paulinus had fled Northumbria with good reason because Edwin's successor, Osric of Deira, reverted to paganism as did Eanfrith of Bernicia although their reigns lasted only a year. However, a christian heir to Northumbria, Oswald of Bernicia (later venerated by the Church as a saint), not only took the reins of power in 633 but added the previous year to his reign as if the pagans had never existed. Oswald becomes bretwalda in 634 as far as the christian faction is concerned. Northumbria becomes a safe haven for christianity once again after only a very brief gap and, as we shall see, Northumbrian royal legitimacy and the Church soon become intimately connected. It is at this time that christianised nobles such as Wilfred (later to be the key spokesperson for Rome at the Synod of Whitby in 664) are beginning to be educated at court to become potential clerical administrators in a much more formal way. Christian clerics of noble descent soon become as much a part of the machinery of the State in England as eunuchs in the Chinese empire, neutered by custom rather than physical force.
The christianisation of Northumbria is not just a court matter. An important initiative was the founding of the monastery at Lindisfarne (636) by Aidan, the Irish monk. Aidan also seems to have been influential in mediating between the Roman and Celtic branches of the faith. Lindisfarne was deliberately placed within sight of Oswald's Bamburgh Castle. Church and State are becoming separate but equal, each buttressing the claims of the other.
The Church's response to defeat elsewhere was to keep on trucking. It had Kent. It clearly had the dominant line of royalty in Northumbria and it could appeal to any Saxon Kingdom that disliked the tutelage of Mercia. It now mounted a clever game in which it would support a bretwalda that was christian (of the Roman persuasion) but also sought to appeal to those oppressed by a bretwalda when he was not - realpolitik has always been part of the clerical skill set. The obvious target was the hitherto powerful and ambitious but also divided West Saxons. Birinus, a Frank, was sent into Wessex as a missionary , successfuly converting the West Saxons to Roman christianity under King Cynegils. Cynegils was not King of all the West Saxons but rather someone who aspired to be from his smaller base in the upper Thames valley covering the modern counties of Somerset, northern Wiltshire, southern Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and western Berkshire. Birinus baptised Cynegils in 635 with Oswald of Northumbria as his sponsor (Oswald also married Cynegils' daughter) so we are already seeing the lineaments of a strategy of encirclement of Mercia by Roman (not Celtic) christianity. Clearly, the Church of Rome in Kent was heavily diplomatically engaged in bringing these two Kingdoms into alliance. Birinus becomes the first Bishop of Dorchester in that same year.
The death of Eadbald of Kent could have removed a lynchpin from this rapidly growing system of Roman influence but his son Earconbehrt proved even more firmly christian than his father - according to Bede, he commanded that pagan cult images be destroyed and that Lent be observed. This was a step further than any other Saxon King had taken to date. It showed confidence that paganism was no longer politically powerful enough to present a threat to the court. Until this point, kings were happy to see the court and nobility flourish as christian while the people continued with their 'pagan superstitions'. Court and the christian element amongst the masses and traders worked around and then crushed the world of the pagan settlers. English christian totalitarian rule proves a creeping paralysis from this day on. It is an object lesson in what happens when a people loses its power and ceases to be vigilant. Religion creeps in not only from below but is insisted upon from above.
Another marker is the canonisation of Oswald of Northumbria after his death at the hands of Penda in 641 (probably in battle at or near Oswestry). The King is sacralised by the Church and another step is taken towards the symbiotic total system of Church and King that would dominate the English people right up until the nineteenth century and even beyond. The political culture that was put in place in these few years would define the English in one way or another for another 1,300. On the other hand, the Cymry were allies of the pagans so what we are seeing is an alliance of Rome and the proto-English State against dissident christians and traditionalist pagans rather than simply a matter of conflict between christian salvation and pagan honour. The Church's problem now was how to pull the Celtic christians back into its orbit and encircle the English pagans as a prelude to their extinction but this is for the future.
Two new Anglo-Saxon kings, Oswiu in Northumbria (641) and Cenwalh in Wessex (643) change little. Both men were christians man and boy in what seems to be an unquestioning way as if their identity as kings were now bound up with the faith. However, there is one change to note - Northumbria splits into its two constituents in 644, Deira and Bernicia. The details are not of interest to us since Northumbria comes together again within a decade but it tells us something of the complexity of state formation in the first half of the seventh century - nothing could be taken for granted and the kings and clerics of the era were very well aware of that fact. A unitary state could still fragment and the Church was thus trying to corral many small warlord kingdoms as a federated system under Rome. Rome was no longer a military but a 'spiritual' (that is, a cultural) power. There was no objection to any future unification of military and administrative power (quite the contrary) so long as it was ultimately culturally answerable to the Papacy. Since the Church increasingly provided the administrators of this proto-state system, and drew part of the warrior nobility into its ambit as those administrators, the process was slowly moving towards the 'global' reinstatement of the Constantinian arrangements that had collapsed when the Roman State collapsed.
Tuesday 4 August 2015
Sunday 2 August 2015
560-624: The Return of Christian Influence
Christianity can never said to have been eliminated from Britain
during the extended time of troubles between the final failure of Rome
to guarantee Britain's safety in 446 and the decision of Pope Gregory to
send an official Papal mission to the then-most significant Anglo-Saxon
Kingdom, Kent, in 596. During that 150 years, Christianity survived and
even extended its range to the 'Gaels' beyond the Cymry. It undoubtedly
lingered as the religion of the oppressed under Anglo-Saxon rule but
without any significant help or leadership from Rome.
There were now several political considerations from the Roman Church's perspective and that of the Anglo-Saxon Kings, no doubt calculated with all the consummate cynicism of such pragmatic realists. First, the continuation of a religion of resistance amongst the Cymri without Papal authority threatened to turn into something that might became heretical, uncontrollable and an alternative focus of loyalty for the unhappy Christians in the North West of Europe. Second, the Papacy had done a great deal to re-establish itself as the cement for Kingship with those barbarians with pretensions to be heirs to Rome generally or locally on the Continent. Its support would be very valuable to rising warlords who wanted both to be respected overseas and command authority over their own chaotic and proud elites and peoples. Third, and connected to the first, stable rule required that the masses who had been conquered accept the new situation and their new masters and lose hope of a return to a former situation. The Church could certainly help with pacifying those Catholic Cymri practising the religion of the oppressed under the yoke of pagan warlordism. Fourth, pagan settlers were a lot less easier to handle with their allegiance to gods of place and struggle than Christians who were taught to seek their salvation in the world beyond through an ethos of passivity and compliance. All that was required was for warlords to aspire to become kings of small settled statelets and the Church would find a ready audience for their 'moral' message. Basically, the Cymri were about to be suckered - and so were the bulk of ordinary Saxon settlers - in a classic deal (we cannot say 'of the devil') between two powerful forces working towards order
But we should not forget those beyond the defeated Cymri. The Church was making separate inroads (with all the prestige of a passing civilisation) amongst those Celtic 'barbarians' who had never been truly conquered by Rome and who were seeking to up their own game as plunderers, the Irish and Scots. A significant figure in this respect is Columba who, based in Ireland, which had received a significant Roman missionary presence in the 430s under Palladius and Patrick, had moved, in 563, to Iona in Scotland to found an important monastery in the Scots Kingdom of Dal Riata. By 574, he is anointing Aedan mac Gebrain as King, showing the important political function of senior religious figures. It is hard not to see the history of Christianity in the British Isles, as it is elsewhere, as primarily the psychological business of creating cultural power for military and economic figures in return for shared control over the population and a slice of the action.
Dal Riata was important as an 'overlord' of the Western Isles, reaching across to the Irish mainland. Columba became Aedan's adviser. In 375, there is a Council Meeting at Druim Ceat in what is now County Londonderry obscure in intent but which seems to have involved a negotiation which weakened the hold of Dal Riata's Irish overlords without recourse to further war. The Church's backing seems to have given a sub-King significant advantage in those negotiations and it entered into its new historical role as consigliere to the bosses amongst the barbarians. Columba died in 597 just as Augustine was settling into Canterbury and within days pilgrims are arriving at Iona, indicating another facet of Catholicism, the popular devotion of items connected to its saints (an early example of the cult of relics and what is now the sale room prices that might be given for Elvis' toothbrush). This popular appeal will constrain Kings as the only power that the masses have left in an age of iron and slavery. It is probably true that the Church dies in proportion to Kings being no longer necessary or powerful.
Towards the end of the sixth century, Christianity has thus already established a magical and cultural role amongst the Irish and Scots (perhaps merely supplanting functionally that of the druidic priests) that the Pope now wants to have accepted by the much more challenging Germanic barbarians. The Church has made enormous headway amongst those barbarians who had been awed by the monuments and culture of Rome on the Continent. It was logical that Gregory should seek to extend that process by sending Augustine to the capital of Kent in 596, probably still the most culturally Roman-friendly of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms and no longer a frontier state. Augustine arrives the next year to persuade Aethelbert of Kent to embrace Catholicism which means if he does so, so does much of Southern England. Augustine becomes the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 597 (although he had probably already been ordained Bishop by the Frankish Church). Catholicism thus returns to Britain. The mission is a success. The Pope sends more resources in 601 in the form of assistants, bringing vital ritual tools (the whole business being not just one of claiming magic but of showing magic to be done). There is then a surge of pastoral activity - he revives the Bishopric of York (there is a strong institutional memory of the old provincial administrative structures within the Roman Church) and appoints Paulinus to it and consecrates two more assistants, Mellitus and Justus, as bishops for the East Saxons in 604. Mellitus gets Bishop of London and Justus Bishop of Rochester so we can see the mission steadily moving into enemy pagan territory.
This is not without its risks. The pagan Aethelfrith of Northumbria in that same year (604) had allegedly slaughtered 200 priests who, like their druidic forebears, had turned up at the battle of Chester to pray for the Cymric forces. We can see the challenge - on one side of the Island, the Church is promising the same sort of support for power granted to Aedan mac Gebrain only a few years before in Scotland to the sort of people who probably believed that Christians were employing their magical, political and religious powers against them on the other side of the island. The question was going to be whether the Church in Rome could guarantee the neutralisation of the magical power employed against the Saxons (not that it appeared to do the Cymry any good) by making it equally available to them and whether that magical power was more politically useful and efficacious than traditional pagan ways. Whether Scrocmail the priest who was one of the fifty who escaped the massacre at Chester would have appreciated Augustine's dealing with the enemy is not recorded by history.
Aethelbert of Kent is converted to catholicism. His son reverts to paganism on acquiring the throne (as we noted in the last posting) but reverts back quite quickly suggesting that there are powerful political motives for abandoning paganism in Kent by this date (616). Augustine's successor, Archbishop Laurentius, who oversees this hiccup, dies in 619. He is succeeded by Mellitus but London reverts to paganism on his departure which suggests that something is enforcing the religion and that its power waxes and wanes with the degree to which religious observance can be 'insisted upon'. History of course is with Christian power. The succession of Archbishops continues with Honorius (note the Latin name) in 624. As with the kings, we will not bother ourselves with episcopal successions, only being interested in those clerical figures who mark major shifts and changes in culture and power. By the end of our period, it is clear that, although Christianity may have only a formal foothold in just one Anglo-Saxon Kingdom and is the ramshackle religion of the defeated everywhere else and those who always were outside the Roman pale, it is to be taken seriously once again in British politics after 150 years in the wilderness.
There were now several political considerations from the Roman Church's perspective and that of the Anglo-Saxon Kings, no doubt calculated with all the consummate cynicism of such pragmatic realists. First, the continuation of a religion of resistance amongst the Cymri without Papal authority threatened to turn into something that might became heretical, uncontrollable and an alternative focus of loyalty for the unhappy Christians in the North West of Europe. Second, the Papacy had done a great deal to re-establish itself as the cement for Kingship with those barbarians with pretensions to be heirs to Rome generally or locally on the Continent. Its support would be very valuable to rising warlords who wanted both to be respected overseas and command authority over their own chaotic and proud elites and peoples. Third, and connected to the first, stable rule required that the masses who had been conquered accept the new situation and their new masters and lose hope of a return to a former situation. The Church could certainly help with pacifying those Catholic Cymri practising the religion of the oppressed under the yoke of pagan warlordism. Fourth, pagan settlers were a lot less easier to handle with their allegiance to gods of place and struggle than Christians who were taught to seek their salvation in the world beyond through an ethos of passivity and compliance. All that was required was for warlords to aspire to become kings of small settled statelets and the Church would find a ready audience for their 'moral' message. Basically, the Cymri were about to be suckered - and so were the bulk of ordinary Saxon settlers - in a classic deal (we cannot say 'of the devil') between two powerful forces working towards order
But we should not forget those beyond the defeated Cymri. The Church was making separate inroads (with all the prestige of a passing civilisation) amongst those Celtic 'barbarians' who had never been truly conquered by Rome and who were seeking to up their own game as plunderers, the Irish and Scots. A significant figure in this respect is Columba who, based in Ireland, which had received a significant Roman missionary presence in the 430s under Palladius and Patrick, had moved, in 563, to Iona in Scotland to found an important monastery in the Scots Kingdom of Dal Riata. By 574, he is anointing Aedan mac Gebrain as King, showing the important political function of senior religious figures. It is hard not to see the history of Christianity in the British Isles, as it is elsewhere, as primarily the psychological business of creating cultural power for military and economic figures in return for shared control over the population and a slice of the action.
