Roman's don't leave Britain by 410 AD

[Melvin Loh]

WI the barbarian threat to Rome hadn't been as great as OTL, so that the Roman legions in Britain were able to be retained there ? How would Britain have developed with the cont'd presence of Roman govt, law and security ? Would there still have been an Anglo-Saxon invasion ?

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by Melvin Loh

WI the barbarian threat to Rome hadn't been as great as OTL, so that the Roman legions in Britain were able to be retained there ? How would Britain have developed with the cont'd presence of Roman govt, law and security ? Would there still have been an Anglo-Saxon invasion ?

Almost certainly; the germanic tribes invaded everywhere, including North Africa.

[robertp6165]

Originally Posted by Melvin Loh

WI the barbarian threat to Rome hadn't been as great as OTL, so that the Roman legions in Britain were able to be retained there ? How would Britain have developed with the cont'd presence of Roman govt, law and security ? Would there still have been an Anglo-Saxon invasion ?

Well, there probably would have been an Anglo Saxon invasion, but it would likely not have been as successful as in OTL. They might establish a few coastal enclaves and not be able to expand inland. Or they might actually be taken into the Roman forces themselves as Foederate troops (which is, according to most accounts, how the first Anglo Saxons came to Britain anyway...they were brought to Britain as foederate troops by Vortigern, the British High King. Vortigern, however, did not have existing legions there to keep the new "allies" in check).

[carlton_bach]

Well, the Roman legions did defend the Rhine frontier at the time and we all know how well that went...

I doubt it would make a long-term difference in terms of Anglo-Saxon control. However, with a nominally Roman infrastructure still on the ground, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms might well have developed more like the Franks and Thuringians, with episcopal seats retained, a church organisation, and eventual conversion 'from within' to the local church.

Which brings us back again to 'No Pope Here'...

[robertp6165]

Originally Posted by carlton_bach

Well, the Roman legions did defend the Rhine frontier at the time and we all know how well that went...

I doubt it would make a long-term difference in terms of Anglo-Saxon control. However, with a nominally Roman infrastructure still on the ground, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms might well have developed more like the Franks and Thuringians, with episcopal seats retained, a church organisation, and eventual conversion 'from within' to the local church.

Which brings us back again to 'No Pope Here'...

The difference in Britain is that there is no real evidence of a huge "folk movement" into Britain, as happened along the Rhine. The invading forces were relatively small, and basically it was the completely ineffectual resistance of the local British sub-kings they encountered which allowed them to advance inland. The Anglo-Saxons, unlike the Visigoths, Vandals, and other groups (the Franks were a major exception, but they came in after the Visigoths had already breached the Roman frontier) were relatively lightly-armed infantry rather than cavalry, so they won't be as difficult for the legions to defend against, either. So the Romans legions might stand a better chance in Britain than did those on the Rhine frontier.

[wkwillis]

We would be speaking a Latin based language called Brinch. How would this happen? How would a Brinich navy unit and a Brinch army unit survive the Roman civil wars?
Maybe they split off when the Roman civil wars split Britain, Gaul, Iberia, Africa, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Illyria, from Italia and the Islands? The seven Caesers and the Republic?
The British would be an attractive model to the Scotti, the Cymri, and the Picts over time. The Scotti were the ones in what is now Ireland. The Cymri were in what is now Wales, and the Picts in the north of England and Scotland and the Orkneys. Cornwall might still have been Cymri at the time.

[Peter]

Rome didn't have legions by 410. Ohh, she called the legions, but they were just merceneries fighting in a completly different way then the original legionaires.

[MerryPrankster]

I thought the Cymri was what the Welsh (descendants of Celtic Britons driven into the West Country) called themselves.

The last Roman forces left Britain as part of a civil war...the legions proclaimed one of their commanders Emperor and marched on Rome. They were defeated, and the British themselves got sick of all this and expelled the usurper's officials, setting up their own people (some kind of Roman-based system remained; St. Patrick's father had the title of "decurion").

