The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (12 page)

to absorb large numbers of foreign Germans into the imperial forces

to compensate for the shrinking recruiting base. To some extent, this

was imperial conquest in reverse. Unlike the auxiliary units of the

early principate, Rome’s barbarian troops fought under their own

kings and chieftains. Many of these leaders assumed senior positions in the Roman army, and later emperors allowed entire friendly

Germanic tribes to settle within the imperial borders. Some of these

groups proved to be reliable allies, but in time the most ambitious

German leaders realized that they held enough power to capture the

Roman Empire from within.

It is not exactly clear how the Roman imperial decline affected

Britain, and the province may have actually benefi ted from its relative isolation. The military garrison’s reduction to thirty-four thousand soldiers in the third century and the deployment of second-line

troops on Hadrian’s Wall suggests Britain was relatively secure.

Improved farming techniques and the adoption of a heavy iron plough

raised agricultural production and in all likelihood made the province

more self-suffi cient. The writer Eumenius noted Britain’s value to

the empire in a.d. 297: “Without doubt Britain was a land that the

state could ill afford to lose, so plentiful are its harvests, so numerous are the pasturelands which it rejoices, so many are the metals of

which seams run through it, so much wealth comes from its taxes.”39

To some degree, this was propaganda lauding Emperor Constantine,

who owed his rise to the throne to the Roman garrison at York. On

the other hand, it is possible that improved crop yields, the extensive

road network, a strong indigenous pottery industry, and sustained

silver production actually did make Britain better off than the rest

58 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

of the later empire. It is not at all clear, however, how much of this

prosperity trickled down to common Britons.

Regardless, the problems of the wider empire eventually reached

Britain by the end of the fourth century. The expanded fortifi cation

of most towns and the construction of a series of forts on the southern English coast suggest that the British provinces were threatened

by invasions from northern highlanders and seaborne Saxon raiders.

Modern excavations of many urban sites dating to this period reveal

a blanketing thick stratum of brackish, loamy soil, known as dark

earth, that was probably decomposed animals, plants, and charcoal.

This evidence of decay suggests that urban construction came to an

abrupt halt in the mid-third century as public buildings in towns and

cities fell into disrepair due neglect or looting. The central theater at

Verulamium appears to have become a dump for broken pottery and

rotted vegetables from a nearby market, and archaeological evidence

suggests that the golden age of villa construction in the southern

countryside was quite brief.

The historian Ammianus Marcellinus recorded that Picts from

Scotland, Attacotti from the Hebrides, Scotti from Ireland, and Saxon

and Frankish pirates from the continent simultaneously invaded

Britain in 367. British prosperity may have attracted these opportunistic raiders, or imperial political and economic meddling might

have provoked the frontier peoples.
Picti
, or “painted people” in

Latin, was not a specifi c tribal identity, and the Picts may have simply

been a larger confederation of Caledonians and Maeatae. They split

into small, disorganized bands to loot and pillage on crossing into

Britain, but the Romans suspected that the attacks were a part of a

grand “barbarian conspiracy.” According to Ammianus, Theodosius, a

senior commander and father of the emperor Theodosius the Great,

restored order with part of the western fi eld army.40 Alternatively,

Ammianus may have invented a conspiracy and overstated the scope

of the unrest in order to celebrate the exploits of an emperor’s father.

Given that archaeological evidence of widespread destruction during

this period is scanty, it is again likely that classical historical accounts

of the Roman Britain experience are not reliable.

The Roman Empire of the late fourth century a.d. was a mere

shadow of the robust economic and military power that had annexed

Britain almost four centuries earlier. Dynastic infi ghting, divisive

Roman

Britain 59

religious controversies, urban decay, depopulation, recession, rampant

infl ation, military decline, and barbarian invasions sapped its strength

and weakened its hold on the outer provinces. Romanized landowning

elites, who had accepted Roman rule in return for legitimacy, opportunity, and security, began to slip the bonds of imperial control. Seeking a measure of protection in troubled times, many transferred their

allegiance to invading warlords.

Still, the overextended imperial military did a reasonably good job

of protecting the frontiers until the Huns moved east. Migrating from

central Asia, these powerful nomads drove the peoples of eastern and

central Europe to seek the comparative safety of the empire. In a.d.

378 a band of Goths who had received imperial permission to settle in

Moesia turned on their Roman patrons and wiped out two-thirds of

the eastern fi eld army at the battle of Adrianople. The eastern empire

recovered under Theodosius the Great, but in the west the Rhine and

Danube garrisons could not hold the entire frontier.

In 405, the Ostrogothic king Radagaisus invaded northern Italy. The

following year bands of Vandals, Alans, and Suevi pushed across the

Rhine into Gaul and Spain, and in 408 a band of Huns invaded Dacia.

Roman forces eventually reined in all three of these incursions with

the assistance of friendly Germanic kings, but the politically divided

and impotent western empire was doomed. The Visigothic king Alaric,

a onetime Roman ally, sacked the city of Rome in 410. The eastern

Roman Empire survived in various forms for another millennium,

but Roman rule in the west ended when the German king Odoacer

deposed the last fi gurehead western Roman emperor in a.d. 476.

In Britain, the turmoil of the Germanic invasions opened the way

for the last of the military pretenders to bid for power. According

to the historian Zosimus, the garrison followed Constantine III to

the continent in 407 to deal with the trans-Rhine invasion and lay

claim to the western empire. Constantine’s troops never returned.