Dal Riata was important as an 'overlord' of the Western Isles, reaching across to the Irish mainland. Columba became Aedan's adviser. In 375, there is a Council Meeting at Druim Ceat in what is now County Londonderry obscure in intent but which seems to have involved a negotiation which weakened the hold of Dal Riata's Irish overlords without recourse to further war. The Church's backing seems to have given a sub-King significant advantage in those negotiations and it entered into its new historical role as consigliere to the bosses amongst the barbarians. Columba died in 597 just as Augustine was settling into Canterbury and within days pilgrims are arriving at Iona, indicating another facet of Catholicism, the popular devotion of items connected to its saints (an early example of the cult of relics and what is now the sale room prices that might be given for Elvis' toothbrush). This popular appeal will constrain Kings as the only power that the masses have left in an age of iron and slavery. It is probably true that the Church dies in proportion to Kings being no longer necessary or powerful.
Towards the end of the sixth century, Christianity has thus already established a magical and cultural role amongst the Irish and Scots (perhaps merely supplanting functionally that of the druidic priests) that the Pope now wants to have accepted by the much more challenging Germanic barbarians. The Church has made enormous headway amongst those barbarians who had been awed by the monuments and culture of Rome on the Continent. It was logical that Gregory should seek to extend that process by sending Augustine to the capital of Kent in 596, probably still the most culturally Roman-friendly of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms and no longer a frontier state. Augustine arrives the next year to persuade Aethelbert of Kent to embrace Catholicism which means if he does so, so does much of Southern England. Augustine becomes the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 597 (although he had probably already been ordained Bishop by the Frankish Church). Catholicism thus returns to Britain. The mission is a success. The Pope sends more resources in 601 in the form of assistants, bringing vital ritual tools (the whole business being not just one of claiming magic but of showing magic to be done). There is then a surge of pastoral activity - he revives the Bishopric of York (there is a strong institutional memory of the old provincial administrative structures within the Roman Church) and appoints Paulinus to it and consecrates two more assistants, Mellitus and Justus, as bishops for the East Saxons in 604. Mellitus gets Bishop of London and Justus Bishop of Rochester so we can see the mission steadily moving into enemy pagan territory.
This is not without its risks. The pagan Aethelfrith of Northumbria in that same year (604) had allegedly slaughtered 200 priests who, like their druidic forebears, had turned up at the battle of Chester to pray for the Cymric forces. We can see the challenge - on one side of the Island, the Church is promising the same sort of support for power granted to Aedan mac Gebrain only a few years before in Scotland to the sort of people who probably believed that Christians were employing their magical, political and religious powers against them on the other side of the island. The question was going to be whether the Church in Rome could guarantee the neutralisation of the magical power employed against the Saxons (not that it appeared to do the Cymry any good) by making it equally available to them and whether that magical power was more politically useful and efficacious than traditional pagan ways. Whether Scrocmail the priest who was one of the fifty who escaped the massacre at Chester would have appreciated Augustine's dealing with the enemy is not recorded by history.
Aethelbert of Kent is converted to catholicism. His son reverts to paganism on acquiring the throne (as we noted in the last posting) but reverts back quite quickly suggesting that there are powerful political motives for abandoning paganism in Kent by this date (616). Augustine's successor, Archbishop Laurentius, who oversees this hiccup, dies in 619. He is succeeded by Mellitus but London reverts to paganism on his departure which suggests that something is enforcing the religion and that its power waxes and wanes with the degree to which religious observance can be 'insisted upon'. History of course is with Christian power. The succession of Archbishops continues with Honorius (note the Latin name) in 624. As with the kings, we will not bother ourselves with episcopal successions, only being interested in those clerical figures who mark major shifts and changes in culture and power. By the end of our period, it is clear that, although Christianity may have only a formal foothold in just one Anglo-Saxon Kingdom and is the ramshackle religion of the defeated everywhere else and those who always were outside the Roman pale, it is to be taken seriously once again in British politics after 150 years in the wilderness.
560-624: The Kingdoms Establish Themselves
A king's leadership is not, however, always uncontested. Ceawlin
himself seems to have been ousted, probably by Ceol, but he may just as
likely have been killed at another significant battle, also obscure,
with Aethelbert of Kent reversing the position of 568 in 591and
replacing Ceawlin as capo di tutti capi or rather 'bretwalda' or overlord of the Anglo-Saxons, at least in Southern England.
The violence continues into the seventh century as you would expect (the arrival and early history of Christianity is covered in the next posting). Two kingdoms, Bernicia, which we have mentioned, and Deira merge to become a major force in the North of England called Northumbria under Aethelfrith who becomes a dominant figure in wars against the Cymry, with a great deciding battle at Chester in 607. He dies in 617 at the hands of Raedwald, King of East Anglia, another Anglo-Saxon Kingdom we have taken somewhat for granted in this series. We have also taken for granted Mercia in the Midlands through which Raedwald marched with impunity to 'take out' Athelfrith. Mercia will later become very important. Who is and who is not an overlord of the English is sometimes never very clear - Aethelfrith appears to have been one so Raedwald defeating and killing him in battle naturally made him his successor. Or did it? Although defeated by Raedwald, Aethelfrith is succeeded by a strong figure in Edwin under whom Northumbrian power continues to increase culturally and politically and he is widely seen as the natural 'bretwalda'.
What is actually going on is a story of personal and dynastic rivalries, greed and lust for power, of which Game of Thrones is merely the fictional version. Most of the detail is of no interest to us. What we are interested in are the grand themes and it is to be noted here that by the time we get to struggles between Athelfrith and Raedwald in the 610s, positions on Christianity and paganism have become part of the mix. For example, it is a material political fact that the son of Aethelberht of Kent, Eadbald, reverts to paganism for a brief period in 616 but is soon 'persuaded' back into the fold because it is becoming clear that Christian clerical support is an asset and loss of that support is a problem. The re-emergence of Christianity is what we have to turn to next.
The period closes with a number of kingdoms vying for leadership of Anglo-Saxon England. Traditionally these will come to be termed a heptarchy of four major players (Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria) and three small 'original' settler Kingdoms (Kent, Sussex and Wessex) but this belies the complexity of the situation with borders shifting, mergers (as with Bernicia and Deira into Northumbria), shifting power bases (with the South Eastern Kingdoms becoming less important over time in favour of the geographically bigger 'frontier' states) and some small settlement kingdoms simply becoming subsumed into others, such as Middlesex as contested territory. There are also viable small Cymric states surviving in the South West, Wales proper and Cumbria and, of course, there are Pictish and Scottish proto-states to the North.
The violence continues into the seventh century as you would expect (the arrival and early history of Christianity is covered in the next posting). Two kingdoms, Bernicia, which we have mentioned, and Deira merge to become a major force in the North of England called Northumbria under Aethelfrith who becomes a dominant figure in wars against the Cymry, with a great deciding battle at Chester in 607. He dies in 617 at the hands of Raedwald, King of East Anglia, another Anglo-Saxon Kingdom we have taken somewhat for granted in this series. We have also taken for granted Mercia in the Midlands through which Raedwald marched with impunity to 'take out' Athelfrith. Mercia will later become very important. Who is and who is not an overlord of the English is sometimes never very clear - Aethelfrith appears to have been one so Raedwald defeating and killing him in battle naturally made him his successor. Or did it? Although defeated by Raedwald, Aethelfrith is succeeded by a strong figure in Edwin under whom Northumbrian power continues to increase culturally and politically and he is widely seen as the natural 'bretwalda'.
What is actually going on is a story of personal and dynastic rivalries, greed and lust for power, of which Game of Thrones is merely the fictional version. Most of the detail is of no interest to us. What we are interested in are the grand themes and it is to be noted here that by the time we get to struggles between Athelfrith and Raedwald in the 610s, positions on Christianity and paganism have become part of the mix. For example, it is a material political fact that the son of Aethelberht of Kent, Eadbald, reverts to paganism for a brief period in 616 but is soon 'persuaded' back into the fold because it is becoming clear that Christian clerical support is an asset and loss of that support is a problem. The re-emergence of Christianity is what we have to turn to next.
The period closes with a number of kingdoms vying for leadership of Anglo-Saxon England. Traditionally these will come to be termed a heptarchy of four major players (Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria) and three small 'original' settler Kingdoms (Kent, Sussex and Wessex) but this belies the complexity of the situation with borders shifting, mergers (as with Bernicia and Deira into Northumbria), shifting power bases (with the South Eastern Kingdoms becoming less important over time in favour of the geographically bigger 'frontier' states) and some small settlement kingdoms simply becoming subsumed into others, such as Middlesex as contested territory. There are also viable small Cymric states surviving in the South West, Wales proper and Cumbria and, of course, there are Pictish and Scottish proto-states to the North.
447-559: The Mercenaries Take Over
The fateful but probably unavoidable decision in 449 by the
Romano-British warlord Vortigern to invite a mixed Anglo-Saxon force
over to Britain to help defeat the Picts and the Scots is shrouded in
mystery but the legends plausibly suggest a brutal palace coup by the
incomers and their seizure of the profitable part of the country closest
to the trade route across the Channel (Kent).
The coup took place in 455 in Aylesford in Kent and was not without cost to the invaders. Hengist, the leading Angle, may have slaughtered the Romano-British court but he lost his brother Horsa and it is quite possible that an attempt to seize control of the whole country by ousting the 'superbus tyrranus' merely left them with Kent which they seem to have ethnically cleansed of the entire Romano-British elite who then fled to Londinium and elsewhere. The exiles would be the descendants of the thoroughly Romanised Cantiaci and have included many merchant princes. It can reasonably be said that England was founded on an ethnic massacre which might suggest to the English that they should be wary of being over-judgmental about the founding histories of other nations.
The matter was not uncontested. Hengest and his son Esc have to defend their newly acquired acquisition. The dispossessed, called the Welsh by the Angles (or rather Wealhas which means foreigners or strangers in Anglo-Saxon) fight back but are defeated at Crayford in 456, apparently with great losses, and then at Wippedesfleot (probably Ebbsfleet) in 465 before the Anglo-Saxons go on the offensive with a major raid in 473 against the Cymri (the term we will now use rather than Romano-British which they have ceased to be and use rather than Wealhas which defines them in the terms of the invader). There is no point in trying to tell the story in detail of the remorseless drive for control of South Britain by clearly superior (in military terms and in terms of sheer will and greed) Anglo-Saxons but we can perhaps highlight the process by which Roman Britain failed to become Cymru and largely became England instead.
The next key moment is a mini-invasion by Saxons under Aelle and his three sons and the seizure of another key economic asset close to the continent, Sussex, in 477. They need only three ship loads of men to dispossess the Cymry landowners, engaging in the same slaughter that Hengist and his brother had dished out two decades earlier. This is essentially an organised crime operation, using superior force to seize assets from a richer but more vulnerable population although we should perhaps not feel overly sorry for a local elite grown fat on slaves and peasant labour and refusing to organise itself adequately for resistance. There is method in all this - the new warlords are targeting the existing rackets with the same determination that Al Capone did in Chicago. Selsey where Aelle lands was a central distribution hub for the profitable trade in wheat and other agricultural and industrial goods in a regional economy which is still (just) functioning on Roman lines although the political and military protection for it has long since crumbled.
As in Kent, the Cymry try to fight back but the fighting skills and no doubt armament of these ruthless gangs is too much for them. They are finally defeated in Sussex with the seizure of the important Roman fort at Pevensey (Anderida) in 491 and the slaughter of everyone inside. There is much that is obscure in all this - context, precise dates and events, names and lineages, the actual politics - but Britain (we reserve the name Cymru for later and apply it to the area the Wealhas/Cymri were finally pushed into) may have suffered these attacks because around 480, Clovis, King of the Franks, was cutting the possibility of the Saxons raiding and seizing Northern French land. The idea that England might have emerged as much on one side of the Channel as the other might amuse but the reality was that Germanic aggression was taking place on a massively wide front, filling the huge vacuum left by the Romans.
