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Combining a fresh analysis of the archaeological evidence with the traditional historical accounts, Neil Faulkner presents a new interpretation of the decline and fall of Roman Britain.The original conquest of Britain was one of the last successes of Roman military imperialism, whereas the Romans' repeated failures on the north British frontier shows the limits of this system. A new order became established in Britain: a centralised, military-bureaucratic state, governed by a class of super-rich landlords and apparatchiks, who siphoned wealth out of the provinces to defend the frontier. As a result the towns declined and the countryside was depressed.This process of decline led to the great military crisis of the last fourth century. The Roman imperial army, bled white by defeats on continental battlefields, withdrew its troops from Britain to defend the imperial heartlands, and the Romano-British elite succumbed to a combination of warlord power, barbarian attack an popular revolt. The study concludes by discussing the legacy of Roman's and the significance of the so-called 'Dark Ages'.… (more)
User reviews
If you want to be a self righteous leftist then fine but please, please go practise your under graduate politics elsewhere and stop spreading this far left nonsense. There are far better books out there on the subject so avoid this propaganda piece - unless of course you enjoy lefty pretentiousness.
But freelance historian and archaeology journalist Neil Faulkner argues that the Roman Empire was "a system of robbery with violence, that it was inherently exploitative and oppressive, and that it was crisis-prone, unstable and doomed to collapse". Furthermore its main use is as an awful lesson to us in the modern world, "dominated as it is by corporate capital and imperialist war," just as in Late Antiquity. His polemic is powerful and cumulative if, as he says, "essentially negative".
The 2004 paperback edition reinforces his political views and includes an additional final chapter on Dark Age Britain entitled 'From Commune to Kingdom' which seems to put the final nail in the coffin of Roman Britain.