End of Empire: Careful What You Wish For

The End of Empire For many years it has been de rigueur on the Left to denounce ‘American Imperialism’ and demand the end of ‘the American Empire’, usually in favour of an ill-defined ‘socialist alternative’, or some global socialist system (modelled on the European Union, or the United Nations, or Communist China) or, at an even more extreme level, a global Islamist theocracy (modelled on Iran or the Taliban). Such demands are quite shrill in Australia and are emitted with monotonous regularity by the Greens, the Socialist Left of the ALP, Islamist organizations, the various Trotskyite groupuscules, most academics and teachers in the humanities and social sciences, and much of the media and the arts. But what has been the historical experience when empires die? And, specifically, how has such an event impacted on nations, such as Australia, that exist on the periphery of an empire?

Case Study: Roman Britain  The fate of Roman Britain provides a case study of this traumatic experience. Indeed, it provides a particularly vivid example of what happens on ‘the edge of empire’ when that empire dies, and it is not at all a re-assuring picture. The Fall of Rome and the sacking of the eternal city had ramifications not only for the Italian Peninsula but for all the Roman provinces, which were closely integrated into the Imperial system; as the centre fell apart they found themselves exposed to unprecedented internal stresses and external threats, which they were ultimately unable to resist, plunging into the Dark Ages from which it took a millennium to emerge.

Britannia Perched in the Great Ocean, on the farthest margins of the Empire, by the beginning of the 5th Century, the island province of Britannia had enjoyed some 300 years of the Pax Romana. In that time, its settled and cultivated area had expanded inland from the southern and Channel coasts across fertile and productive fields to the frontiers of Scotland and Wales, beyond which lived ancient tribal societies with little interest in being integrated into an Imperial system, the immensity and complexity of which they couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

Civilization During this time, Britannia had evolved its own version of Roman civilization. It was a fusion of Roman culture with indigenous British and Celtic cultures and customs. There was the usual class structure based on a landed aristocracy, tenant farmers, and an urban proletariat but most people had become Roman citizens, with all the privileges and protections this offered. In their world there were cities, shops, farms, mines, factories, potteries, workshops, fishing fleets, paved roads, harbours, colosseums, theatres, schools, libraries, pagan temples, country  villas, intricate mosaic floors, murals, Druidic groves, Christian churches, and public baths, including the renowned facility at Bath. Many homes even had central heating and perhaps glass windows. Life was peaceful and only a few Roman legions were required to maintain external security and internal peace as Britannia moved into the 4th Century.

Integration Beyond the Channel, the Romano-Britons were integrated into an international system reaching across three continents, offering opportunities for trade, travel, and participation in imperial politics and important intellectual debates (e.g., Pelagius vs Augustine). Their world was a relatively ordered and peaceful one, governed by Roman law where even the civilian possession of weapons was banned. Inevitably, as the centuries rolled by, the Romano-Britons forgot the brutality and primitiveness of the world from which they had emerged, and which still lurked beyond the frontiers. Perched on the fringes of the Empire, Britannia was a flourishing society, whose c.3.6 million people enjoyed a lifestyle that would have been the envy of most of the rest of the world.

The Abyss But this was a population level Britain would not enjoy for much longer. Racing towards the Romano-Britons were the vast demographic, military, and natural forces that were crashing across other parts of the Empire. The centuries to come would be known as the Dark Ages, during which the once peaceful island realm would suffer a demographic decline of well over a million people, and it would take it many centuries more to recover. In the millennial year of 1000 the population of England and Wales was only 1.6 million and it would not be until 1500 that they would be home again to 3.6 million people.

The Crisis of Roman Britain The end-times began in the 4th Century, as Rome’s island realm experienced the same type of barbarian invasions that destabilized and would eventually overthrow the entire Western Roman Empire. From the north, Britannia was threatened by  the Picts of Caledonia; in the east and the south there lurked Angle, Saxon, and Jute raiders; in the west there were the unsubdued Celts of Wales and the adventurous Gaels and ‘Scots’ of Ireland. During the 360s raids from these various sources increased alarmingly. Initially, military forces from Briton and Gaul were sufficient to repel them, but then, from 381 onwards, hard-pressed Emperors and usurpers elsewhere in the Empire began to strip military forces from Britain. Even the famed Hadrian’s Wall, the vital bulwark against the marauding Picts, was stripped of troops. Eventually, some 125,000 soldiers and their families were posted out of Britannia, and very few of these ever returned.

