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.

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.

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 )

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

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.