Romans in Britain: Genocide & Christianity?

[Robert Vermaat]

You've been reading Stuart Laycock's books.

An interesting observation....is that a good or bad thing

By itself, not a bad thing. Stuart is a great guy who wrote some great books (on of them with my face on the cover, so who complaing? ). In this case though I can't agree with his conclusion that the Britons were hardly affected by the centuries of Roman presence, that the tribal background survived (including identity and inter-tribal conflict) throughout the occupation, and that the end of that occupation was already preceded by a re-arming of these tribal communities.

The way Paul described it, the 'same old tribal boundaries', is pure speculation of course because we hardly know where they boundaries were in the first place. I also see no going back to Iron Age norms, to the contrary: where they could, they attempted to sustain a lot of Romanitas. I think post-Roman Britain was very different from pre-Roman Britain. Not just socially. Although a lot of 'horoic society' springs up again, that's to be expected. It doesn't mean that it remained around, beneath the surface.