In 495 the Saxon warlord Cerdic appears in Hampshire to create the basis for what will be the Kingdom of Wessex (to follow alongside Sussex and Kent). Other Saxon warlords seize land around Portsmouth in 501. The pattern of capturing the export zones of Britain continues, exerting a stranglehold on the old Romano-British economic system. Since the new arrivals are interested in extracting as much as they can by way of taxation and dues and pushing the locals off the best land in order to be otherwise self-sufficient, the economic disruption is immense. It is at this point that there is an attempt to pull together the Cymry in what might be called a last attempt to create a viable independent Romano-British state, that of 'King Arthur' and push the Anglo-Saxons back into the sea.
In fact, King Arthur is so shrouded in legend and subsequent accretions that we can discount the vast bulk of it as history. What it is probably safe to say is that a Romano-British warlord was able to muster the forces to halt the Western Anglo-Saxon advance and, if not push them back into the sea, stop their move inland and seizure of prime agricultural land and markets for a while. The legend centres around a major battle at an unknown site, the Battle of Badon Hill, where the Cymry finally defeated a major Anglo-Saxon force in pitched battle in or around 513. The relief is not one that lasts for long. Cerdic is acknowledged King of Wessex by 519 (to be succeeded by his son Cynric in 534), although all these dates and even persons are uncertain, and he apparently seizes the Isle of Wight (although it seems to have been settled and ruled in practice by Jutes) in 530. Wessex appears at this time still to be a small 'stranglehold' kingdom in and around Hampshire and to be far from the West of England hegemon that it was to become later.
Meanwhile, a similar process of invasion and settlement is taking place in Northern Britain with the most important development being the reign of Ida (547-559), King of Bernicia, an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom established throughout the sixth century to give Anglo-Saxons mastery of south-eastern Scotland and what is north-eastern England. It almost certainly emerged out of mercenary operations similar to those in the south east and directed at northern Pictish and Scottish raiders. Ida builds a strong fortress at Bamburgh and is succeeded by his son Glappa but we are going to forgo king lists in this series. Ida's ability to maintain his position and fight off attempts to oust him is the basis for what will be the important Kingdom of Northumbria.
By the middle of the sixth century, Roman Britain is not merely dead on paper but in fact. Romano-Britons, to be the ancestors of the modern Cymry but already regarded as such in our series for convenience, are still occupying much of the country but their frontiers to the North East and South are firmly in the hands of Germanic warlords who, in the South, have a stranglehold on the vital export trades that had kept the country prosperous. It is down hill for the original inhabitants all the way from now on.
The coup took place in 455 in Aylesford in Kent and was not without cost to the invaders. Hengist, the leading Angle, may have slaughtered the Romano-British court but he lost his brother Horsa and it is quite possible that an attempt to seize control of the whole country by ousting the 'superbus tyrranus' merely left them with Kent which they seem to have ethnically cleansed of the entire Romano-British elite who then fled to Londinium and elsewhere. The exiles would be the descendants of the thoroughly Romanised Cantiaci and have included many merchant princes. It can reasonably be said that England was founded on an ethnic massacre which might suggest to the English that they should be wary of being over-judgmental about the founding histories of other nations.
The matter was not uncontested. Hengest and his son Esc have to defend their newly acquired acquisition. The dispossessed, called the Welsh by the Angles (or rather Wealhas which means foreigners or strangers in Anglo-Saxon) fight back but are defeated at Crayford in 456, apparently with great losses, and then at Wippedesfleot (probably Ebbsfleet) in 465 before the Anglo-Saxons go on the offensive with a major raid in 473 against the Cymri (the term we will now use rather than Romano-British which they have ceased to be and use rather than Wealhas which defines them in the terms of the invader). There is no point in trying to tell the story in detail of the remorseless drive for control of South Britain by clearly superior (in military terms and in terms of sheer will and greed) Anglo-Saxons but we can perhaps highlight the process by which Roman Britain failed to become Cymru and largely became England instead.
The next key moment is a mini-invasion by Saxons under Aelle and his three sons and the seizure of another key economic asset close to the continent, Sussex, in 477. They need only three ship loads of men to dispossess the Cymry landowners, engaging in the same slaughter that Hengist and his brother had dished out two decades earlier. This is essentially an organised crime operation, using superior force to seize assets from a richer but more vulnerable population although we should perhaps not feel overly sorry for a local elite grown fat on slaves and peasant labour and refusing to organise itself adequately for resistance. There is method in all this - the new warlords are targeting the existing rackets with the same determination that Al Capone did in Chicago. Selsey where Aelle lands was a central distribution hub for the profitable trade in wheat and other agricultural and industrial goods in a regional economy which is still (just) functioning on Roman lines although the political and military protection for it has long since crumbled.
As in Kent, the Cymry try to fight back but the fighting skills and no doubt armament of these ruthless gangs is too much for them. They are finally defeated in Sussex with the seizure of the important Roman fort at Pevensey (Anderida) in 491 and the slaughter of everyone inside. There is much that is obscure in all this - context, precise dates and events, names and lineages, the actual politics - but Britain (we reserve the name Cymru for later and apply it to the area the Wealhas/Cymri were finally pushed into) may have suffered these attacks because around 480, Clovis, King of the Franks, was cutting the possibility of the Saxons raiding and seizing Northern French land. The idea that England might have emerged as much on one side of the Channel as the other might amuse but the reality was that Germanic aggression was taking place on a massively wide front, filling the huge vacuum left by the Romans.
In 495 the Saxon warlord Cerdic appears in Hampshire to create the basis for what will be the Kingdom of Wessex (to follow alongside Sussex and Kent). Other Saxon warlords seize land around Portsmouth in 501. The pattern of capturing the export zones of Britain continues, exerting a stranglehold on the old Romano-British economic system. Since the new arrivals are interested in extracting as much as they can by way of taxation and dues and pushing the locals off the best land in order to be otherwise self-sufficient, the economic disruption is immense. It is at this point that there is an attempt to pull together the Cymry in what might be called a last attempt to create a viable independent Romano-British state, that of 'King Arthur' and push the Anglo-Saxons back into the sea.
In fact, King Arthur is so shrouded in legend and subsequent accretions that we can discount the vast bulk of it as history. What it is probably safe to say is that a Romano-British warlord was able to muster the forces to halt the Western Anglo-Saxon advance and, if not push them back into the sea, stop their move inland and seizure of prime agricultural land and markets for a while. The legend centres around a major battle at an unknown site, the Battle of Badon Hill, where the Cymry finally defeated a major Anglo-Saxon force in pitched battle in or around 513. The relief is not one that lasts for long. Cerdic is acknowledged King of Wessex by 519 (to be succeeded by his son Cynric in 534), although all these dates and even persons are uncertain, and he apparently seizes the Isle of Wight (although it seems to have been settled and ruled in practice by Jutes) in 530. Wessex appears at this time still to be a small 'stranglehold' kingdom in and around Hampshire and to be far from the West of England hegemon that it was to become later.
Meanwhile, a similar process of invasion and settlement is taking place in Northern Britain with the most important development being the reign of Ida (547-559), King of Bernicia, an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom established throughout the sixth century to give Anglo-Saxons mastery of south-eastern Scotland and what is north-eastern England. It almost certainly emerged out of mercenary operations similar to those in the south east and directed at northern Pictish and Scottish raiders. Ida builds a strong fortress at Bamburgh and is succeeded by his son Glappa but we are going to forgo king lists in this series. Ida's ability to maintain his position and fight off attempts to oust him is the basis for what will be the important Kingdom of Northumbria.
By the middle of the sixth century, Roman Britain is not merely dead on paper but in fact. Romano-Britons, to be the ancestors of the modern Cymry but already regarded as such in our series for convenience, are still occupying much of the country but their frontiers to the North East and South are firmly in the hands of Germanic warlords who, in the South, have a stranglehold on the vital export trades that had kept the country prosperous. It is down hill for the original inhabitants all the way from now on.
369-446: The Roman Withdrawal
After a half decade of brutal and co-ordinated raiding from overseas,
Emperor Theodosius the Great restored order in Britain in 369. The next
great crisis will shift us like a pendulum from external threat to
internal rebellion once again. This time it is a revolt by the military
commander Magnus Maximus in 383 after a victory in the previous year
against the Picts. His revolt lasts only until 388 but involved an
incursion into the heart of the Empire itself in a failed attempt to
seize the Imperial throne (albeit that he had already been declared
Western Emperor). His invasion of Italy was defeated by Theodosius at
the Battle of the Save.
It is not long after this (401) that the Roman legions began to be withdrawn from Britain and defence transferred to local forces. Hillforts would eventually begin to be reoccupied, including Cadbury Castle in Somerset from around 470, later to become associated with the legend of Arthur as Camalet. It remained so occupied until the 580s. The legions proved necessary for the struggles for power within the Empire as it began to crumble under the barbarian invasions on the mainland. In 407 the local Roman usurper Emperor Constantine III (after a series of such usurpers had emerged and fallen in the Province) withdrew the legions entirely to support his own claims.
Given the general mayhem as Vandals, Burgundians, Alans and Sueves crossed the Rhine at Mainz in 406, it is no surprise to see Saxon raids start up again after Constantine's departure and, in 409, there is a native British revolt against his rule. This is the best marker date for the end of Roman rule since Emperor Honorius' assertion to the British that they are on their own and must organise their own defence (410) is simply, by that point, a statement of the obvious. In that year, Rome itself was sacked by the Goths under Alaric.
There is, of course, still a Roman administration and a Romano-British ruling class operating in Britain after the withdrawal of the military but it appears that, where possible, capital is being exported or buried and the administrative structures begin to weaken and collapse as resources disappear. The Christian Church feels the strain even though it sustains its relationship with the province for another 45 years or so. In 429, the well recorded visit of St. Germanus, a Gallo-Roman Bishop, was made to combat the growing influence of the Pelagian heresy which might be said to reflect what was later to become a very strong part of the British character - the importance of free will and self reliance in seeking salvation. It was Germanus who constructed the story of St. Alban the martyr, as a useful propaganda tool for stiffening Romano-British spines within the Christian tradition. The famous debate held with the Pelagians at Verulamium seems to have had a class element to it. Germanus appeared to be able to appeal over the heads of the wavering Romano-British aristocracy and merchant class to the broader population assembled there. The Church's determination to hold on to Britain was matched by its equal determination to convert the rising barbarian powers and tribes,. In 431 Bishop Palladius was sent on missions to the Irish and the Scots by Pope Celestine.
The Romano-British did not give up hope of reintegration into the Roman Empire for quite some time, no doubt assisted by the Catholic Church. Perhaps we see another constant in British history appearing here, similar to that between Slavophiles and those who looked to the West in Russia, by which the Catholics looked to Europe, whether Roman or Gallic, and the Pelagians preferred national independence, a difference of outlook that is about to be played out once again in the struggles over which way the British will vote in the forthcoming European Referendum. There was a last appeal for the return of the Roman legions in 446 but Rome was embroiled in its conflict with the formidable Huns and could not or would not help. It is at this point that the desperate Roman-British aristocracy, unable to build a sufficient fighting force of their own, made the fateful decision to appeal to the Angles (from what is now Southern Denmark) to take on what had been Rome's responsibility but as mercenaries.
It is not long after this (401) that the Roman legions began to be withdrawn from Britain and defence transferred to local forces. Hillforts would eventually begin to be reoccupied, including Cadbury Castle in Somerset from around 470, later to become associated with the legend of Arthur as Camalet. It remained so occupied until the 580s. The legions proved necessary for the struggles for power within the Empire as it began to crumble under the barbarian invasions on the mainland. In 407 the local Roman usurper Emperor Constantine III (after a series of such usurpers had emerged and fallen in the Province) withdrew the legions entirely to support his own claims.
Given the general mayhem as Vandals, Burgundians, Alans and Sueves crossed the Rhine at Mainz in 406, it is no surprise to see Saxon raids start up again after Constantine's departure and, in 409, there is a native British revolt against his rule. This is the best marker date for the end of Roman rule since Emperor Honorius' assertion to the British that they are on their own and must organise their own defence (410) is simply, by that point, a statement of the obvious. In that year, Rome itself was sacked by the Goths under Alaric.
There is, of course, still a Roman administration and a Romano-British ruling class operating in Britain after the withdrawal of the military but it appears that, where possible, capital is being exported or buried and the administrative structures begin to weaken and collapse as resources disappear. The Christian Church feels the strain even though it sustains its relationship with the province for another 45 years or so. In 429, the well recorded visit of St. Germanus, a Gallo-Roman Bishop, was made to combat the growing influence of the Pelagian heresy which might be said to reflect what was later to become a very strong part of the British character - the importance of free will and self reliance in seeking salvation. It was Germanus who constructed the story of St. Alban the martyr, as a useful propaganda tool for stiffening Romano-British spines within the Christian tradition. The famous debate held with the Pelagians at Verulamium seems to have had a class element to it. Germanus appeared to be able to appeal over the heads of the wavering Romano-British aristocracy and merchant class to the broader population assembled there. The Church's determination to hold on to Britain was matched by its equal determination to convert the rising barbarian powers and tribes,. In 431 Bishop Palladius was sent on missions to the Irish and the Scots by Pope Celestine.
