Britannia, the Failed State

[Robert Vermaat]

[size=150:2q1iwhv3]A daring view about a time of change[/size]
A review of Stuart Laycock: Britannia - The Failed State: Tribal Conflicts and the End of Roman Britain, The History Press Ltd (2008).
By Robert M. Vermaat



Stuart Laycock: Britannia - The Failed State: Tribal Conflicts and the End of Roman Britain, The History Press Ltd (2008).
Paperback: 256 pages
ISBN-10: 0752446142
ISBN-13: 978-0752446141

The end of Roman rule in the Western empire was not a nice time to be a citizen of that empire. The economy was collapsing in an alarming rate, trade ground to a halt and many lost their source of income. If that was not enough, the climate was changing, forcing farmers to give up marginal fields and pushing the sea inland, forcing the coastal dwellers to flee inland. Wars seemed to be closer than ever, the once-strong Roman military now seemed ever more powerless against barbarian raiders, who were probing inland ever daringly. Or, as a 6th-c. Briton put it: "The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea throws us back on the barbarians: thus two modes of death await us, we are either slain or drowned." And added to that, the few Roman generals seemed to be less concerned with these raiders than with their private attempt for the throne - each supported by such numbers of those same barbarians that the common man was left in doubt by the wayside, oblivious as to whether the passing army that had just flattened his crops belonged to an invading force or to his own failing military.

Amidst this scenario, it can only be seen as logical that one after another, local governments reached the conclusion that they had to start looking after themselves. The civitates or provincial districts of Britain, once the mainstay of governmental rule in Britainslowly began their journey towards independence, a road that would eventually lead to the emergence of early Medieval kingdoms. Towns bricked up most of their gates, restricting access and facilitating defence of the walls. Sometimes towns and settlements down in the valleys were even given up, the people seeking safety in the hills and the cold comfort of resurrected hill forts. Weapons were hoarded, first in defiance of the Roman government, but when the power of Rome fell short, openly until a nucleus was formed of a new power. Finally, the transformation was complete – a town official had changed into a warlord, and his citizens into his Dark Ages army.

The author takes us on a journey that has us visit every step of this development, but in order to understand all the detail behind this process, he takes the reader back to Britannia before the Romans. Because here is where the beginnings lie, the seeds that only grown into sturdy trees after having lain dormant in the soil during the 400-dd years of Roman occupation. Before the Romans came, there were tribes in the island of Britain, the Celtic tribes who twice defied Julius Caesar and held out when most of Europe south of the Rhine and Danube had been conquered by the seemingly invincible legions of Rome. Only generations after Caesar did the Romans return to Britain, conquering it in the decades after their initial landing.

However, even during that conquest the Britons showed their teeth, the Iceni uprising under the now famous queen Boudicca coming close to driving the Romans from the island a third time – who knows how history would have changed if they had succeeded? But they failed, and slowly Britain was pacified, Romanised and changed into a province like every other province that was part of the empire.

Or was it?

Here the author takes us onto a new path, a narrow path that meanders adventurously through the thicket of a forest which at first seemed so very well-known, but which suddenly seems very alien. What if the British tribes did not change into peaceful Roman citizens, Romanised or not? What if they, instead, passed on the tradition of animosity towards their former enemies, now neighbouring Roman civitates, from father to son? Here the Bosnian scenario comes into full play: old grudges, harboured for generations, suddenly bursting into life again whenever the joke of Roman power seems that bit lighter. Some raids may have followed, although the evidence is hard to interpret. At the end of the Roman empirein Britain, it may even seem that the tribes re-emerged into their own right, bearing arms to defend themselves against raider or overeager neighbour.

Personally I may occasionally have lost my way among these dark trees, but it’s worth the reader tracing their own path through this forest, to finally arrive again on a sun-warmed glade. The transition from Roman civitas to post-Roman kingdom, once hidden in a grey mist, now seems so much more clear. Germanic federates, not arriving by the boatloads on the shores, but invited by warring proto-kingdoms, had a much easier task that way, instead of having to fight their way inland at every step. It is not surprising, according to this theory, to find that the geographical border of the emerging Anglo-Saxon kingdoms shared much with both the pre-Roman tribal borders as well as the civitates in-between the two. A form of continuity may well have been the case.

This book is a great read. The reader is challenged with an avalanche of facts spanning the three periods of British history before Medieval times (Celtic, Roman and Anglo-Saxon), and may be forced to re-read a lot of books as a result of this one!

[Paullus Scipio]

Nice review, Robert....damn it ! :evil:

Thanks to the review, I now feel compelled to buy it.... :lol: :lol:

[Robert Vermaat]

Buy it and tell me what you think of it!

[Agraes]

Ordered on amazon!

Thanks Robert :wink:

[Sean Manning]

That sounds interesting. I'll add it to my list of books-to-read, although I don't think I'll have time for it in the next few months.

[Robert Vermaat]

I'll be looking forward to your comments!

[romanonick]

Thank you Robert for a fascinating review. As a student of the late Roman period in north Brittania I'm particularly hoping it's got some coverage of the tribal situation 'up at the Wall'. I'm going to buy it anyway ! Thanks again.
Romanonick/Nick Deacon.

[Arturus Uriconium]

Well written review Robert. It's certainly made my mind up, so off to Amazon I go!

[Robert Vermaat]

Comments please!!

[Arturus Uriconium]

Should be arriving it tomorrow!