Economic Impact Economically, the impact was disastrous. Quite apart from the widespread  disruption to production, the Imperial taxation burden on Britannia increased enormously as the Empire struggled to finance its defence across its almost endless borders. Moreover, the withdrawal of Imperial forces took away not only their military deterrent effect, but also their substantial spending power, crippling Britannia’s economy. Entwined with this decline were a series of rebellions and attempted coups in Britain itself as local commanders sought to establish control over the province as the central Roman administration became ever more remote and ineffectual. And all this was happening at a time when the savage and relentless Picts from  Scotland and Scotti from Ireland were accelerating their raiding activity in the north and the west, rampaging across the borders, seizing plunder and slaves, and getting ever closer to the centres of Romano-British civilization. Britannia was becoming a microcosm of the general Roman experience.

The Barbarian Conspiracy This first came to a head in 367 with the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’, so-called because of the high level of co-ordination achieved between disparate barbarian forces; this had taken the Roman army and administration in Britain and Gaul completely by surprise. In the winter of that year, the Roman garrison on Hadrian’s Wall rebelled, and allowed massive Pictish forces from Caledonia to enter Britannia. They were followed elsewhere by the Scotti from Hibernia, along with the mysterious, cannibalistic, Attacotti, while the Franks and Saxons attacked the coastal areas of Britain and north-western Gaul. In Britain they rampaged about in fierce bands, looting, destroying, taking slaves, raping and killing whoever they liked around the provincial borderlands. Troops deserted or defected, the countryside was ravished, and even the fortified cities were threatened. Much of the province quickly descended into anarchy.

Delayed Response The Emperor at the time was Valentinian I, who was campaigning against the Alamanni along the Upper Rhine at the time and unable to respond personally. A series of commanders and military forces were then nominated to go to Britannia but were recalled to deal with other crises judged to have higher priority. After further desperate pleas from the Romano-Britons, an elite force of specialized troops was sent in to restore order. This was led by Flavius Theodosius the Elder, accompanied by his son, the future Emperor, Theodosius I (379-95), and his nephew, the future usurper Emperor in the west, Magnus Maximus (383-8). This force descended ruthlessly upon the raiders as they fled back to their homelands, weighed down with stolen booty, and driving their stolen cattle and captive slaves ahead of them. Theodosius the Elder then executed the traitors, regarrisoned Hadrian’s Wall and the major forts, and generally restored order. But this respite was brief as Britannia continued to be drained of legions and taxes to help preserve the core of the Empire.

Rotten at the Core Tragically, the Imperial core itself was being torn apart by civil war as various claimants emerged to challenge the effete and ineffective Imperial leadership, and seize power in the key provinces or in Rome itself. Huge numbers of irreplaceable professional soldiers were being sacrificed in these internecine wars. By 400, the Western armies, which could have defended Britain, had been devastated in three vicious civil wars during the previous 50 years. Earlier, in 375, the Emperor Valens did battle with the Goths at Adrianople in Turkey and lost his own life and a huge army. Increasingly, faced with these huge losses, Rome had to rely on mercenaries and barbarian warriors to man the legions, sowing the seeds for the later betrayals by these forces as the regime crumbled and people looked to their own best interests.

The Rescript of Honorius The Western Roman Emperor during these crucial years was the lamentable Honorius (r.395-423), to whom the people in the provinces addressed a desperate plea for assistance. Already faced with far more crises than he could handle, he issued the ‘Rescript of Honorius’. This informed the frantic Romano-Britons that there were no Imperial troops to spare or funds to hire mercenaries, and that they were on their own. As the Venerable Bede, a contemporary historian lamented “In the year 409 the Romans ceased to rule in Britain.” Britannia was on its own as the Age of Invasion wreaked havoc across Europe.

