Roman Officers and English Gentlemen

The Imperial Origins of Roman Archaeology

Richard Hingley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134563111
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This landmark book shows how much Victorian and Edwardian Roman archaeologists were influenced by their own experience of empire in their interpretation of archaeological evidence. This distortion of the facts became accepted truth and its legacy is still felt in archaeology today. While tracing the development of these ideas, the author also gives the reader a throrough grounding in the history of Roman archaeology itself.

1

IMPERIAL DISCOURSE: BRITAIN AND ROME

Summary

This book focuses upon the images provided by the impact of classical Rome upon ancient Britain. The ways in which these images were used during the period from around 1860 to 1930 – the heyday of British imperialism – form the core of the text. The book also considers certain aspects of Roman archaeology in Britain, in particular the development of the subject under Francis Haverfield in the 1900s and 1910s and how aspects of the archaeological interpretation of Roman Britain have continued to reflect the world-view of late Victorians and Edwardians until the present day.

Attention is focused upon the nature of the imperial discourse that was current at this time. A study of imperial discourse examines the ways in which various media were used to serve the needs of the British Empire. In this context various Victorian and Edwardian texts concentrated upon the influence of the classical Roman Empire on ancient Britain. I shall argue that, through the creation of imperial discourse, some late Victorian and Edwardian British administrators, politicians and academics used images of the Roman Empire to help them to define the identity and imperial destiny of Britain.¹ It will also be shown that the Roman history of Britain appears to have been particularly significant from this perspective.

In the course of the book I study the interrelated nature of the images of Rome and the Roman Empire which existed in the popular mind, in political and academic works. The aim is to consider two main themes – the ways in which the images provided by Rome operated in the discourse of British imperialism and also the role of the developing subject of Romano-British archaeology. A circular process of interpretation existed in which the past was used to provide lessons for the present and this resulted in the creation of a relevant and useful past. In the context of imperial discourse, archaeological narrative was drawn into the provision of useful lessons for the British Empire. Archaeological knowledge reinforced, supplemented and sometimes contradicted popular imagery.

The organisation of this book

The book has three main Parts. The first Part (Imperialism) studies some of the ways in which images of Roman imperialism were used to help to define and inform British imperial efforts. Part II (Englishness) turns to the ways in which the image of Roman civilisation was used in the definition of English identity. The definition of identity includes both the definition of Englishness and the creation of an image of otherness, which will be titled ‘the Celtic subaltern’ (see below). The third Part draws the book together by studying the nature of Francis Haverfield’s work on Romanisation and the ways in which this related to the imperial concerns of his contemporaries. It also considers the way in which Haverfield’s work created a legacy in Romano-British archaeology that has lasted until the end of the twentieth century. The final chapter summarises these three themes and examines the national context of Romano-British archaeology.

Defining imperialism

Classical Rome was attributed with a distinct role in the process of the definition of British imperialism and this is studied in Chapter 2. The image of decline and fall stressed the need for the British to consider morals for the survival of their own empire. A range of late Victorian and early twentieth-century writings focus upon the role of Rome with regard to British administrative, military and frontier policy.

I shall show how the British used the Roman example to assist with their own imperial projects through the creation of a direct form of imperial discourse, which derived lessons from past examples. This imperial discourse drew upon the evidence for the administration of the Roman Empire and the archaeological evidence for the Roman frontier systems in addition to Roman literary texts that addressed military issues. In so doing it helped to draw the archaeological study of Roman monuments into the sphere of imperial discourse. This Victorian and Edwardian tradition also had an influence on archaeological practice in the early to mid-twentieth century. A strong military tradition existed in popular images of Roman Britain throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, within Roman studies, the archaeology and history of the Roman army has remained a clearly defined and fairly distinct area of research. The imperial context of the origins of modern Roman military archaeology helps to explain the way in which military studies have developed during the twentieth century.

