Contents of
Britain in AD
Year
AD 1 Part A
AD 1 Part B
AD 500
AD 1000
AD 1100
AD 1200
AD 1300
AD 1400
AD 1500
AD 1600
AD 1700
AD 1800
AD 1900
Direct Roman rule actively encouraged urbanisation in Britain, not least through the settlement of veteran legionaries who had reached the end of their military service and had built lives for themselves in Britain. Meanwhile, settled concentrations of troops required supplies and support and could thus grow into towns and cities. Rome favoured urbanisation for its own administrative and broadly cultural purposes: from a Roman perspective towns meant order and taxes. The British elite, with a long-standing taste for Continental goods, came to seek preference through assimilation to a Roman rule which was firmly committed to support those of high status and to offer them subsidies. Accordingly, lowland Britain was swift to accept the new situation after Claudius's invasion, while Roman imperialism pressed on into Wales arid by the end of' the 1st century AD to the north of Scotland, to complete the conquest and to search for elusive local wealth.
Throughout, Rome depended upon the support of friendly rulers, who were duly benefited. A notable example is Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, whose kingdom in the Hampshire region was established and enhanced by Rome and who was accorded the title rex magnus (great king), for all the minimality of his power. However, the death of Cunobelinus had indicated the limitations of empire through monarchy. The death of Prasutagus, the king of the Iceni of East Anglia, was the immediate cause of' the uprising in AD 60 of his wife, Boudica (more familiar in the form Boadicea). Tacitus's account of the revolt illustrates the broader social dynamics involved. The Iceni soon seized the Roman settlement at Colchester; the Roman colony having been established at the erstwhile centre of' Cunobelinus's kingdom. It had not been built for defence: Tacitus denounces the omission, but Prasutagus�s regime nearby and the Roman presence had seemed to ensure sufficient stability. The centrepiece of the colony had been the temple of the deified emperor Claudius, whose priests were members of the British elite. They were expected to provide the finances required for the cult of their deceased conqueror. This brave new world had been facilitated by neighbourin Prasutagus, whose famous personal wealth seems to have been derived substantially from Roman support. The king himself had issued coins bearing his Romanised likeness and expressing his kingship in more Latin than that found on any other British coins. Like Cogidubnus and the other Rome-friendly kings, Prasutagus had received Roman citizenship (with the remarkable but probable consequence that his wife Boudica was also made a Roman citizen). Like a good Roman, Prasutagus left a will upon his death, which included the Roman emperor (Nero) among his heirs. It was the harsh interpretation of that will which caused the uprising. The Roman masters had decided to re-possess the wealth that had been bestowed upon the king.
It was symptomatic that the uprising directed its wrath especially at towns, not only Colchester, but also London and St Albans. For these towns were readily regarded as the centres of Roman power and perhaps as an alien imposition, with land expropriated in their creation. It was also symptomatic that, when the uprising had been put down, Rome re-asserted control with the encouragement of towns high on its list of priorities, a key part of the cultural and administrative programme of Roman government in Britain. The process was a slow one. It was to be some decades yet before the British elite chose to build residences in towns. Meanwhile, the growth of military bases, with soldiers spending their pay and consuming supplies, gave an even greater impetus to the creation of towns. At the same time, the Roman construction of highways provided work (not least for the soldiery) and greatly enhanced the speed of movement and transport by land. The primary Roman interest in road building was military: troops and military supplies needed maximum mobility. Yet others could only benefit from the improved communications, not least traders and civilian suppliers. In that way, the imperial interests of Rome coalesced with indigenous processes of development. The aspirations of the British elite combined with the organisation and free spending of the Roman military to make lowland Britain around AD 100 a very different place from its counterpart a century earlier, let alone two centuries. Now the landscape featured not only towns, but also grand villas, through which the British elite competed to display its wealth through imported styles and architectural splendours. In the largely static world of antiquity, this change was breathtaking.
Through the later decades of the 1st century AD Roman diplomacy, subsidies and luxury goods were having their effect even in the more conservative regions further north. The process is well illustrated by the development of a substantial settlement at Stanwick, among the Brigantes. ln the north, this time, as in the south a century before, hill-forts were steadily abandoned in favour of farmsteads, better suited to taking advantage of a new level of stability and supplying the Roman military.
Around AD 100 the road between the Roman military bases at Carlisle and Corbridge formed the spine of a kind of frontier between the Solway in the west and the Tyne in the east. This was to become Hadrian's Wall, built between 122 and c.126. The peoples to the north of that line were open to diplomacy, as is indicated by the luxury goods that form the treasure of Traprain Law among the Votadini, of south-east Scotland. The settlement at Traprain Law had been established long before Romans arrived in force in the area, probably by 500 BC, though it is hard closely to assess the degree of Roman influence from afar before their military arrived in about AD 80. However, through the late 1st and 2nd centuries AD the settlement boomed with increasing Roman contact. There was no real social or economic division along the Tyne-Solway line. Rather, the peoples of' what is now the very north of' England and of lowland Scotland were tractable enough, from a Roman perspective, to participate in the military economy and to constitute a buffer between the directly-administered province and the Highlands, where Roman coins and other goods are notable by their general absence. Indeed, lowland Scotland was so malleable that, in c.139-42 Rome could soon attempt a frontier-line across Scotland itself, the Antonine Wall. However, that line proved unsustainable without the lowland buffer enjoyed by the Tyne-Solway line and was in any case too easily circumvented on its west. Nevertheless, for all its failure, the very attempt to create the Antonine Wall shows that Roman government adjudged the area and population to the north of Hadrian's Wall to be more, part of its world than of the barbarian world beyond.
The later history of Britain tends to confirm the impression left by archaeology that the Roman presence and influence in lowland Britain brought profound assimilation. By contrast, in northern England, Scotland and much of Wales, Roman impact was far more superficial. The explanation of that sustained north-south divide may well reside in the long process of acculturation and exchange between southern Britain and the Continent, something that had been well in train in the centuries before the arrival of Caesar and Claudius and that had made Roman culture not only very attractive, but perhaps even familiar, to the elite of lowland Britain by AD 1. ENDS