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The Romans did bring some blessings to Britain, but none so great as the one they did not mean to bring.
In his Child’s History of England Dickens was consistently severe on the abuse of power. The Romans, who ruled here from the first century to the start of the fifth, did not escape his censure. He admitted they had exercised a degree of civilising influence, but in his judgment the most civilising influence in their time had been Christianity, for it exposed the frauds of Britain’s indigenous pagan elite, the Druids.
Agricola, tasked with subduing the people of Britain to Roman colonial government, persuaded them to wear servitude as a badge of refinement.
Gnaeus Julius Agricola took over as Roman Governor of Britannia in 78, and remained there for six very successful years. Having applied the stick, so his son-in-law Cornelius Tacitus tells us, he was eager to offer carrots: taxes were cut, corrupt officials were weeded out, and investment was poured in. The coddled and cozened tribal leaders thought they had got a fine bargain for their liberties.
After the kingdoms of Great Britain were absorbed into the Roman Empire, the promises of prosperity and civilisation came only to a favoured few.
When the kingdoms of Britain joined the Roman Empire – some willingly, some not – their peoples found that it brought great benefits. Unfortunately, most never got to experience them. City-dwellers fared well and lived comfortably, if they were good Romans, but everyone else existed for their convenience.
Rome’s greedy tax policy in Britain and Gaul left farmers with little to show for their labours but the stripes on their backs.
Admission to the Roman Empire brought an unfamiliar prosperity and ease to the former kingdoms of Britain, but American historian David Montgomery emphasised that much of it was a sham. Behind the facade lay a culture of corruption and exploitation fed by government greed, which was not limited to the miserable slaves labouring in mines or brickworks.
A Roman commander facing court martial took refuge in politics, and for ten years London was an imperial capital.
Roman Britain was no backwater: it was prosperous and civilised, and its people were critical of Rome’s bungled wars in the East and porous borders in Europe. In fact, her people felt ready to govern themselves, making Britannia a good place to start for would-be Emperors.
British sympathy for Roman imperial progress evaporated when officials began asset-stripping the country.
In AD 60, corrupt Roman officialdom pushed the dowager queen of the Iceni, in what is now Norfolk, too far. But Britain’s military Governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, was far away in Anglesey (dealing, as he supposed, with the last British resistance) when he learnt of it.