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Britannia - The Failed State: Tribal Conflict and the End of Roman Britain
by Stuart Laycock
It shows how tribal conflict was central to the arrival of Roman power in Britain and how tribal identities persisted through the Roman period and were a factor in the three great convulsions that struck Britain during the Roman centuries. It explores how tribal conflicts may have played a major role in the end of Roman Britain, creating a failed state scenario akin in some ways to those seen recently in Bosnia and Iraq, and brought about the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. Finally, it considers how British tribal territories and British tribal conflicts can be understood as the direct predecessors of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and Anglo-Saxon conflicts that form the basis of early English history.
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After Rome: C.400-c.800
Thomas Charles-Edwards (Editor).
The chapters in this volume, each written by a leading scholar of the period, analyse in turn the different nationalities and kingdoms that existed in the British Isles from the end of the Roman empire to the coming of the Vikings, the process of conversion to Christianity, the development of art and of a written culture, and the interaction between this written culture and the societies of the day. Available from:
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Tribal Militias and the End of Roman Rule
Richborough (Rutupiae) Kent
In 383 the British garrison proclaimed the Spaniard Magnus
Maximus, known in Welsh legend as Macsen Wledig, as Emperor in Britain.
He took his army to the continent to advance his claim and conquered Gaul,
Spain and Italy. He occupied Rome itself in 388 only to be defeated in
battle by Theodosius, the eastern Augustus. Maximus was beheaded in July
of that year. Legend has it that many of his surviving troops settled in
Armorica (Brittany). The consequence to Britain was the loss of much of
its defensive force. Gildas, writing in the 6th century, provides a garbled
version which wrongly dated the building of Hadrians Wall to the end of the Roman period:
'Thereafter Britain was robbed of all her armed forces,
her military supplies, her rulers, cruel as they were, her sturdy youth.
They followed in the steps of the usurper mentioned above (Maximus), and
never afterwards returned. Totally ignorant of all the usages of war, Britain
remained for many years groaning in a state of shock, exposed for the first
time to two foreign tribes of extreme cruelty, the Scots from the north-west,
the Picts from the north. As a result of their attacks and terrible depredations
Britain sent envoys to Rome with letters, making tearful appeals for an
armed force to give protection, and promising unwavering and wholehearted
submission to Roman rule, if only the enemy could be kept at a greater
distance. Forgetting previous ills, Rome soon prepared a legion, soundly
equipped with arms. Crossing over Ocean to Britain in ships it engaged
the fierce enemy, and killing a great number drove them all from the place,
freeing from imminent slavery a people that had been subjected to such
dreadful mangling. The Britons were instructed to build a wall across the
island from sea to sea so that when manned it might be a deterrent to keep
away the enemy and a means of protection for the people. The wall, however,
being built not of stone but of turf, proved useless to the unthinking
and leaderless masses.' (, 14-15).
In 396, general Stilicho - regent of the western empire during the minority
of the Augustus Honorius - reorganized Britains remaining defences. This
involved the transfer of military authority from the Roman army to local
British rulers. In the following year he came to Britain to repel another
attack by an alliance of Picts, Irish and Saxons.
In 402 events in mainland Europe forced Stilicho to recall
the Sixth Victrix, one of the two remaining British legions. They were
needed for the defence of Italy against Alarics Visigoths. In "Gothic War"
(416-18) Claudian describes the Sixth Victrix as "the legion set to guard
the furthest Britons, the legion that curbs the savage Scot and scans the
lifeless patterns tattooed on dying Picts". The Sixth Victrix did not return
to Britain as Alaric's incursion was followed by a further, more serious
penetration by Radagaisus in 405.
Stuart Laycock ('Britannia: a failed state?', Current Archaology June 2008)
speculates on the possibility that British militias had been formed along tribal lines in the late
4th century. In fact, he argues that the notion of 'British' hardly existed at the time as the Romans
had built their occupational structures on pre-invasion tribal lines. The tribal militias, he contends,
formed the basis of a new power structure as Roman rule failed.
Pointing to the high level of hoarding of precious metals, particularly in non-coastal areas in the south of England,
Laycock finds it difficult to believe that this had anything to do with Pictish or Anglo-Saxon raids.
Rather, he considers that the combination of hoards, distinctive military belt and buckle ornaments and earthworks
suggest 'hotspots' of tribal conflict among the Britons, including:
- A border area between the Iceni and their neighbours, the Catuvellauni and Trinovantes
- The Upper Thames area where Catuvellauni and Dobunni met
- The west, where Dobunni and Belgae cam into contact
Laycock sees a Balkanisation of eastern Roman Britain with new kingdoms essentially based on pre-invasion
tribal structures and their civitates, along the lines suggested by Gildas for the west. He states that:
'The Anglo-Saxon takeover can be interpreted as new players taking advantage of local weakness to seize control.
Alternatively, the Anglo-Saxon intervention could be seen as an integral part of British tribal conflict. As with the hoards, it has
long been a puzzle why some of the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlements should be so far inland, in the area around
Dorchester-on-Thames. What if the area was a hotspot for the Catuvellauni to locate a band of Anglo-Saxon
mercenaries?'
He notes that:
'... many Britons Britons surely remained and became 'Anglo-Saxon'. Some may even have become
'Anglo-Saxon' kings - the West Saxon leader Cerdic (a British name) is the classic likely example. Continuity from
British civitas to early Anglo-Saxon kingdom is probable in Kent and possible elsewhere. Was early Wessex the
continuation of an Atrebatic political entity? Was Essex ancient Trinovantia? East Anglia the land of the Iceni?'
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The Fall of the Roman Empire : A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
by Peter Heather. The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Rome generated its own nemesis. Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors it called barbarians into an enemy capable of
dismantling the Empire that had dominated their lives for so long.
Heather is a leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians. In The Fall of the Roman Empire, he explores the extraordinary success story that was the Roman Empire and uses a new understanding of its continued strength and enduring limitations to show how Europe's barbarians,
transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled it apart. Available from:
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