The End of Roman Britain After that, things got truly desperate as the unthinkable happened and Rome, the eternal city, was besieged and sacked by the Visigoths in August, 410. Out on the edge of Empire, Britannia continued to fall apart. What was left of the army was disintegrating as the legions went unpaid. The bureaucracy followed, and soon there was no effective central government and what was left of the provincial ruling elite had fled to their country villas, trying to escape the decaying urban society as trade evaporated and social order broke down. Farms were deserted and cultivation was increasingly confined to areas  within fortified settlements; glassware and cutlery became unavailable, as did proper wheel-thrown pottery, as people began to drink from leather casks. Even the actual currency was disappearing, as the coinage flowed out of Britannia and towards Rome, reducing society to a barter economy where the laws and conventions of commerce had largely vanished.

Warlords The raids by the Picts and the Scotti accelerated now that the borders were once again denuded of guards, and sea-born incursions by the Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and other Germani increased. Britons were soon living under local warlords and upstart rulers who’d seized power as the Roman administration retreated or deserted, and who owed allegiance only to themselves and their followers. Chief amongst these usurpers was Vortigern, sometimes known as the King of the Britons, who took a tremendous gamble with the British people, and they all lost. Vortigern and other local leaders were desperate to repel the incessant raids on Britain by the Picts and the Scotti, and their ill-fated strategy was to follow the approach taken by the Romans and employ barbarians to fight other barbarians.

Germani Mercenaries They therefore hired Saxon, Angles, and Jutes as mercenaries, promising them tribute and land if they would fight with the Britons to repel the savage invaders from the north and the west. Such battle-hardened warriors eagerly took up the offer, making the trip across the channel in three vessels in 449. Once in Briton they fought well, eclipsing the native British soldiers, who’d lost all martial vigour through centuries of civilized living under the Pax Romana. In his study, On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, the Welsh monk, Gildas (c. 500–570), complained that the British were “foolish and frightened [and] too lazy to fight and too unwieldy to flee.” And soon the Germani were sending word back across the channel to their homelands describing “the worthlessness of the Britons, and the richness of the land” that lay at their mercy, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records. Their families and other warriors soon joined them, and they began to settle on the fertile lands of eastern Britain, brushing the Britons aside.

Takeover Inevitably, they fell into dispute with the Britons over tribute payments and land, and rebelled, waging a war of terror across the region. Soon they had seized vast areas: the Saxons annexed Essex, Sussex, and Wessex; the Angles, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria; and the Jutes, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, and Kent. It was said that the terrified and ineffectual British “fled from the Germani like fire”. Aside from far superior military ability, much of this was conquest was achieved by subterfuge, betrayal, and deceit, at which the Germani were expert. They came to believe they had been gifted the British lands by Woden, their war god, and they had no respect for the Britons, whom they physically and psychologically overawed. Soon, as Geoffrey of Monmouth records, the Germani captured London, York, Lincoln, and Winchester: “ravaging the neighbouring countryside and attacking the peasantry, just as wolves attack sheep that the shepherds have forsaken.”

Resistance This uneven war of conquest raged throughout the 5th Century. The surviving literary sources describe wholesale violence, destruction, massacre, and the desperate plight of the Romano-British people. According to Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Ch.38), the violence of conquest was “never more dreadful and destructive than in the hands of the Saxons, who hated the valour of their enemies … The fields of battle might be traced, almost in every district, by monuments of bones; the fragments of falling towers were stained with blood [and] the last of the Britons, without distinction of age or sex, were hunted down and massacred” across Britain. By the year 600, vast numbers of the original population had disappeared. They had been killed, driven deep into Wales or the rugged North, or had fled overseas to Armorica (Brittany) in France or Galicia in Spain. The civilized world brought to their island by the Romans was also gone: “The cities of Britain were ruined by the long contest; transport was disrupted, industry decayed; law and order languished, art hibernated, and the incipient Christianity of the island was overwhelmed by the pagan gods and customs of Germany. Britain and its language became Teutonic; Roman law and institutions disappeared; Roman municipal organization was replaced by village communities.” (Will Durant, The Age of Faith)

The Lesson of Gildas On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain is one of the very few accounts from these bleak times. In it, Gildas (c. 500–570) vividly describes the harrowing events and mounts a scathing attack on the corruption and ineptitude of the religious and political leaders of the age. Gildas describes a Romano-British people who had grown complacent and far too accustomed to peace and luxury under the umbrella of the mighty Empire. Once the onslaught began, they simply couldn’t comprehend the scale of the threat confronting them, which made the horror all that much greater for them when the “foul hordes” of Picts and Scotti arrived, and the carnage and enslavement began: “There were enemy assaults and massacres most cruel. The pitiable citizens were torn apart by their foe like lambs by the butcher; their lives became like those of the beasts of the field.” He describes a conflagration that stretched across the land from sea to sea:

