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.