The Romano-British did not give up hope of reintegration into the Roman Empire for quite some time, no doubt assisted by the Catholic Church. Perhaps we see another constant in British history appearing here, similar to that between Slavophiles and those who looked to the West in Russia, by which the Catholics looked to Europe, whether Roman or Gallic, and the Pelagians preferred national independence, a difference of outlook that is about to be played out once again in the struggles over which way the British will vote in the forthcoming European Referendum. There was a last appeal for the return of the Roman legions in 446 but Rome was embroiled in its conflict with the formidable Huns and could not or would not help. It is at this point that the desperate Roman-British aristocracy, unable to build a sufficient fighting force of their own, made the fateful decision to appeal to the Angles (from what is now Southern Denmark) to take on what had been Rome's responsibility but as mercenaries.
274-368: The Instabilities of Roman Rule
By the last quarter of the third century, south of Hadrian's Wall,
Roman Britain was a fully romanised and prosperous occupied province
under men who could become minor players in the bigger game of Roman
imperial politics, using the resources made available by the need to
have a significant military on hand to protect the asset from potential
raiding on three of its four sides - Ireland, north of the Wall and
across the North Sea.
The tension between Roman Imperial desire to control and maintain the asset and what local rulers and commanders wanted must be placed in its context - that local interests saw their primary needs as either being protected by Rome or being allowed to protect themselves on their terms if Rome could not do so for whatever reason. After the imposition of direct rule on Britain from Rome in 274, we see, within fifteen years, the rise of an independent 'British Emperor' Carausius, actually a Belgic-Roman naval commander who had been charged with clearing the English Channel of pirates. The propertied interests of Britain were wholly dependant on export of grain and manufactures to the wider Roman Empire. Rome itself was not doing much directly to keep the trade routes open and so the local military Commander clearly got himself the local mandate to keep the resources available to him on site and not have them weakened by interference from overseas, failures to provide resources or autonomy of decision-making or any attempt to have taxes or men diverted to Rome's needs rather than those of 'national' defence.
In fact, the Carausian Revolt had its opportunistic aspects as these things tend to do. Carausius was apparently about to be arrested and executed on charges of dealing with the Frankish and Saxon pirates and embezzlement. His independent Empire lasted a bare decade (286-296) but, based on observation of the dynamics of all Empires trying to hold on to their assets against the depredations of border tribes and organised crime (we see this in the struggles of our own Atlantic System to hold the line against migration and organised crime today), we might see these charges as charges of central Roman frustration at Carausius rationally following a local policy of buying off the enemy at a time when this was not the policy of the centre. It could easily have been the opposite position - the centre seeking to cut deals with the barbarians and a local commander commited to military action. This tension between military aggression against 'invaders', or building walls or bribery, accommodation and negotiation is played out today in the policy discussions about how to deal with Libyan trafficking gangs in Europe and even Mexican cartels. Under some Imperial administrations, whether Roman or Chinese, negotiation with 'terrorists' would have been regarded as self-defeating and morally culpable as much as it does today to Washington policymakers.
Carausian himself may have been called Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Valerius Carausius but he was actually a Menapian (Belgic) of humble birth and shows us another aspect of the Roman Empire by this period. Rome had run out of Romans and a distinctive hybridisation of Roman and native culture created a class of people who saw themselves as Roman but also detached from Rome itself. In power, Carausius appears to have actively worked to create a British national identity albeit within a Roman cultural framework. It is this tendency to integrate local elites into the processes of higher administration that permits, across Empire, the emergence in time of independent centres of power that come and go - entering imperial politics from the periphery, setting up temporary independent polities and acting as minor powers representing a preference for imperial ways of doing things as more efficient but choosing or forced to deal with the rapidly developing barbarian polities and organised ethnic criminalities (from an imperial perspective) at their borders. There are analogies for this in Chinese imperial history. Over-expansion in order to acquire maximun assets and push barbarian threats ever further outwards not merely reaches a certain natural limit of cost-effectiveness but creates its own nemesis as barbarian tribes cohere and adopt and adapt imperial military technologies. Observe the skilled adoption of Western techniques by ISIS in the Middle East and you see what the Mongols and Franks did in their time. The periphery creates unstable 'civilised warlords' who can threaten the centre itself and the costs of holding everything together increase. Does this not remind us a little of our current situation in the West as Washington, free trade, NATO and the 'Big Five' surveillance reach the limits of their expansionary capability? It is as if decline is built into Empire by its very expansionary and 'globalising' nature.
Carausius held the southern shore of the English Channel, inherited as local naval commander, until 293 when Constantius I isolated Boulogne and cut him off from his Frankish allies. Boulogne was taken and Carausius assassinated by Allectus (one of his own officers who succeeded him and was also Menapian). Allectus was defeated within three years. Britain returned to Roman rule under Constantius I, founder of the Constantinian Dynasty, who invaded Britain in 296 and defeated Allectus in 297, leaving behind a myth of British independence that would reappear in Geoffrey of Monmouth's work in the twelfth century, interestingly linked to Christian resistance to Diocletian's persecution. Somewhere in the sub-text is a story of resistance to centralised power being associated with the relatively new religion of Christianity since it would seem that the punitive operations of Julius Asclepiodotus, who Constantius appointed military governor after the revolt, involved some serious persecution of Christians (part of a much wider war on the faith undertaken by Diocletian in these years).
What we seem to have in late third century Roman Britain is an identifiable Belgic ruling class that had been fully romanised but is quite prepared to work with Frankish barbarians pragmatically, simply diverting some of the tax take perhaps from Rome to the barbarians in order to buy them off, and who were perhaps partially adopting Christianity as an ideology of resistance to Roman religious (and so moral and organisational) claims. It is soon after the revolt (304) that St. Alban is executed at Verulamium (later named St. Alban's). Alban was a converted Roman legionary. It is not difficult to see this as a political as much as a religious execution, if the story is not a later invention entirely. Despite the doubts as to veracity, the sheltering by a Roman Officer of a Christian dissident (Amphibalus, also caught and executed) and the story of his conversion seems to hide a deeper narrative of political and military defeat and of an attempt to root out the elite groups who had challenged direct Roman Imperial rule.
Meanwhile, we must not forget the North Britons who would have taken their own raiding opportunities from the fighting in southern Britain. Constantine the Great will cross the Channel to claim the Empire in another ironical reversal of the recent years of struggle only after Constantius I (Constantine the Great's father) had crossed the Channel in the other direction (305) and brought his son with him to mount a major and apparently successful campaign against the Picts in 306. Constantine's father died that year in Eboracum (York) but ensured the army accepted his son as heir - the second campaign against the Picts was thus aborted in order to secure the Empire for the family.
Christianity is a significant political factor across the Empire by this time. The story of St. Alban becomes even more suggestive when we find that Constantine the Great goes on to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire in a series of measures starting in 313 with the Edict of Milan. Christianity in the Empire is another story entirely but it is hard not to see Constantine responding to its ability to mobilise continued resistance in an important asset like Britain and elsewhere, and coming to the 'realpolitik' view that, ironically, just as Carausius might come to an accommodation with the Franks to allow the English Channel trading routes to operate securely so the Emperor might come to an accommodation with the internal dissidents and turn them from cause of instability to force for stabilisation.
Britain returns to being a relatively stable back water of the Empire for a while but we see the Emperor Constans having to cross to Britain in 343 (the visit was short and sharp and undertaken under dangerous sea conditions suggesting an emergency response to some event) and in the 360s the Mildenhall Treasure was buried suggesting some further internal instability in the elite (though the narrative about this find remains unclear). The serious problems for Roman rule really start again with a run of raids on the Britain by Saxon pirates from 363 to 368, with a particularly large raid in 364 that seems to have been more than just piratical and another in 367 by a coalition of Picts, Scots and Saxons that almost brought Roman Britain to its knees.
The tension between Roman Imperial desire to control and maintain the asset and what local rulers and commanders wanted must be placed in its context - that local interests saw their primary needs as either being protected by Rome or being allowed to protect themselves on their terms if Rome could not do so for whatever reason. After the imposition of direct rule on Britain from Rome in 274, we see, within fifteen years, the rise of an independent 'British Emperor' Carausius, actually a Belgic-Roman naval commander who had been charged with clearing the English Channel of pirates. The propertied interests of Britain were wholly dependant on export of grain and manufactures to the wider Roman Empire. Rome itself was not doing much directly to keep the trade routes open and so the local military Commander clearly got himself the local mandate to keep the resources available to him on site and not have them weakened by interference from overseas, failures to provide resources or autonomy of decision-making or any attempt to have taxes or men diverted to Rome's needs rather than those of 'national' defence.
In fact, the Carausian Revolt had its opportunistic aspects as these things tend to do. Carausius was apparently about to be arrested and executed on charges of dealing with the Frankish and Saxon pirates and embezzlement. His independent Empire lasted a bare decade (286-296) but, based on observation of the dynamics of all Empires trying to hold on to their assets against the depredations of border tribes and organised crime (we see this in the struggles of our own Atlantic System to hold the line against migration and organised crime today), we might see these charges as charges of central Roman frustration at Carausius rationally following a local policy of buying off the enemy at a time when this was not the policy of the centre. It could easily have been the opposite position - the centre seeking to cut deals with the barbarians and a local commander commited to military action. This tension between military aggression against 'invaders', or building walls or bribery, accommodation and negotiation is played out today in the policy discussions about how to deal with Libyan trafficking gangs in Europe and even Mexican cartels. Under some Imperial administrations, whether Roman or Chinese, negotiation with 'terrorists' would have been regarded as self-defeating and morally culpable as much as it does today to Washington policymakers.
Carausian himself may have been called Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Valerius Carausius but he was actually a Menapian (Belgic) of humble birth and shows us another aspect of the Roman Empire by this period. Rome had run out of Romans and a distinctive hybridisation of Roman and native culture created a class of people who saw themselves as Roman but also detached from Rome itself. In power, Carausius appears to have actively worked to create a British national identity albeit within a Roman cultural framework. It is this tendency to integrate local elites into the processes of higher administration that permits, across Empire, the emergence in time of independent centres of power that come and go - entering imperial politics from the periphery, setting up temporary independent polities and acting as minor powers representing a preference for imperial ways of doing things as more efficient but choosing or forced to deal with the rapidly developing barbarian polities and organised ethnic criminalities (from an imperial perspective) at their borders. There are analogies for this in Chinese imperial history. Over-expansion in order to acquire maximun assets and push barbarian threats ever further outwards not merely reaches a certain natural limit of cost-effectiveness but creates its own nemesis as barbarian tribes cohere and adopt and adapt imperial military technologies. Observe the skilled adoption of Western techniques by ISIS in the Middle East and you see what the Mongols and Franks did in their time. The periphery creates unstable 'civilised warlords' who can threaten the centre itself and the costs of holding everything together increase. Does this not remind us a little of our current situation in the West as Washington, free trade, NATO and the 'Big Five' surveillance reach the limits of their expansionary capability? It is as if decline is built into Empire by its very expansionary and 'globalising' nature.
Carausius held the southern shore of the English Channel, inherited as local naval commander, until 293 when Constantius I isolated Boulogne and cut him off from his Frankish allies. Boulogne was taken and Carausius assassinated by Allectus (one of his own officers who succeeded him and was also Menapian). Allectus was defeated within three years. Britain returned to Roman rule under Constantius I, founder of the Constantinian Dynasty, who invaded Britain in 296 and defeated Allectus in 297, leaving behind a myth of British independence that would reappear in Geoffrey of Monmouth's work in the twelfth century, interestingly linked to Christian resistance to Diocletian's persecution. Somewhere in the sub-text is a story of resistance to centralised power being associated with the relatively new religion of Christianity since it would seem that the punitive operations of Julius Asclepiodotus, who Constantius appointed military governor after the revolt, involved some serious persecution of Christians (part of a much wider war on the faith undertaken by Diocletian in these years).
What we seem to have in late third century Roman Britain is an identifiable Belgic ruling class that had been fully romanised but is quite prepared to work with Frankish barbarians pragmatically, simply diverting some of the tax take perhaps from Rome to the barbarians in order to buy them off, and who were perhaps partially adopting Christianity as an ideology of resistance to Roman religious (and so moral and organisational) claims. It is soon after the revolt (304) that St. Alban is executed at Verulamium (later named St. Alban's). Alban was a converted Roman legionary. It is not difficult to see this as a political as much as a religious execution, if the story is not a later invention entirely. Despite the doubts as to veracity, the sheltering by a Roman Officer of a Christian dissident (Amphibalus, also caught and executed) and the story of his conversion seems to hide a deeper narrative of political and military defeat and of an attempt to root out the elite groups who had challenged direct Roman Imperial rule.
