0300AUK-AD

In 2000AD the English history magazine, 'History Today' published a series of 12 articles about the history of England which included a little of the history of Wales and Scotland - and Ireland. It covered the period from 1AD to 1900AD. In that, for about 800 years, our Irish history was a part of English history, the series will be of interest to Erinislanders - not only for what is included, but also for what is omitted. We can see some of the various developments, social, political and economical which go towards the overall make-up of present day UK. Whatever the merits of the series, we can see to some extent, those events which were occurring in England and contemporaneously, in Ireland. We may be able to perceive how actions in one country, may have had an effect on events in the other.

The history written about, is primarily social rather than political. In school, I was never able to get too excited about yet another war or battle or confrontation or the like, these affairs left me cold. Among other things, I found it impossible to understand the seeming inevitability of rulers/barons/monarchs to take up arms in order to settle their differences. In this series can be seen the fallout effects on our Erinisland ancestors, of major British policies and movements and sometimes, the effects of European political and social development. We can observe also some of the activities known to have been initiated from the island of Ireland prior to our gaining a reputation as an island of 'Saints & Scholars'. At times, it would appear, that we were no less venal than others in taking advantage of various opportunities, especially around the end of the Roman period in Britain. See 'Venerable Bede'.

The series is an excellent example of the ongoing revision of our past history.

At the beginning of the first millennium AD there was very much a north-south divide in Britain. The southern low-lands had recently experienced major change, driven both by local processes and by new relationships across the Channel.
We depend particularly upon the results of archaeology for any understanding of local processes in ancient Britain, for at this stage the inhabitants of Britain did not produce written accounts of themselves, whatever oral traditions may have been current among them. Archaeology shows that by the middle of the 1st century BC, a major shift in forms of settlement had occurred in lowland Britain. Hitherto communities had been centred upon defended 'hill-forts', such as Maiden Castle in Dorset. Yet the term may mislead. Hill-forts were more than defensive acropoleis: they included dwellings and may best be seen as representing a stage in the process of developing urbanisation. However, in the early decades of the 1st century BC, settlement in lowland Britain steadily shifted to sites suited not so much for defence as for farming, communication and trade.
These new settlements still tended to take advantage of such natural defences as might be available, such as rivers and marshes. Their inhabitants might even devote substantial labour to the construction of earthworks and dykes. However, while the change requires nuanced interpretation, we may safely infer that, as the 1st millennium AD approached, a measure of peace had come to the British lowlands. There was a new stability there which made the change of settlement viable. That in turn seems best explained by the development of larger political entities across southern Britain. These not only provided a peaceful atmosphere necessary for the move from hill-forts, but perhaps also made new demands upon agrarian and other types of production in the form of taxes, overwhelmingly, no doubt, in kind, such as grains and hides.
The archaeological evidence can be supplemented by Caesar's account of his brief incursions into the south-east corner of Britain in 55 and 54 BC. He landed in Kent and went as far as the Hertfordshire and Essex borders. However, Caesar�s account is fraught with difficulties, despite (and perhaps because of) its simplicity of language and content. While Caesar may seem to offer an impartial account of what he discovered in Britain, he was of course profoundly implicated in his own narrative. As far as we can judge, his account was designedly polemical. It was constructed to demonstrate the propriety of his British adventures, not to mention his activities in Gaul. For Caesar, though located far from Rome, remained at the very heart of the political furore there, which soon culminated in civil war, with Caesar himself as the key protagonist. While Caesar's enemies in Rome fiercely criticised each step of his campaigns, he wrote his own account to answer and undermine these criticisms. His agenda is indicated by his decision to write about himself in the third person, as if he were not the author as well as the subject. In all probability he sent a portion of that account back to Rome each year, for circulation and perhaps public recitation there, together with his formal reports to the Senate. The point is central to any attempt to understand Britain at this stage, for when Caesar offers information on Britain we should expect it in some way to contribute to his own defence or aggrandisement. That does not mean that Caesar's evidence is to be ignored, but it does mean that we must subject it to much closer scrutiny than it might seem at first to require.
Yet Caesar's self-serving account does offer a partial snapshot of south-eastern Britain. And his account tends to confirm inferences from the archaeological record of changes in settlement. For Caesar claimed to have found this portion of the lowland organised as a rudimentary empire, at least in order to deal with his invasion. He described a King Cassivellaunus at the head of that empire, a high-king commanding lesser rulers, four of whom, for example, ruled sections which formed an area broadly identifiable as Kent. Of course, his depiction of Cassivellaunus served to give him a worthy adversary, whose conquest could be counted as a significant achievement. However, the key point remains that this presentation appears to confirm the archaeological indications of a tendency to the formation of larger agglomerations in lowland Britain.

Caesar's invasions are important also as indications of the permeability of the barrier formed by the Channel. While, especially in the modern world, one may perceive the sea as an obstacle, it offered in antiquity also a swift means of travel and transport. Accordingly, the proto-history of southern Britain was very much bound up with the Continent of Europe. Caesar was by no means the first to cross the Channel. Indeed, it has long been fashionable to explain the changes in the material culture of lowland Britain before Caesar�s arrival as the consequence of earlier invasion or migration from the Continent by a tribal grouping called the Belgae. However, the extent of any such invasion remains unclear. While cross-Channel influences are not to be denied movement is to be expected, local, social, economic and politicaldevelopments have probably been under-estimated. The rulers of lowland Britain had begun to mint their own coins through the earlier 1st century BC in the context of increasing importation of coinage from Gaul. Here at least we may be confident about the impact of contacts across the Channel and possibly from further afield, from the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds. More in Part B....