The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[ambrosius]

Hi Vortigern,
Germanic settlers of the 5th and 6th cents. had little interest in towns. They are only of use where there is production, markets and an economic system. They do make sense in the west where there is continued trade with the roman world.

Hi Harry,

I don't agree. Look at what happened in Gaul, where the Goths, Franks and Burgundians had a very keen interest in towns. Read Bachrach's study: Bachrach, Bernard S. (1994): The Anatomy of a Little War, History and Warfare Series, (Oxford) about the strategic role of the civitates of former Roman Gaul.

Yeah, but that Roman Gaul, Robert. For one thing, Gaul retained
its link with the rest of the Empire - especially Rome! - more than
Britain, due to its land-linkage with the rest of the continent. And for
another thing, your talking about the Franks and Burgundians, here.
These may have been Germanic peoples, but they were not Saxons.
As we have seen from the linguistic evidence, the Franks adopted 120
Gallic words (and God knows how many Latin ones) to the Anglo-Saxon
adoption of three Brittonic words. There is a clear difference
between the attitudes of Germanic tribes on the Continent towards
residual Roman culture and the attitude of sea-going Anglo-Saxons
towards insular, Romanized Britons. Perhaps their sea-going nature
had something to do with it, being more akin to that of the Vikings
who followed them than to the thoroughly land-lubbing Burgundians
and Goths.

The towns in post-Roman Britain were no longer real towns. As Mike pointed out in the case of Viroconium [Wroxeter] towns that were defendable functioned more like forts than as towns.

Yeah, but, again: ALL large towns had been defended with
stone walls since the 3rd c. precisely to defend the population from
just the same kind of pirate-raiding as the Saxon Shore Forts were
built to defend against. If you'd like to compare this aspect with life
in Gaul, then you'll see how often those town-defences were needed
to protect the local-population against Saxons, Goths, Huns etc.
Heck, the Gauls even resorted to leaving their low-lying walled-towns
to re-occupy old Iron-Age hillforts and refurbish their dry-stone walled
defences (either in dry-stone or mortared-masonry), as they were
more easily defended against a concerted attack. We see this at sites
like St. Bertrand de Comminges, in South-West France. And don't we
see exactly the same in the British West, at places like the walled-town
of Ilchester, where the administrative centre for the area moves uphill
to the nearby Cadbury Castle? (Guess who may have lived there...) :lol:

So at this time, ALL large towns are built like forts (for very
essential reasons) and all forts probably funtioned, additionally, like
towns, as well. The Anglo-Saxons made no distinction between them
in Britain, of course, calling both towns and Saxon Shore Forts 'castra',
or 'fortresses'. There can have been little - in the non-urbanised Anglo-
Saxon mind - to distinguish between Portchester (as a true Saxon Shore
Fort) and Chichester (the large walled-town just down the coast.

In Britain, most towns had ceased to function as towns in the sense of the word already during Roman times - I think I recall it's Neil Faulkner who made that point: Faulkner, Neil (2000): The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain, (Tempus).

Oh yes. We all know that Faulkner is at one extreme of the continuum
of belief in Romano-British cultural survival into the 5th & 6th c., and
people like Ken Dark are at the other (they don't get on with each
other, by the way). So we can safely take with a pich of salt any points
which Faulkner makes about the functioning of British towns, I think.
He is as much anti-Roman as anyone you're likely to find, you see. 8)

Ambrosius / Mike