[Arturus Uriconium]

I had read articles by Stuart Laycock so had an idea as to what his theories were going to be, especially with his use of comparing to the collapse of Britannia to Yugoslavia and Iraq and the distribution of tribal brooches and buckles, but this book went much further than I imagined. It may be because I have had similar theories of my own, though nowhere near as well researched and thought out, that I found it a compelling read, completing it in two session, but I believe this a must for anyone interested in the history of Roman and post-Roman Britain and the Saxon Advent.

As Robert commented, he does ramble a little at times, especially, I found, when it comes to the brooch and belt distributions, but he does so to reinforce his theories and he can be forgiven. The rest I found well written and argued with a great deal of cross referencing between archaeological and textual material in support. Whilst Laycock may not be the first to theorize about the collapse of Britannia well before 410 and the infighting that ensued, I think he’s the first to combine many of these controversial theories, together with his own, in a narrative way that should satisfy scholar and interested general public alike... not an easy task. It certainly captured me and his arguments make a great deal of sense and challenge many long held views at to just how united Britannia was. Indeed, if it ever was.

However, the book should really be called BRITANNIA: The Failed State (Tribal conflict and the formation of England), as that’s the main thrust towards the end of the book. Laycock does seem to concentrate more on what is now central, eastern and southeastern England and leaves the west to the work of Ken Dark. I found this a little disappointing and would like him to have expanded on Dark’s work or at least reiterated a little more for those who haven’t read his Civitas to Kingdom book... or, more likely, unable to afford it. It is currently £125 at Amazon UK! Likewise I found the ‘Conclusion’ chapter disappointing too as it related more to the closing arguments of the book rather than to the whole.

Never-the-less, I think this an excellent book that should be listed up there with the best. If nothing else, it will start fresh debates on the subject and the revaluation as to the worth of Bede and Gildas as historical sources. Well done Stuart and I look forward to his next book: Warlords: The Struggle for Power in Post-Roman Britain.

[Agraes]

Three months before getting it :evil:
Three days for reading it :twisted:

Ok, I got only the last chapter left. Very interesting so far. However I think it lacks a bit of hypothetis about northern and western Britain. History of sub-roman Britain is viewed in a whole new light, even if the concept of conflicts between civitates and kingdoms is not that new. Shame there seems to be little or nothing about figures such as Vortigern, Ambrosius, and battles such as Badon. Impact of those wars on the migration to Gaul would be interesting to be studied aswell.
I would be interested aswell in reading counter-arguments about Laycock's theories. Reading Patrick and Gildas, it seems there was a kind of Briton sense of nationality, nation not beeing always restricted to the civitas, and this is to be confirmed by the word later used by the Welsh to describe themselves, cumbrogi then cymri, "of the same country", despite rivalries and wars between their kingdoms.

It seems aswell Britons in Brittany had also such a distinctive identity, considering themselves as Romans... Some comparisons in my mind would be the Greek cities states, despite beeing often in wars they still both view themselves as Hellenes, or the Irish kingdoms and their common Gaelic identity.

[Arturus Uriconium]

Hi Ben. I agree with you on the Ambrosius/Vortigern question as his theories do indeed have an impact on who they might have been and it was a shame he didn't cover it. The up-shot of his theory would be seem to be that Vortigern used the Saxons to guard the Romanized southeast against the not so Romanized west, if the Dorchester settlement is anything to go by, as well as any east coast pirates.

...it seems there was a kind of Briton sense of nationality, nation not being always restricted to the civitas, and this is to be confirmed by the word later used by the Welsh to describe themselves, cumbrogi then cymri, "of the same country", despite rivalries and wars between their kingdoms.

The word cymri doesn't come into use until much later and there's nothing to say that, just as the Scottish only really became united because of the English enemy, those who called themselves cymri (including Cumbria) did so in response to the Anglo-Saxon enemy in their most expansive stage. Those in Wales called themselves Cymri/Cymru but they spent most of their time fighting one another until they were united against the common enemy. Calling themselves "of the same country" or "fellow countrymen" could just as well refer to the fact they spoke (roughly) the same language at his point. However, it is very interesting that the Dumonians didn't call themselves thus, having more in common with Letavia. There have been arguments made that Cymri and Britons became to mean different things at different times with the south and southwest being referred to as Britons (or West Welsh) and the west and northwest as Cymri.

Gildas and Patrick wanted a united Britannia under the church, it doesn't mean that all the various warlords and kings thought the same way. Gildas saw the Romans as the saviours of Britannia and the Roman church would be the same. Britannia, and its people, in their eyes were one and God's chosen people who had fallen from grace. Britons would be, in fact, either people who spoke Brythonic or its earlier forms, or simply people who were from the island of Britannia with no need for a meaning of unity or national identity between all the varying peoples who inhabited it although I think there was between Dumnonia and Letavia. As Laycock demonstrates, grave markers in Europe tended to say the civitas they were from rather than Britannia.

Having said all the above, you're right, he leaves a lot of question unexplord.

[Agraes]

By curiosity, does someone owns Laycock's book about roman military belt fittings in Britain? Does it cover much of the sub-roman period? Im particulary interested about any evidence of military fitting in the late Vth/early VIth century AD...

[Arturus Uriconium]

Don't know about a book Ben, but here's the link to his website:

[url:2sba96un]http://www.laycockinfo.co.uk/rombuckles/pages/lrb_titlepage.htm[/url]