Defining ‘Englishness’

Curiosity about the history of the British Isles during medieval and post-medieval times was associated with the perceived relationship between various ancient peoples and modern populations.² The questions asked of the evidence for the past at this time and the answers that were offered were often motivated by the desire of scholars to examine national identity and destiny.³ In the process the past was interpreted in terms of a concern to establish historical lines of ancestry. This resulted in the creation of images of origin and identity that are teleological in nature. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an interest in national origins continued to hold a fascination for the English. In examining works that were produced by popular writers, politicians and academics at this time, I shall draw upon an idea defined by Raphael Samuel. Samuel has argued that historians (or for that matter ancient historians and archaeologists) however wedded they are to empirical enquiry, will take on, without knowing it, the deep structures of ‘mythical thought’.⁴ This concept of mythical thought relates to the broader views of society as represented in a wide range of ideas and media, for instance, popular works and political writings. Samuel attributes this adoption of mythical thought to the scholarly wish to establish lines of continuity, or to the symbolic importance attached to the permanence of national life, or to an un-argued and in-explicit but all-pervasive teleology.⁵

The issue of national origins in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came to be focused upon relevant imperial considerations in the search for a useful definition of Englishness which drew upon the idea of the permanence of national life. The Teutonic image of racial origin, which had been dominant for much of the nineteenth century became less powerful in the face of new imperial concerns towards the end of the century. The new representation that developed at this time argued that the English imperial spirit was derived from a mixed genetic inheritance, including ancient Britons, classical Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Danes.

This mixed racial origin included the civilising spirit of the Romans. Some late Victorian and Edwardian texts suggest that the classical Romans passed onto the English a civilisation that led fairly directly to the modern state of England. Through the process of conquest, Rome was felt to have introduced civilisation and Christianity to Britain and also to have helped to form the imperial character of the English. English civilisation, religion and imperial spirit are all traced back to the Roman past. This continuity in imperial spirit is defined in such a way that the natives of Roman Britain are often viewed in popular literature to have adopted Roman civilisation and improved upon it in an active effort to create modern England and the British Empire. Incorporated in this distinctly English racial mix was the brave spirit of the ancient Britons who had opposed Rome. In this context, some popular pictures of Roman Britain gave a nationalist view of a civilised distinctly British province – a linear forebear for modern England.

Within the context of Great Britain, the English could be argued to have inherited this distinct Roman character. The Welsh, Irish and Scots had a less direct claim to a Roman inheritance. As a result, a Roman inheritance was used by the English to help to define their relationship to the other people of Great Britain.⁶

Defining Romanisation

Haverfield’s interpretation of Romanisation formed an important element in the developing representation of Englishness. It helped to correct an earlier idea that suggested that little of the civilisation of the Romans had passed onto the British – the image of the Celtic subaltern. Concerns about lines of continuity in the national life of England structured academic and popular works and Roman archaeology came to have a distinct value as part of the representation of Englishness.

At the same time, Haverfield’s theory of Romanisation was also characterised by certain basic assumptions involving the character of civilisation. It defined a binary opposition between barbaric native ‘Celts’ and civilised Romans. Romanisation was the process by which the uncivilised Briton (or European) achieved civilisation. This theory of Romanisation reflected aspects of contemporary imperial discourse, particularly images of the progress of civilisation under imperial guidance. Haverfield’s work provided the basis for what will be called ‘progressive’ interpretations of Romanisation. The progressive interpretation carried beliefs about imperial civilisation into the 1970s and beyond.

The types of analogies that were drawn between Britain and Rome during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries deeply influenced the character of Haverfield’s studies and also the Roman archaeology that we have inherited. This produced the context for beliefs of a unified civilising mission that united imperial Britain with classical imperial Rome (see Preface). It has also resulted in a tradition in which Britain has often been viewed as distinctly different from the remainder of the Roman Empire.⁷

Classical Rome: a useful imperial image

Before exploring the use of image of imperial Rome in British imperial discourse in greater detail, it is necessary to examine some concepts and terms in greater detail. This book draws upon the idea that the Roman past has been used to help to define the images of imperialism that the British have found to be useful in their own imperial activities. The Roman conquest and occupation of southern Britain during the first four centuries of the first millennium AD drew the classical Romans into the orbit of English domestic history.⁸ These events are recorded both in the accounts of classical historians and through the physical evidence of the buildings and structures that were built in Britain during the Roman period of history. Various authors in the recent past have suggested that the classical Romans introduced both civilisation and Christianity to the British Isles.⁹ Partly as a result of this direct Roman impact on the domestic history of England, the image of Rome has formed a useful set of historical references (or representation) for the English, as indeed it has for other nations.¹⁰

A variety of images derived from classical Rome has been adopted (and adapted) in the course of English history because...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Imperial discourse: Britain and Rome
• Part I Imperialism
• Part II Englishness
• Part III Romanisation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index