Meanwhile, we must not forget the North Britons who would have taken their own raiding opportunities from the fighting in southern Britain. Constantine the Great will cross the Channel to claim the Empire in another ironical reversal of the recent years of struggle only after Constantius I (Constantine the Great's father) had crossed the Channel in the other direction (305) and brought his son with him to mount a major and apparently successful campaign against the Picts in 306. Constantine's father died that year in Eboracum (York) but ensured the army accepted his son as heir - the second campaign against the Picts was thus aborted in order to secure the Empire for the family.
Christianity is a significant political factor across the Empire by this time. The story of St. Alban becomes even more suggestive when we find that Constantine the Great goes on to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire in a series of measures starting in 313 with the Edict of Milan. Christianity in the Empire is another story entirely but it is hard not to see Constantine responding to its ability to mobilise continued resistance in an important asset like Britain and elsewhere, and coming to the 'realpolitik' view that, ironically, just as Carausius might come to an accommodation with the Franks to allow the English Channel trading routes to operate securely so the Emperor might come to an accommodation with the internal dissidents and turn them from cause of instability to force for stabilisation.
Britain returns to being a relatively stable back water of the Empire for a while but we see the Emperor Constans having to cross to Britain in 343 (the visit was short and sharp and undertaken under dangerous sea conditions suggesting an emergency response to some event) and in the 360s the Mildenhall Treasure was buried suggesting some further internal instability in the elite (though the narrative about this find remains unclear). The serious problems for Roman rule really start again with a run of raids on the Britain by Saxon pirates from 363 to 368, with a particularly large raid in 364 that seems to have been more than just piratical and another in 367 by a coalition of Picts, Scots and Saxons that almost brought Roman Britain to its knees.
77-273: The Problem of Caledonia
The arrival of Gnaeus Julius Agricola gives us the most famous Roman
Governor of antiquity because his life and deeds were written up by the
Roman historian, his son-in-law Tacitus, but he was an important element
in the final conquest of Britain even if his public relations ran ahead
of his achievements. Having moved against the Ordovices and Anglesey,
over which Rome had temporarily lost control, Agricola then undertook a
campaign to subdue Northern England in 78, possibly as far as the Firth
of Tay (Scotland) in the following year. There may even have been a
small exploratory expedition to Ireland similar to that of Caesar's in
55 though nothing came of it and nothing may be assumed about its
reality.
In 80, Agricola was faced with a major Caledonian (Scottish) rising. A war ensued that led to the pivotal battle of Mons Graupius (83-84) in the far north of Scotland which, if it actually took place (there is some doubt amongst a minority of historians) resulted in the complete defeat of the Northern British, led by Calgacus, Chief of the Caledonian Confederation. Whether the 10,000 British casualties figure is true or not is debatable but the Romans are unlikely to have taken many prisoners so far from home and surrounded by the enemy. Nevertheless, the battle may still have left 20,000 defeated but still formidable Caledonians in the surrounding forests.
Tacitus almost certainly invents a famous speech by Calgacus before the battle that probably tells us more about Roman doubts and sensibilities than it does those of the British. It is worth quoting in full because it suggests that intelligent Romans had some qualms about the ethical basis for their own imperialist endeavours:
In 117, Hadrian became Emperor and appeared in
Britain in 121 after a rebellion (119-121) in order to restore order. He
famously settled the matter (with one significant gap under the later
Antonines 142-162 which temporarily restored the frontier to the Firth
of Forth and Firth of Clyde line and was briefly reoccupied by Septimus
Severus in 208-211) of the boundary between barbarian North Briton and
Roman Britain by ordering the building of his famous wall along the
Tyne-Solway frontier between 122 and 128 under his Governor Aulus
Platorius Nepos. Hadrian died in 138.
As suggested above, the advance into Scotland by
Emperor Antoninus Pius in 140 was a temporary business especially as the
tribes between the Antonine (under Governor Quintus Lolius Albinus) and
Hadrian's Wall were organised into another anti-Roman confederacy, the
continuously troublesome Maeatae: the Antonine Wall may have merely been
intended to limit the connections between these lowland tribes and the
Caledonians to their North as well as to control trade between them. The
withdrawal from the more northerly wall in 162 simply meant the
restoration of Hadrian's Wall as the definitive frontier under Marcus
Aurelius.
The vulnerability of Southern Britain to Caledonian resurgence is demonstrated at the end of the second century AD. Septimius Severus, who was to die in Eboracum (York) in 211, became Emperor in 193 and appointed Clodius Albinus, a powerful Imperial politician who had tried to become Emperor in 193, as Governor of Britain. It may have been a necessary but was not a wise choice because the British and Hispanic Legions declared for Clodius Albinus as Emperor and the Legions followed him in a (second) attempt in 196 to seize the Imperial throne. Britain was left undefended. What actually happened next is unclear but it is probable that the northern tribes started to become troublesome with the withdrawal of the three Legions generally required to hold down the province. Once Clodius Albinus had been crushed with consummate brutality (Septimius Severus is said to have ridden his horse over his naked corpse as an act of humiliation and beheaded his wife and sons), Severus returned to Britain personally to restore order on the Scottish frontier with near-genocidal fervour. After his death, his son Caracalla eventually sued for peace and the Romans permanently withdrew to the Tyne-Solway line. The engagement of these Emperors in Britain throughout this period suggests that the South of Britain was a major economic asset to be protected even at great cost in men and financial resources. At the end of the day, we must never forget that empires are fundamentally intended to be profitable businesses. Legions were merely what corporate lawyers are today - very expensive necessities.
Notes
1. "Hadrian's wall at Greenhead Lough" by Velella - Personal photograph taken by Velella.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hadrian%27s_wall_at_Greenhead_Lough.jpg#/media/File:Hadrian%27s_wall_at_Greenhead_Lough.jpg
In 80, Agricola was faced with a major Caledonian (Scottish) rising. A war ensued that led to the pivotal battle of Mons Graupius (83-84) in the far north of Scotland which, if it actually took place (there is some doubt amongst a minority of historians) resulted in the complete defeat of the Northern British, led by Calgacus, Chief of the Caledonian Confederation. Whether the 10,000 British casualties figure is true or not is debatable but the Romans are unlikely to have taken many prisoners so far from home and surrounded by the enemy. Nevertheless, the battle may still have left 20,000 defeated but still formidable Caledonians in the surrounding forests.
Tacitus almost certainly invents a famous speech by Calgacus before the battle that probably tells us more about Roman doubts and sensibilities than it does those of the British. It is worth quoting in full because it suggests that intelligent Romans had some qualms about the ethical basis for their own imperialist endeavours:
Whenever I consider the origin of this war and the necessities of our position, I have a sure confidence that this day, and this union of yours, will be the beginning of freedom to the whole of Britain. To all of us slavery is a thing unknown; there are no lands beyond us, and even the sea is not safe, menaced as we are by a Roman fleet. And thus in war and battle, in which the brave find glory, even the coward will find safety. Former contests, in which, with varying fortune, the Romans were resisted, still left in us a last hope of succour, inasmuch as being the most renowned nation of Britain, dwelling in the very heart of the country, and out of sight of the shores of the conquered, we could keep even our eyes unpolluted by the contagion of slavery. To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain's glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.This speech inspired intellectual and educated anti-imperialists and British nationalists within the later British Imperium when it aspired to be the New Rome and perhaps acted as a restraint on a ruling caste educated in the classics and torn between the libertarian values of the Isles and the mission to create an ethical world empire. Be all that as it may, and despite doubts about the extent of Agricola's victory, the drive against the North Britons created space for the South Britons to be fully romanised. In fact, Scotland itself was far from pacified. Within a few years of Agricola's campaign, Rome had withdrawn to a line between the Tyne and Solway Firth which was to be the Roman frontier for much of Imperial history.
 |
| Hadrian's Wall today (For Source - See Note 1) |
 |
| Rome's Northernmost Frontier - The Antonine Wall (Source - Wikipedia) |
The vulnerability of Southern Britain to Caledonian resurgence is demonstrated at the end of the second century AD. Septimius Severus, who was to die in Eboracum (York) in 211, became Emperor in 193 and appointed Clodius Albinus, a powerful Imperial politician who had tried to become Emperor in 193, as Governor of Britain. It may have been a necessary but was not a wise choice because the British and Hispanic Legions declared for Clodius Albinus as Emperor and the Legions followed him in a (second) attempt in 196 to seize the Imperial throne. Britain was left undefended. What actually happened next is unclear but it is probable that the northern tribes started to become troublesome with the withdrawal of the three Legions generally required to hold down the province. Once Clodius Albinus had been crushed with consummate brutality (Septimius Severus is said to have ridden his horse over his naked corpse as an act of humiliation and beheaded his wife and sons), Severus returned to Britain personally to restore order on the Scottish frontier with near-genocidal fervour. After his death, his son Caracalla eventually sued for peace and the Romans permanently withdrew to the Tyne-Solway line. The engagement of these Emperors in Britain throughout this period suggests that the South of Britain was a major economic asset to be protected even at great cost in men and financial resources. At the end of the day, we must never forget that empires are fundamentally intended to be profitable businesses. Legions were merely what corporate lawyers are today - very expensive necessities.
Notes
1. "Hadrian's wall at Greenhead Lough" by Velella - Personal photograph taken by Velella.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hadrian%27s_wall_at_Greenhead_Lough.jpg#/media/File:Hadrian%27s_wall_at_Greenhead_Lough.jpg
44-77: The Romans Occupy
By 47 (within four years of the initial invasion), the Roman military
had occupied Britain as far west as the Severn and Cornwall and as far
north as the Trent, moving far beyond a punitive action against Belgic
tributaries towards a full-scale occupation of the most productive part
of the British Isles. However, the occupation was not untroubled and
this was no 'blitzkrieg', as we will see. The process was accompanied by
'Romanisation', the tendency to adopt Roman cultural forms which had
already begun in the Southern trading ports and tribes long before Aulus
Plautius had landed his troops. The Romans had pursued a policy in Gaul
of
destroying Druidry and now extended the policy to Britain, essentially
doing to the Britons what the Soviets
attempted in Eastern Europe - the elimination of the nearest equivalent
to an educated pre-regime middle class, one that seemed to see the Roman
threat as a profound cultural challenge and so stiffen local spines for
ideological resistance. The elimination of this
class, notably the invasion of their stronghold in Anglesey, was
portrayed by the Romans as a civilising act. The enemy were presented as
bloody
sacrificers of human beings - an image rekindled for us in popular
culture today by the 'Wicker Man'. The aristocrats were tolerated if
they became Romanised but otherwise they would be extirpated by force
if
charm and self interest had failed.
In 48, the Decangi of North Wales were subdued by Ostorius Scapula, who succeeded Aulus Plautius as Governor of Britain, and this helped split the Southern British Tribes from the Northern. The military policy was the standard brutal one of razing hill fort strongholds to the ground and generally massacring their inhabitants. This is not to say that British resistance did not continue for a while yet regardless of Roman ruthlessness. The Romans, having forced Caratacus out of Eastern Britain, founded their own Camulodonum (later Colchester), the first Roman town and arguably the first town in Britain, where Celtic Camulodonum once stood, and made it their capital. Londinium (London) was founded a year later and Verulamium the year after that. Caratacus had maintained the tribal confederation based in Celtic Camulodonum for a while but had then moved his base of operations to Wales, adopting guerrilla tactics, the only way to deal with the application of direct Roman military power if you could not inspire a levee en masse as Boudicca was to do later.
Defeated in battle in 50 at a still unknown location, Caratacus fled to the Brigantes, another confederation of tribes, in North Yorkshire. There, the Brigantian Chief Venutius, married to Cartimandua, prepared for a war of resistance. The story is worthy of a soap opera. His Queen Cartimandua seems to have found a new lover and a struggle for power had ensued. Cartimandua was inclined to the Roman cause (we are finding here a common pattern of internal tribal rivalries being expressed in terms of resistance or acceptance of Roman rule much as France was divided after 1940). Venutius seems to have taken up the cause of resistance more as a result of his wife's position than because he started out in a liberatory frame of mind. The upshot was that Cartimandua simply handed Caratacus over to the Romans. He was carted off to Rome as a prisoner where he was pardoned by Claudius, no doubt to ease the process by which the Southern British aristocracy would come to terms with Roman rule.
