Roman Britain and Early England: 55 B.C.-A.D. 871
by Peter Hunter Blair
The Norton Library History of England (1)
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By the time of Caesar's first expedition to Britain in 55 B.C., migratory movements had established close ties of kinship and common interest between the peoples who lived in Gaul and some of the inhabitants of Britain. Because the source material is so meager for much of early British history, Mr. Blair is careful to explain just how scholars have arrived at an accurate knowledge of the first 900 years.The real history of Britain begins with the Roman occupation, for the Romans were the show more first to leave substantial documentary and archaeological evidence. After the governorship of Agricola the written sources almost entirely disappear until the early Anglo-Saxon era of the fifth century; but archaeologists have been able to gather a great deal of information about the intervening centuries from excavations of old walled towns, roads, and fortresses dating from the Roman period. Mr. Blair skillfully describes the transition from Roman to Saxon England and shows why Rome's greatest legacy to her former colony--Christianity--flowered within Anglo-Saxon culture. The source material on Saxon England is mainly documentary, as these new inhabitants built in wood and little archaeological evidence has survived. However, Bede's Ecclesiatical History of the English Nation and other great Christian writings, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Beowulf, the stories of Caedmon, and other poems and epics in the Germanic minstrelsy tradition, have revealed much about English economic, social, and cultural life up to the accession of Alfred the Great. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Published in 1963 and now out of date; interesting as an example of the way historical writing changes. When this book was written, history of the time under study mostly came from textual sources – Tacitus, Gildas, Nennius, Bede. Thus the stories of people like Vortigern and Hengist and Horsa and Ambrosius Aurelianus are taken at face value. It’s interesting to compare with Britain After Rome, which has quite a different take on the same time period.
Quite dry but a very nice overview of this period. I chose this book for it's size: it's only about 200 pages. If you're doing a major paper or something you might want to find another book with more information, but if you just want a background on the time from Caesar's arrival in Britain to the time right before the reign of Alfred the Great, this is a good choice.
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13+ Works 1,021 Members
Peter Hunter Blair: Formerly Reader in Anglo-Saxon History in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Emmanuel College
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Roman Britain and Early England: 55 B.C.-A.D. 871
- Original publication date
- 1963
- Important places
- England, UK (as England); Britannia, Roman Empire
- Important events
- Roman occupation of Britain
- Original language
- English
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Statistics
- Members
- 337
- Popularity
- 94,032
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.47)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 4