This left the province without a signifi cant imperial presence for the

fi rst time in four centuries. Historians conventionally date the end of

Roman Britain to a.d. 409–10, when Romano-Britons expelled the

imperial administration. Zosimus suggests that this was in response

to Emperor Honorius’s refusal to come to their aid during another

barbarian invasion: “Accordingly the Britons took up arms and,

with no consideration of the danger to themselves, freed their cities

60 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

from barbarian threat. . . . They freed themselves, ejected the Roman

magistrates, and set up home rule at their own discretion.”41 Finally

liberated from direct Roman occupation, the British population took

their chances as anarchy engulfed continental Europe.

Having lost its imperial protection, Britain’s autonomy was ephemeral, and it appears to have lapsed into chaos under the weight of

renewed invasions by Picts and Saxons. Long-distance imperial trade

dried up due to the turmoil on the continent, and the Roman military

retreat ended the infl ow of imperial coinage for provisions and wages.

The disintegration of the cash-based economy doomed manufacturing industries, ended commercial mining, and made it impossible

for farmers to disposes of their surpluses. Stripped of its economic

underpinnings, Romano-British society collapsed. The threat of rape

and pillage appears to have given the populace little alternative but

to place themselves in the hands of invading Saxon warlords or local

strongmen and militia leaders. The British provinces thus split into a

mix of Germanic and indigenous petty kingdoms within decades of

the Roman retreat.

Archaeological evidence indicates an abrupt disappearance of

Romano-British culture by the mid-fi fth century. The layer of ash

in many urban sites dating from this period suggests widespread

destruction and fl ight. The remaining townsmen dismantled neglected

Roman-era monuments and buildings for raw materials and built new

wooden structures over older Roman stone foundations and streets.

Tellingly, peasant settlements and simple farmsteads seem to have

been less affected.

While imperial Roman culture survived the demise of the western empire to varying degrees in Italy, Gaul, and Spain—excepting

Arthurian legends of Roman holdouts in Wales and Cornwall—

Roman Britain seems almost to have disappeared overnight. Roman

apologists often point out that there was no evidence that preconquest tribal identities reemerged, but it is unrealistic and ahistorical

to assume that any identity or culture would have remained static for

four centuries. Ultimately, the Christian church was the only signifi cant imperial institution that remained.

German invaders on the continent became partially romanized by

taking over provincial bureaucratic and economic systems, but the Saxons apparently had much less to work with in Britain, which again

Roman

Britain 61

suggests that Roman infl uence on the island was relatively transitory.

Conventional accounts suggest that the bulk of the British population

became “Germanized” instead of taming the invaders through the lure

of romanization. More likely, the rural communities that had preserved

much of their autonomy during the Roman era continued to evolve by

selectively incorporating elements of their new rulers’ culture.

The achievements of imperial Rome were a touchstone for succeeding western empire builders. From their perspective, the Roman

Empire’s longevity, infl uence, and scientifi c and cultural achievements made it the measure of all empires. It was highly profi cient in

using the extracted wealth of conquered peoples to create a complex

bureaucracy, nurture the arts, build grand stone monuments, and

become a quintessentially unipolar continental power. Later imperial rulers therefore adopted its nomenclature and copied systems of

administration and indirect rule.

Yet at best Rome’s rise and fall was a cautionary tale about the

risks of allowing military power to build up in the periphery and

the inherent incompatibility of empire building and representative

government. There have been no “new Romes.” Born of the ancient

world, the Roman Empire was a unique product of its times that

offered no real precedents for later eras. It is nonsensical to assume

that it was possible, much less desirable, to replicate ancient institutions in advanced industrial societies.

Furthermore, imperial enthusiasts overlook the reality that the

Roman Empire’s seeming durability actually stemmed from its

capacity to enlist subjugated elites in extractive imperial enterprises.

This was possible only in an age when subjects lacked the means and

perspective to resist collectively because their identities were primarily local and fl uid. Slave uprisings were relatively common under

the early principate, but apart from the Jewish Revolt, there were no

signifi cant organized rebellions, much less nationalistic ones. Most

of the empire’s main challengers were local and “tribal,” and at fi rst

glance, systemic internal weaknesses rather than popular uprisings

appeared to have brought down the empire. In reality, the Roman

Empire did not so much fall as evolve to refl ect the new identities

resulting from four centuries of imperial rule. Its weak boundaries

between citizen and subject allowed conquered elites to join, if not

eventually dominate, the imperial aristocracy.

62 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

The surprisingly conclusive demise of Roman Britain draws

these realities into sharper focus. Ancient states relied on widespread

slavery, tribute collection, and the exploitation of agricultural labor to

extract the surplus needed to support an advanced bureaucracy, elite

culture, and, by extension, grand art and literature. Ruling classes

disdained their own lower orders and had no qualms about treating

them as an exploitable resource. Initially, Roman rule in Britain was

lucrative because the strange and alien population was precariously

vulnerable to enslavement and unrestrained exploitation. In time,

elite assimilation and Caracalla’s enfranchisement turned Britons

into citizens, but the bulk of the population still remained marginal

and subordinate because they were common. Moreover, most free

rural people in the later imperial heartland became bound to the land

as impoverished tenants or outright serfs. Local partisanship and the

bureaucratic limit of ancient empire allowed some protection from

excessive Roman demands for treasure and labor.

While the Augustan state ruled and exploited an enormous subject

population, by the fourth century Rome was no longer an empire in