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.