An Imperial Possession: Britain In The Roman Empire, 54bc - Ad409

[M. Porcius Cato]

Peter Jones writes a review of David Mattingly's "An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54BC - AD409" in this issue's Literary Review.

 

The full review can be read here.

 

Brief excerpt:

Plunderers of the world, they have exhausted the land and now ransack the sea. Enemy wealth excites their greed, enemy poverty their lust for power

[WotWotius]

I recently read an article by David Mattingly in the BBC History Magazine on the Roman presence in Britain. He argued that civilization in Roman Britain was less luxurious and more oppressive than it was later epitomised as:

 

'For the majority, the benefits of Roman rule were less tangible than the conventional archaeological presentation of Roman Britain would suggest. The large size of the military garrison exacted a high price on civilian communities in all parts of the island and this continued for generation after generation. The slow development and early decline of towns (and limited extension of know area of civil local government in southern Britain) is hardly a resounding success story...Britannia was an expensive province and one with a distinctly military and financially exploited character...'

[M. Porcius Cato]

I don't doubt that life in Britain was tough under the Romans, but the review makes two subtle but important points. First, everywhere else in the Roman world, the military administrators were much harder to live with than the civilian ones, so there's no reason to doubt that this was the case in Britain too. Second, the archaelological evidence in Britain has been coming much more from excavations of military than urban sites in recent years. Thus, the modern picture of life in Britain tends to be biased against the Romans more so than life in other provinces.

 

Obviously, it could still be that the Romans were harsher in Britain than anywhere else, but it's also possible that it was the same kind of territory as any other.

[WotWotius]

The article I read additionally mentioned that even after large-scale resistance in the province had been quelled, Rome still had a domineering military presence in the area.

[DecimusCaesar]

Life was harsher in Roman Britain due to the fact that most of the country remained under military control for the entire period, for instance if you look at areas such as Northern Britain, Wales, Cornwall and so on there is a lack of Roman civilian infastructure but a lot of Military buildings. Although life must have been good to the Britons who lived in Southern Britain and some other urban areas, with their baths; entertainment facilities; grand temples and heated villas; for the rural population all the Romans brought must have been the studded hob-nailled boot of the soldiers.

 

That is unless further archaeological discoveries in these poorer areas show signs of grand Roman towns.