This pardon appeared to settle the matter of Roman control of Southern Britain for the while but the occupation was not all plain sailing. By the time of the fourth Governor, Quintus Veranius [57-58], orders had been given to go further and conquer the whole island. Although he died within a year, Quintus Veranius appears to have done a great deal to create the conditions for the conquest of Wales, a process continued by his successor against fierce resistance, notably by the Silures in South-Eastern Wales who were not subdued until the 70s. The point when war in this area was replaced with occupation might be set as the founding of Isca (Caerleon) in 75. Wales took a long time to deal with partly because initial campaigning had to be brought to a halt as troops were recalled to deal with a significant revolt in Eastern Britain.
The East British revolt of Queen Boudicca of the Iceni, in alliance with the Trinovantes (60-62AD) meant the sack of the new towns Camulodonum, Verulamium and Londinium with many thousands of death in each but she was eventually defeated in a battle at an unknown site near Watling Street. Boudicca committed suicide by poison. The slaughter had made the Emperor Nero consider withdrawing from Britain altogether but the victory, which demonstrated Roman military superiority against very much greater numbers, drove Rome to push even harder to suppress dissent and romanise the province. The Brigantes, now under Venutius, then became resistant to Rome. This was really little more than a family spat in which Venutius managed to throw out Cartimandua in 69 (interestingly, at the end of the chaotic year of the Four Emperors in Rome when perhaps some British aristocrats started to wobble over the viability of the Roman project). She promptly appealed to the Romans for assistance in winning back her throne. Whether they restored her or not, the Romans decided to deal with Venutius in battle, which they won of course, but the Brigantes themselves were not subdued for some years.
This is no simple picture of military might sweeping all before it in a few quick campaigns but something more like dogged attrition in which brute legionary force was used alongside diplomatic intrigue and probably bribery, with setbacks, to bring the valuable province into the Roman fold. The very fact that the murder of the citizens of the three first colonial towns of Britain led to considerations of withdrawal suggests that Rome was not always sure of its ground and that the benefits of its minerals and agricultural production could be offset by the huge cost of maintaining order over a rag-bag of squabbling tribes. Nevertheless, by the time that Gnaeus Julius Agricola became Governor in Britain in 77, some sense of order had returned, Rome was on its way to final uncontested occupation of South Britain and consideration could be given to conquering the North.
In 48, the Decangi of North Wales were subdued by Ostorius Scapula, who succeeded Aulus Plautius as Governor of Britain, and this helped split the Southern British Tribes from the Northern. The military policy was the standard brutal one of razing hill fort strongholds to the ground and generally massacring their inhabitants. This is not to say that British resistance did not continue for a while yet regardless of Roman ruthlessness. The Romans, having forced Caratacus out of Eastern Britain, founded their own Camulodonum (later Colchester), the first Roman town and arguably the first town in Britain, where Celtic Camulodonum once stood, and made it their capital. Londinium (London) was founded a year later and Verulamium the year after that. Caratacus had maintained the tribal confederation based in Celtic Camulodonum for a while but had then moved his base of operations to Wales, adopting guerrilla tactics, the only way to deal with the application of direct Roman military power if you could not inspire a levee en masse as Boudicca was to do later.
Defeated in battle in 50 at a still unknown location, Caratacus fled to the Brigantes, another confederation of tribes, in North Yorkshire. There, the Brigantian Chief Venutius, married to Cartimandua, prepared for a war of resistance. The story is worthy of a soap opera. His Queen Cartimandua seems to have found a new lover and a struggle for power had ensued. Cartimandua was inclined to the Roman cause (we are finding here a common pattern of internal tribal rivalries being expressed in terms of resistance or acceptance of Roman rule much as France was divided after 1940). Venutius seems to have taken up the cause of resistance more as a result of his wife's position than because he started out in a liberatory frame of mind. The upshot was that Cartimandua simply handed Caratacus over to the Romans. He was carted off to Rome as a prisoner where he was pardoned by Claudius, no doubt to ease the process by which the Southern British aristocracy would come to terms with Roman rule.
This pardon appeared to settle the matter of Roman control of Southern Britain for the while but the occupation was not all plain sailing. By the time of the fourth Governor, Quintus Veranius [57-58], orders had been given to go further and conquer the whole island. Although he died within a year, Quintus Veranius appears to have done a great deal to create the conditions for the conquest of Wales, a process continued by his successor against fierce resistance, notably by the Silures in South-Eastern Wales who were not subdued until the 70s. The point when war in this area was replaced with occupation might be set as the founding of Isca (Caerleon) in 75. Wales took a long time to deal with partly because initial campaigning had to be brought to a halt as troops were recalled to deal with a significant revolt in Eastern Britain.
The East British revolt of Queen Boudicca of the Iceni, in alliance with the Trinovantes (60-62AD) meant the sack of the new towns Camulodonum, Verulamium and Londinium with many thousands of death in each but she was eventually defeated in a battle at an unknown site near Watling Street. Boudicca committed suicide by poison. The slaughter had made the Emperor Nero consider withdrawing from Britain altogether but the victory, which demonstrated Roman military superiority against very much greater numbers, drove Rome to push even harder to suppress dissent and romanise the province. The Brigantes, now under Venutius, then became resistant to Rome. This was really little more than a family spat in which Venutius managed to throw out Cartimandua in 69 (interestingly, at the end of the chaotic year of the Four Emperors in Rome when perhaps some British aristocrats started to wobble over the viability of the Roman project). She promptly appealed to the Romans for assistance in winning back her throne. Whether they restored her or not, the Romans decided to deal with Venutius in battle, which they won of course, but the Brigantes themselves were not subdued for some years.
This is no simple picture of military might sweeping all before it in a few quick campaigns but something more like dogged attrition in which brute legionary force was used alongside diplomatic intrigue and probably bribery, with setbacks, to bring the valuable province into the Roman fold. The very fact that the murder of the citizens of the three first colonial towns of Britain led to considerations of withdrawal suggests that Rome was not always sure of its ground and that the benefits of its minerals and agricultural production could be offset by the huge cost of maintaining order over a rag-bag of squabbling tribes. Nevertheless, by the time that Gnaeus Julius Agricola became Governor in Britain in 77, some sense of order had returned, Rome was on its way to final uncontested occupation of South Britain and consideration could be given to conquering the North.
1-44AD: The Romans Invade
As the new millennium opens, the Romans are yet to invade but the
South Britons continue internal manouevring as if their world would
survive regardless of intentions in Rome. Addedomarus, Chief of the
Trinovantes, is succeeded by Dubnovelaunus while Tasciovanus, Chief of
the Catuvellauni, is succeeeded by Cunobeline (Shakespeare's Cymbeline).
The latter captured Camulodunum in or around AD9. From there, he ruled
over the bulk of the Belgae in the South East as an independent
tributary of Rome. He or one of his sons, Adminius, then went on to
expel Eppillus from Kent in AD20. Cunobeline, the nearest thing that
South Britain has had to a unifying force, dies some time before AD43
and is succeeded by two sons, Togodumbnus and Caratacus.
This dynasty is the proximate cause of the invasion. There is a ridiculous performance in 41AD when the deranged Caligula accepts the homage of Adminius, forced into exile from Kent by his father for reasons unknown, as the homage of all Britain and has his legions collect sea shells on a Gallic beach (although the source of the story, Suetonius, is not exactly reliable and is prone to propaganda at the expense of unpopular Emperors). However Caligula (in fact, the Emperor Gaius) was soon ousted in a military and court coup that same year. He is replaced with his uncle Claudius. Caratacus, with exquisitely poor timing, misread the situation in Rome as one of weakness. This was, after all, only three decades after the crushing Roman defeat in the Teutoberg Forest (AD9) which had seemed to encourage barbarian state builders to misinterpret the situation then and for some time to come.
Caratacus decided to depose Verica, Chief of the Atrebates, and a significant Roman ally. Claudius and his circle must have seen this as a provocation at a time when Rome needed to assert its authority after the failures of Caligula. Claudius ordered a full-scale invasion by Aulus Plautius in AD43. Cunobeline had got away with ousting the Trinovantes, also a Roman ally, in AD9 in the wake of the Teutoberg disaster but he had been swift to rebuild relations with Rome and become a tributary. It is possible that Caratacus thought he could perform the same trick a quarter of a century later and so establish his position as Chief of Chiefs. What he clearly did not understand was that political conditions in Rome now demanded decisive action to ensure the legitimacy of the new Emperor. The fact that eleven tribal chiefs immediately allied with Rome when the legions landed suggests that a very large number of British aristocrats considered a Catuvellauni Capo di Tutti Capi to be more oppressive than the foreign invaders and believed that the Romans would probably guarantee their 'rights'.
Those committed to resistance undertook a major wave of hill fort refortification. No doubt those not committed to resistance also thought it advisable to review their defences in what might become general mayhem as tribe fell on tribe because of their differing allegiances. Under Aulus Plautius, Vespasian (later to become not only Emperor but eventual conqueror of the Jews in the Great Jewish War of AD66-60) undertook a year of campaigning, systematically reducing the hillforts of a stretch of country from Hampshire through to Cornwall. Some 20 oppida were taken. The General eventually arrived at Isca Dumnoniorum (Exter) having secured the vital line of South Coast ports essential to securing trade. Many of these assaults appear to have been captured in the archaeological record.
The response of the defending Britons was to create a grand confederacy of the Catuvellauni, Trinovantes and Cantiaci, moving their headquarters to the more defensible Camulodunum from Verulamium (St. Albans). This proved to be a 'last stand' around which the Romans simply flowed.
Although the significant political struggle is taking
place in the South, iron age culture continued to flourish in North
Britain. Although the Broch of Mousa in Shetland dates from around a
century before these events, it is the best preserved of the 571 or so
identified broch structures in the far north of Scotland that were being
built not only in the first century BC but in the first century AD. One
might assume that instability had become endemic across the island but
archaeologists seem to be increasingly dismissive of the idea that these
structures were merely or even primarily defensive.
Note
[1] Source: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=4687 (Thorgrim)
[2] Source: http://www.walkshetland.com/mousa-circular.php
 |
| Lexden Tumulus (Colchester [Camulodunum], said to be the burial place of Chief Addedomarus of the Trinovantes (For Source - see Note 1) |
This dynasty is the proximate cause of the invasion. There is a ridiculous performance in 41AD when the deranged Caligula accepts the homage of Adminius, forced into exile from Kent by his father for reasons unknown, as the homage of all Britain and has his legions collect sea shells on a Gallic beach (although the source of the story, Suetonius, is not exactly reliable and is prone to propaganda at the expense of unpopular Emperors). However Caligula (in fact, the Emperor Gaius) was soon ousted in a military and court coup that same year. He is replaced with his uncle Claudius. Caratacus, with exquisitely poor timing, misread the situation in Rome as one of weakness. This was, after all, only three decades after the crushing Roman defeat in the Teutoberg Forest (AD9) which had seemed to encourage barbarian state builders to misinterpret the situation then and for some time to come.
Caratacus decided to depose Verica, Chief of the Atrebates, and a significant Roman ally. Claudius and his circle must have seen this as a provocation at a time when Rome needed to assert its authority after the failures of Caligula. Claudius ordered a full-scale invasion by Aulus Plautius in AD43. Cunobeline had got away with ousting the Trinovantes, also a Roman ally, in AD9 in the wake of the Teutoberg disaster but he had been swift to rebuild relations with Rome and become a tributary. It is possible that Caratacus thought he could perform the same trick a quarter of a century later and so establish his position as Chief of Chiefs. What he clearly did not understand was that political conditions in Rome now demanded decisive action to ensure the legitimacy of the new Emperor. The fact that eleven tribal chiefs immediately allied with Rome when the legions landed suggests that a very large number of British aristocrats considered a Catuvellauni Capo di Tutti Capi to be more oppressive than the foreign invaders and believed that the Romans would probably guarantee their 'rights'.
Those committed to resistance undertook a major wave of hill fort refortification. No doubt those not committed to resistance also thought it advisable to review their defences in what might become general mayhem as tribe fell on tribe because of their differing allegiances. Under Aulus Plautius, Vespasian (later to become not only Emperor but eventual conqueror of the Jews in the Great Jewish War of AD66-60) undertook a year of campaigning, systematically reducing the hillforts of a stretch of country from Hampshire through to Cornwall. Some 20 oppida were taken. The General eventually arrived at Isca Dumnoniorum (Exter) having secured the vital line of South Coast ports essential to securing trade. Many of these assaults appear to have been captured in the archaeological record.
The response of the defending Britons was to create a grand confederacy of the Catuvellauni, Trinovantes and Cantiaci, moving their headquarters to the more defensible Camulodunum from Verulamium (St. Albans). This proved to be a 'last stand' around which the Romans simply flowed.
 |
| Broch of Mousa (Source:See Note 2 ) |
Note
[1] Source: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=4687 (Thorgrim)
[2] Source: http://www.walkshetland.com/mousa-circular.php
325BC-1AD: The Roman Vultures Circle
By the time Pytheas was writing his account of his travels, Iron Age
Britain had evolved into a fairly coherent network of agricultural
communities linked to the Continent through trade and social
connections. This culture, based on tribe and kin, has historically been
called Celtic. It extended across the hinterland of the Graeco-Roman
urban, merchant and slave plantation civilisation to the south, itself
slowly becoming urbanised.