“It devastated town and country round about and it did not die down until it had burned almost the whole surface of the island… All the major towns were laid low, laid low too were all the inhabitants – church leaders, priests, and people alike – as the swords glinted and the flames crackled … It was a sad sight. In the middle of the squares amidst the holy altars torn from their bases were fragments of corpses covered with a purple crust of congealed blood, looking as though they had been through some dreadful wine press There was no burial to be had except in the ruins of houses and the bellies of the birds and beasts.”

Surrender & Flight The surviving Britons gave up or fled wherever they could: “Some wretched survivors were caught in the mountains and butchered wholesale. Others, their spirit broken by hunger, surrendered to the enemy, fated to be slaves forever, if they were not killed outright – the highest boon! Others made for lands beyond the sea, while some fled in terror to the highest hills, the densest forests, and the sheerest cliffs along the coast.” It was in such inaccessible and inhospitable places that the survivors tried to survive.

Subjugation After this ethnic cleansing, virtually no linguistic evidence of the earlier British or Celtic tongues survived. In fact, “the Anglo-Saxon invaders retained and imposed their own language, the ancestor of modern English, with only the smallest admixture of British or Latin words; they also kept their own Germanic institutions and customary laws with barely a vestige of the Roman legal fabric …  They were nearly untouched by Latin culture and were heathens so that Christianity was erased in the conquest.” (C.W. Previte-Orton, The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History 1, 1953)

Effacement The ruined villas and many towns were left deserted. The Anglo-Saxons were country-dwellers, preferring the lowlands beside rivers with their heavy but fertile soils for their cornfields and large wheeled ploughs. They settled mainly in dispersed villages based on tribal loyalties and controlled by kinship groups, petty chiefs, and local ‘lords’ descended from the warlords who had led the invasion. Their social order had three ranks: the nobles, the churls or ordinary freeman, and the slaves. In Kent there was also an inferior class of half-free laets, the pathetic remnants of the Britons who had not fled.

Eradication During the Anglo-Saxons conquest it appears that more than a million male Britons (out of a population of 3.6 million) vanished without a trace and left no descendants. Studies of DNA and especially of the Y-chromosome passed down only by males concluded that around the beginning of the Dark Ages “a massive replacement of the native fourth-century male Britons had taken place.” (“Who Killed the Men of England?” by Jonathan Shaw, Harvard Magazine, July-August 2009) It appears male Britons were simply killed or driven from the island, and those that remained were enslaved and denied female partners. It has been estimated that male British DNA would have eliminated from the gene pool in about five generations under such conditions. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxon males mated prodigiously with both their own females and the surviving British women. In this fashion, female Britons were reduced to the status of sex slaves, while male Britons were simply expunged from the human race.

A World Lost Roman Britain had taken centuries to create, far out on the margins of the Empire, but the implosion of the Imperial core allowed it to be swept away almost overnight. Virtually an entire people, a culture, and an advanced economic and physical infrastructure that had evolved over four centuries under the influence of Roman civilization were gone. They had been wiped out by a group of savage, warlike tribes that valued none of it, and whose general level of culture was utterly regressive compared to that which they had destroyed. As G. M. Trevelyan observed in A History of England (1959), the victors were “bloody-minded pirates, rejoicing to destroy a higher civilization than their own,”

The Future So ended civilization in the once thriving Roman province of Britainnia. The lessons for Australia seem obvious: the collapse of an Imperial order brings only economic and political chaos, death and destruction, and regression into an era of civilizational darkness from which it takes many centuries to emerge, if ever. Perhaps those shrill ideologues, academics, teachers, media propagandists, and other useful idiots demanding the end of American Imperialism, and an ill-defined ‘End of Empire’ should do some historical research or, at the very least, should be challenged to justify their nihilistic demands. The global reality is clear, we live in an increasingly dangerous and uncivilized world where the sole guarantor of our liberal democratic system and way of life is the United States: Make America Great Again!