The sort of acquisitive movements that have happened elsewhere in such extended imperial hinterlands emerge no less in this zone. Those who can accumulate capital nearer the Imperium begin to move outwards to seize assets, not perhaps realising that the Imperium itself will do much the same to them in due course. There were certainly trading and ethnic movements bringing the continental Belgae into South Eastern Britain around 150BC. These soon came to dominate what is now Kent, Surrey and the Thames Valley - and not only there. The precise ethnic type of the Belgae is unclear but they were not quite Gallic Celts and had some affinity with the Germans to the East. Modern ethnographies may be next to useless at this point - what we see are peoples on a broad 'Indo-European' continuum in terms of language, physical characteristics, technology and social organisation who probably self-identified as tribes and tribal confederacies but not as nations as we understand the concept. By this time, the British Isles are part of that European continuum of peoples, drawn ever more closely into the standard model of a mobile and volatile aristocratic 'barbarian' hinterland to the administratively, commercially and militarily more sophisticated Roman Republic.
Other such imperial hinterlands have quickly descended into competitive tribal warfare. There was no reason why the British Isles should have been the exception. There seems to be a pattern of native refortification of hill forts either to counter incursions by the Belgic warrior aristocracies from Europe or to deal with increased competition from neighbouring indigenous tribes. The mounting anarchy would have been of interest and concern to the Romans as they took more of an interest in the north. After all, Gallic tribes had once been disruptive enough to take their chances on invasions of Italy itself. Germans tribes would later take their chances in turn as Rome weakened. Self defence would suggest eventual Roman engagement in halting or managing any state formation of consequence in the Celtic zone. A 'Shaka' (the Zulu warrior-king) emergent among the Celts could have been seriously problematic and dangerous even for the militarily superior Rome.
This is the context for Julius Caesar's reconnaissance expedition from newly conquered Gaul in 55BC. The Celtic zone, effectively a subsidiary of Rome through trading links for quite some time, had just been incorporated into the Empire. Caesar was testing the water on acquiring the South Eastern British element that was integrated into it with its holdings of prime agricultural production. The reconaissance was sufficiently useful to encourage a second Expedition in 54BC with 800 ships (transport and traders), five legions and 2,000 cavalry. As in Gaul, Caesar faced a defensive resistance under the probably Belgic Cassivellaunus (Cassiuellaunos), Chief of the Catuvellauni, who headed a confederate indigenous force whose structure would probably be familiar to historians of the Frontier Wars of the United States. Caesar crossed the Thames into Catuvellaunian territory, allegedly using an armoured elephant to strike terror into the crossing defenders. Cassivellaunus had adopted defensive guerrilla tactics against superior military forces but that same superiority resulted in tribes detaching themselves from the confederacy, notably the Trinovantes who appeared to fear Cassivellaunus far more than Caesar.
The peace treaty was a no-score draw. Rome demonstrated its awesome potential and the Belgae and their allies were certainly given pause for thought though not actually crushed into compliance. It is almost as if Caesar got bored. There were certainly bigger fish to fry at home. South Britain was sideshow: he did not occupy it but he made it clear that the Belgae would be very foolish if they tried to reverse the occupation of Gaul. They took the lesson and the next century is one of manouevring by Britons, variously to avoid a further intervention, prepare for an intervention and (in some cases) establish terms to profit from an intervention when it came. Given the anarchic confederal nature of iron age culture, the lack of unity of purpose would mean that Southern Britain would be a fruit ripe for the taking when the Romans decided that the area had become prosperous enough to pay for its own invasion and occupation. The problem for the South British aristocrats was that its own increasing prosperity under the shadow of the Imperium provided the cause for its own doom as a network of independent aristocratic farming cultures.
In Rome itself, major changes took place. We have spoken of Empire but Rome was technically still a Republic when Caesar invaded, albeit one increasingly run by competing warlords struggling to control the centre in order to profit from the periphery. Caesar was murdered [44BC] in the struggle for power by Roman traditionalists but the upshot was the emergence of Octavian (Augustus), adopted son of Caesar, who became Emperor [55BC] and instituted a disciplined and well-organised polity based on effective military power. Once Roman matters were settled, the occupation of Britain became one of those issues that was now permanently on the Roman state agenda even if nothing decisive was to happen for seventy years after Augustus' seizure of power.
We cannot know the detail of pre-invasion politics but it seems that the Romans invested in local allies, standard practice when Empires want to soften up potential invasion targets, and that resistance factions may have emerged to counter that influence. After all, Washington undertakes similar operations today in maintaining its sphere of influence and is equally faced by elements that oppose it in much the same way as British 'patriots' might have done. One such Roman ally was probably Tincomarus, Chief of the Atrebates [20-8BC], who was developing a Belgic proto-state with strong continental links. He was deposed in an internal coup and fled to Rome. It is possible that Augustus contemplated the ejection of his ally as a 'casus belli' for another invasion but decided better of it. In the event, there was a settlement and Trincomarus' brother, Eppillus, was recognised as Rex (King). The crisis passed for the moment. In AD1 Eppillus was (possibly) deposed, took refuge in Kent and was succeeded by another brother Verica but these shifts may have been perfectly peaceable and simply be a matter of the Cantiaci choosing a figure with Roman contacts as their King.
The disunity amongst the Britons is the fact that stands out during this period. A proto-State, such as it may be, was always going to be scarcely bigger than two or three modern British counties in extent. Warfare for local advantage was endemic. If South Britain was ever to be a unified state that could give Rome a run for its money, then it was on borrowed time. The time available was not used wisely in the near-century that intervened between invasions. A typical bout of warfare would be that between the Catuvellauni, led by Tasciovanus and the Trinovantes in Eastern Britain. These two tribes were in a constant state of rivalry and the Trinovantes had walked out on the confederation against the Romans in 55BC. They probably considered themselves ultimately under the protection of Rome. In AD8, the Catuvellauni captured control of Camulodunum (Colchester), the capital of the Trinovantes, subsequently recaptured in AD6 by Addedomarus, 'King' of the Trinovantes. As we will see, these struggles involving different tribes in their relationships with each other and with Rome, and which remain obscure, suggest two countervailing trends - that Rome's very existence was a destabilising force amongst the Belgae and that the power struggles were a path towards creating a proto-State that could both engage with Rome as ally and deter it from outright occupation. The natural candidate for primacy was the Catuvellauni but they were in a race against time. Yet their success might provoke what they and others were trying to anticipate and avoid.
The sort of acquisitive movements that have happened elsewhere in such extended imperial hinterlands emerge no less in this zone. Those who can accumulate capital nearer the Imperium begin to move outwards to seize assets, not perhaps realising that the Imperium itself will do much the same to them in due course. There were certainly trading and ethnic movements bringing the continental Belgae into South Eastern Britain around 150BC. These soon came to dominate what is now Kent, Surrey and the Thames Valley - and not only there. The precise ethnic type of the Belgae is unclear but they were not quite Gallic Celts and had some affinity with the Germans to the East. Modern ethnographies may be next to useless at this point - what we see are peoples on a broad 'Indo-European' continuum in terms of language, physical characteristics, technology and social organisation who probably self-identified as tribes and tribal confederacies but not as nations as we understand the concept. By this time, the British Isles are part of that European continuum of peoples, drawn ever more closely into the standard model of a mobile and volatile aristocratic 'barbarian' hinterland to the administratively, commercially and militarily more sophisticated Roman Republic.
Other such imperial hinterlands have quickly descended into competitive tribal warfare. There was no reason why the British Isles should have been the exception. There seems to be a pattern of native refortification of hill forts either to counter incursions by the Belgic warrior aristocracies from Europe or to deal with increased competition from neighbouring indigenous tribes. The mounting anarchy would have been of interest and concern to the Romans as they took more of an interest in the north. After all, Gallic tribes had once been disruptive enough to take their chances on invasions of Italy itself. Germans tribes would later take their chances in turn as Rome weakened. Self defence would suggest eventual Roman engagement in halting or managing any state formation of consequence in the Celtic zone. A 'Shaka' (the Zulu warrior-king) emergent among the Celts could have been seriously problematic and dangerous even for the militarily superior Rome.
This is the context for Julius Caesar's reconnaissance expedition from newly conquered Gaul in 55BC. The Celtic zone, effectively a subsidiary of Rome through trading links for quite some time, had just been incorporated into the Empire. Caesar was testing the water on acquiring the South Eastern British element that was integrated into it with its holdings of prime agricultural production. The reconaissance was sufficiently useful to encourage a second Expedition in 54BC with 800 ships (transport and traders), five legions and 2,000 cavalry. As in Gaul, Caesar faced a defensive resistance under the probably Belgic Cassivellaunus (Cassiuellaunos), Chief of the Catuvellauni, who headed a confederate indigenous force whose structure would probably be familiar to historians of the Frontier Wars of the United States. Caesar crossed the Thames into Catuvellaunian territory, allegedly using an armoured elephant to strike terror into the crossing defenders. Cassivellaunus had adopted defensive guerrilla tactics against superior military forces but that same superiority resulted in tribes detaching themselves from the confederacy, notably the Trinovantes who appeared to fear Cassivellaunus far more than Caesar.
The peace treaty was a no-score draw. Rome demonstrated its awesome potential and the Belgae and their allies were certainly given pause for thought though not actually crushed into compliance. It is almost as if Caesar got bored. There were certainly bigger fish to fry at home. South Britain was sideshow: he did not occupy it but he made it clear that the Belgae would be very foolish if they tried to reverse the occupation of Gaul. They took the lesson and the next century is one of manouevring by Britons, variously to avoid a further intervention, prepare for an intervention and (in some cases) establish terms to profit from an intervention when it came. Given the anarchic confederal nature of iron age culture, the lack of unity of purpose would mean that Southern Britain would be a fruit ripe for the taking when the Romans decided that the area had become prosperous enough to pay for its own invasion and occupation. The problem for the South British aristocrats was that its own increasing prosperity under the shadow of the Imperium provided the cause for its own doom as a network of independent aristocratic farming cultures.
In Rome itself, major changes took place. We have spoken of Empire but Rome was technically still a Republic when Caesar invaded, albeit one increasingly run by competing warlords struggling to control the centre in order to profit from the periphery. Caesar was murdered [44BC] in the struggle for power by Roman traditionalists but the upshot was the emergence of Octavian (Augustus), adopted son of Caesar, who became Emperor [55BC] and instituted a disciplined and well-organised polity based on effective military power. Once Roman matters were settled, the occupation of Britain became one of those issues that was now permanently on the Roman state agenda even if nothing decisive was to happen for seventy years after Augustus' seizure of power.
We cannot know the detail of pre-invasion politics but it seems that the Romans invested in local allies, standard practice when Empires want to soften up potential invasion targets, and that resistance factions may have emerged to counter that influence. After all, Washington undertakes similar operations today in maintaining its sphere of influence and is equally faced by elements that oppose it in much the same way as British 'patriots' might have done. One such Roman ally was probably Tincomarus, Chief of the Atrebates [20-8BC], who was developing a Belgic proto-state with strong continental links. He was deposed in an internal coup and fled to Rome. It is possible that Augustus contemplated the ejection of his ally as a 'casus belli' for another invasion but decided better of it. In the event, there was a settlement and Trincomarus' brother, Eppillus, was recognised as Rex (King). The crisis passed for the moment. In AD1 Eppillus was (possibly) deposed, took refuge in Kent and was succeeded by another brother Verica but these shifts may have been perfectly peaceable and simply be a matter of the Cantiaci choosing a figure with Roman contacts as their King.
The disunity amongst the Britons is the fact that stands out during this period. A proto-State, such as it may be, was always going to be scarcely bigger than two or three modern British counties in extent. Warfare for local advantage was endemic. If South Britain was ever to be a unified state that could give Rome a run for its money, then it was on borrowed time. The time available was not used wisely in the near-century that intervened between invasions. A typical bout of warfare would be that between the Catuvellauni, led by Tasciovanus and the Trinovantes in Eastern Britain. These two tribes were in a constant state of rivalry and the Trinovantes had walked out on the confederation against the Romans in 55BC. They probably considered themselves ultimately under the protection of Rome. In AD8, the Catuvellauni captured control of Camulodunum (Colchester), the capital of the Trinovantes, subsequently recaptured in AD6 by Addedomarus, 'King' of the Trinovantes. As we will see, these struggles involving different tribes in their relationships with each other and with Rome, and which remain obscure, suggest two countervailing trends - that Rome's very existence was a destabilising force amongst the Belgae and that the power struggles were a path towards creating a proto-State that could both engage with Rome as ally and deter it from outright occupation. The natural candidate for primacy was the Catuvellauni but they were in a race against time. Yet their success might provoke what they and others were trying to anticipate and avoid.
4,500 Years Ago to 325BC: High Culture & Tribalism
The dominant form of cultural centre was, however, the henge which is
found all over Britain from Scotland to Wessex and which is generally
regarded as a local development of the causewayed enclosure. These were
in use right through the neolithic and into the subsequent bronze and
iron ages.
In the later two ages (from roughly 3,000 years ago) we see the rise of the hill fort which is a European-wide phenomenon and definitely has defensive characteristics which henges do not. The hill forts are believed to indicate significant population increase - most iron age settlements were of about 50 people but the hill forts could have populations of up to 1,000 and, as we move into the Roman period, the oppida that derived from them and were situated primarily within the trading zone between 'Celts' and Romans could reach 10,000 persons (though these would tend to develop more readily on the European Continent).
If Stonehenge appears to decline in importance during the iron age, another ritual centre of European importance emerged 3,500 years ago during the neolithic at Flag Fen near Peterborough. It lasted for nearly a millennium as the (so far as we can know anything about the period)) primary bronze age site. The site is still under archaeological investigation but is significant because the ritual structures seem to have involved the importation of material (wood in this case) from a distance, much as we have seen in the Stonehenge case. This is hard to interpret but the labour involved suggests a form of conspicuous consumption based on concentrated wealth and a strong belief system.
This is the point at which history arrives. After nine and a half thousand years of development that can only be studied through the archaeological record and with much speculation based on modern anthropological analogies, a text finally refers to the Pretanic Islands. Around 325BC, a Massilian (Marseilles) trader and explorer Pytheas allegedly circumnavigated Britain and reached the polar ice of the Arctic (he undoubtedly visited Britain, though probably not Ireland, whatever the other claims). He described the islands and something of its iron age culture in a now lost work, although the reference has remained on the record because of the respect in which the text was held in the Ancient World. Interestingly, Catalyst, the left wing think tank with which we were once involved in as co-founders, suggested in 1999 using the term Pretanic once again to help get the United Kingdom out of the log jam of post-imperial British identity. The idea did not capture the imagination of the Blairite Government.
Notes
(1) "Thornborough Henge" by Tony Newbould. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thornborough_Henge.jpg#/media/File:Thornborough_Henge.jpg
(2) "Aerial photograph of Maiden Castle, 1935" by Major George Allen (1891–1940) - Ashmolean Museum. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial_photograph_of_Maiden_Castle,_1935.jpg#/media/File:Aerial_photograph_of_Maiden_Castle,_1935.jpg
 |
| The Thornborough Henges Complex - three henges can be identified (For Source - see Note 1) |
In the later two ages (from roughly 3,000 years ago) we see the rise of the hill fort which is a European-wide phenomenon and definitely has defensive characteristics which henges do not. The hill forts are believed to indicate significant population increase - most iron age settlements were of about 50 people but the hill forts could have populations of up to 1,000 and, as we move into the Roman period, the oppida that derived from them and were situated primarily within the trading zone between 'Celts' and Romans could reach 10,000 persons (though these would tend to develop more readily on the European Continent).
 |
| Maiden Castle - Photographed in 1935 from the air (For Source - see Note 2) |
If Stonehenge appears to decline in importance during the iron age, another ritual centre of European importance emerged 3,500 years ago during the neolithic at Flag Fen near Peterborough. It lasted for nearly a millennium as the (so far as we can know anything about the period)) primary bronze age site. The site is still under archaeological investigation but is significant because the ritual structures seem to have involved the importation of material (wood in this case) from a distance, much as we have seen in the Stonehenge case. This is hard to interpret but the labour involved suggests a form of conspicuous consumption based on concentrated wealth and a strong belief system.
This is the point at which history arrives. After nine and a half thousand years of development that can only be studied through the archaeological record and with much speculation based on modern anthropological analogies, a text finally refers to the Pretanic Islands. Around 325BC, a Massilian (Marseilles) trader and explorer Pytheas allegedly circumnavigated Britain and reached the polar ice of the Arctic (he undoubtedly visited Britain, though probably not Ireland, whatever the other claims). He described the islands and something of its iron age culture in a now lost work, although the reference has remained on the record because of the respect in which the text was held in the Ancient World. Interestingly, Catalyst, the left wing think tank with which we were once involved in as co-founders, suggested in 1999 using the term Pretanic once again to help get the United Kingdom out of the log jam of post-imperial British identity. The idea did not capture the imagination of the Blairite Government.
Notes
(1) "Thornborough Henge" by Tony Newbould. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thornborough_Henge.jpg#/media/File:Thornborough_Henge.jpg
(2) "Aerial photograph of Maiden Castle, 1935" by Major George Allen (1891–1940) - Ashmolean Museum. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial_photograph_of_Maiden_Castle,_1935.jpg#/media/File:Aerial_photograph_of_Maiden_Castle,_1935.jpg
10,000 to 4,500 Years Ago: The Beginnings
History strictly starts when things are written down yet nothing is
written down about the British Isles until overseas invaders and traders
start noticing the place. What we know about the past before that comes
from things dug out of the ground and then theorised about.
Of course, 'history' in the prehistorical sense of what we can tell from the dug up things and from the theory never actually starts as such, or at least, if it started, it started with the Big Bang. Who knows if that was indeed a start or just another event succeeding events of which we can know nothing.
A good place for us to start though is when the British Isles becomes a number of islands disconnected from the Continent of Europe. Although using boats means that no island so close to a continent is isolated, nevertheless, the relatively large size of the main two islands and the gap between them and Europe of just over twenty miles at its narrowest point (the Strait of Dover) means that a distinctive culture of set of cultures was bound to appear.
You can tell about past climates from geology. When glaciers melt, they leave behind them a till of sands and gravels. Hot deserts can leave behind rocks coloured red from iron deposits. Hot climates evaporate sea water and leave behind them salts. Thus it is that we know that ten thousand years ago our last set of glaciers, part of a series that may yet return despite 'climate change', started to recede with a warming climate. The sea (though still below levels today and still permitting a land connection until eight thousand five hundred years ago) started to rise rapidly (comparatively).
To the right is a hypothetical map of what the area
might have looked like at ten thousand years ago with the North Sea area
now generally given the name of Doggerland.
One of the central sites of British civilisation is Stonehenge and it is roughly as early as this that the site has several pine 'totem poles' that served some purpose, presumably ritual, for hunter-gatherers (termed Mesolithic). There is no necessary link to the later ritual use of the site.
Doggerland was flooded and the British Isles finally separated from the Continent around eight and half thousand years ago or at least only a few centuries later. Agriculture, no doubt as a form of 'slash and burn' clearing the forest which dominated the countryside, began around six thousand eight hundred years ago. This begins the Neolithic - the period of predominantly settled agriculture.
The primary tool of the Neolithic was flint. We know of around 14 flint mines of which the earliest, possibly the earliest in Europe, is found (to our current knowledge) on the South Downs above Worthing in Sussex dated to around six thousand years ago. This industry would later evolve into (by the standards of the time) a major production effort at Grime's Grave in Norfolk from 5,000 years ago, at a site probably still producing flint into the Iron Age - flint would still be cheaper than bronze and iron during its earliest phase of development - although its major period of use was in its first millennium.
The first major fixed structures start appearing soon after this. An ancient causeway, the Sweet Track, appears across the Somerset Levels. It had been built over an even earlier timber track way. Traces of another earlier timber causeway have been found at Plumstead, making these the oldest timber trackways in Northern Europe. Underneath the Iron Age hill fort at Maiden Castle in Dorset, there is an 8 hectare neolithic causewayed enclosure on the eastern part of the hill that appears two or three hundred years after the timber trackways elsewhere so we have a culture emerging with sufficient organisation to create small settlements.
This brings us back to Stonehenge whose first (of several iterations) is an earth circle (see right) with an outer ditch made of chalk and standing on slightly sloping open grassland (built around 5,200
years ago). Archaeologists have estimated that 4,000 people may have met at mid-winter and mid-summer solstice dates, based on animal bones being consistently nine and fifteen months after spring birth. Isotope analysis has shown that some of the animals came from as far as the Scottish Highland suggesting island-wide trading networks at least and some sense of 'national' community at speculative most.
At the other end of the country, in Orkney, a
complex of neolithic settlements had developed even before Stonehenge I.
One village of eight stone settlements at Skara Brae (see left)
survives today as Europe's most complete neolithic village. Two other
monumental sites close this early stage period for a fairly
sophisticated farming, livestock and trading culture, Silbury Hill (see left below top),
an artificial chalk mound that is the tallest prehistoric human made
mound in Europe, was created around 3,700 BC and nearby Avebury was
built around 3,600 years ago, both in the same general region of
Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Avebury (see right below) is a henge (a
ring bank with the ditch inside the bank rather than outside the
monument which immediately suggests some use other than defence) that
contains three stone circles.
Bringing all this together, we have, four and a half thousand years ago, a very advanced culture by the standards of the era that seems to be communicating across the whole island and has the resources to build settlements and monuments, some of which appear to exceed anything being done elsewhere in Europe at the time.
Of course, 'history' in the prehistorical sense of what we can tell from the dug up things and from the theory never actually starts as such, or at least, if it started, it started with the Big Bang. Who knows if that was indeed a start or just another event succeeding events of which we can know nothing.
A good place for us to start though is when the British Isles becomes a number of islands disconnected from the Continent of Europe. Although using boats means that no island so close to a continent is isolated, nevertheless, the relatively large size of the main two islands and the gap between them and Europe of just over twenty miles at its narrowest point (the Strait of Dover) means that a distinctive culture of set of cultures was bound to appear.
You can tell about past climates from geology. When glaciers melt, they leave behind them a till of sands and gravels. Hot deserts can leave behind rocks coloured red from iron deposits. Hot climates evaporate sea water and leave behind them salts. Thus it is that we know that ten thousand years ago our last set of glaciers, part of a series that may yet return despite 'climate change', started to recede with a warming climate. The sea (though still below levels today and still permitting a land connection until eight thousand five hundred years ago) started to rise rapidly (comparatively).
 |
| (Source: Wikipedia) |
One of the central sites of British civilisation is Stonehenge and it is roughly as early as this that the site has several pine 'totem poles' that served some purpose, presumably ritual, for hunter-gatherers (termed Mesolithic). There is no necessary link to the later ritual use of the site.
Doggerland was flooded and the British Isles finally separated from the Continent around eight and half thousand years ago or at least only a few centuries later. Agriculture, no doubt as a form of 'slash and burn' clearing the forest which dominated the countryside, began around six thousand eight hundred years ago. This begins the Neolithic - the period of predominantly settled agriculture.
The primary tool of the Neolithic was flint. We know of around 14 flint mines of which the earliest, possibly the earliest in Europe, is found (to our current knowledge) on the South Downs above Worthing in Sussex dated to around six thousand years ago. This industry would later evolve into (by the standards of the time) a major production effort at Grime's Grave in Norfolk from 5,000 years ago, at a site probably still producing flint into the Iron Age - flint would still be cheaper than bronze and iron during its earliest phase of development - although its major period of use was in its first millennium.
The first major fixed structures start appearing soon after this. An ancient causeway, the Sweet Track, appears across the Somerset Levels. It had been built over an even earlier timber track way. Traces of another earlier timber causeway have been found at Plumstead, making these the oldest timber trackways in Northern Europe. Underneath the Iron Age hill fort at Maiden Castle in Dorset, there is an 8 hectare neolithic causewayed enclosure on the eastern part of the hill that appears two or three hundred years after the timber trackways elsewhere so we have a culture emerging with sufficient organisation to create small settlements.
This brings us back to Stonehenge whose first (of several iterations) is an earth circle (see right) with an outer ditch made of chalk and standing on slightly sloping open grassland (built around 5,200 years ago). Archaeologists have estimated that 4,000 people may have met at mid-winter and mid-summer solstice dates, based on animal bones being consistently nine and fifteen months after spring birth. Isotope analysis has shown that some of the animals came from as far as the Scottish Highland suggesting island-wide trading networks at least and some sense of 'national' community at speculative most.
 |
| (Source - www.orkneyjar.com) |
 |
| (Source - Wikipedia) |
 |
| (Source - www.stone-circles.org.uk) |
Bringing all this together, we have, four and a half thousand years ago, a very advanced culture by the standards of the era that seems to be communicating across the whole island and has the resources to build settlements and monuments, some of which appear to exceed anything being done elsewhere in Europe at the time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)