Perhaps the usurper (I think it was Maxentius III) decides to stay in Britain and rule it himself, and we get a Britain-only version of the "Gallic Empire." However, he may have to deal with subordinates what want more...one British usurper was killed by his own troops for some reason.

If Britain remains under Maxentius while the Empire on the continent collapses, we might have a "Byzantium of the West." Thing is, what to do about the Saxons? Before Vortigern tried to use them as federati, they raided Britain and western Gaul by sea.

[wkwillis]

A flotilla of ships. One flotilla of ships is enough to wipe out Vikings because it is easier to kill than to capture. One flotilla of ships can wipe out so many Viking villages in one campaign as to completely eliminate the idea of going Viking again. Vikings have to make a profit. Raiders don't. Raiders just go out with a ship full of arrows and butcher homesteads and burn them.
Then the local lords don't let their men go Viking because they have to stay home to protect themselves and their villages. Works every time.

[JHPier]

Matt Quin: The usurper's name was Constantine III. And he probably didn't take ALL his forces over to Gaul. He needed a home-base to draw taxes and supplies from and some garrisons had to be left in the frontier forts to protect that home-base. Of course once the Britons overthrew Constantine's administration they were out of a paymaster and will have set up shop for themselves which is probably how these "local British sub-kings" sprang up.

And there were already Saxons in Britain before this. Quite a large proportion of the Roman troops on the Saxon Shore and Hadrian's Wall are described as 'numeri' that is basically barbarian warbands hired en bloc as mercenaries, which in Britain will have been mostly Saxon.

Originally Posted by carlton_bach:
Well, the Roman legions did defend the Rhine frontier at the time and we all know how well that went...

Actually they didn't. They had (in 405) been withdrawn to help defend Italy from a large barbarian invasion led by a guy called Radagais that came as far as Fiesole in Tuscany. So when the Vandals et al. reached the Rhine they encountered only a skeleton force.

[JHPier]

Originally Posted by robertp6165

The difference in Britain is that there is no real evidence of a huge "folk movement" into Britain, as happened along the Rhine. The invading forces were relatively small, and basically it was the completely ineffectual resistance of the local British sub-kings they encountered which allowed them to advance inland.

I agree. So as long as Rome has the troops to spare Britain remains Roman.

Originally Posted by robertp6165

The Anglo-Saxons, unlike the Visigoths, Vandals, and other groups (the Franks were a major exception, but they came in after the Visigoths had already breached the Roman frontier) were relatively lightly-armed infantry rather than cavalry,

There is no evidence that the Visigoths and Vandals were especially strong in cavalry (meaning little more than 10% cavalry) before they conquered Roman territory. Alot of the Germans that came under Hunnic domination went in for cavalry in a big way, but after being conquered.

[Faeelin]

Originally Posted by robertp6165

The difference in Britain is that there is no real evidence of a huge "folk movement" into Britain, as happened along the Rhine. The invading forces were relatively small, and basically it was the completely ineffectual resistance of the local.

Err, what? The Roman-Celts were displaced completely from eastern England. How is that not a huge folk movement?

[MerryPrankster]

Originally Posted by Faeelin

Err, what? The Roman-Celts were displaced completely from eastern England. How is that not a huge folk movement?

Well, I did read once that it wasn't an expulsion-genocide...those conquered by the Saxons simply assimilated into their culture and it was mostly the leadership that evacuated into the West.

However, I'd expect more Romano-Celtic stuff in the Saxon culture if there really was a lot of assimilation.

[Peter]

Originally Posted by wkwillis

A flotilla of ships. One flotilla of ships is enough to wipe out Vikings because it is easier to kill than to capture. One flotilla of ships can wipe out so many Viking villages in one campaign as to completely eliminate the idea of going Viking again. Vikings have to make a profit. Raiders don't. Raiders just go out with a ship full of arrows and butcher homesteads and burn them.
Then the local lords don't let their men go Viking because they have to stay home to protect themselves and their villages. Works every time.

No it doesn't. Instead the Vikings just gather a host and eliminate the petty southrons. Most likely these raiders would be destroyed before they could do any harm, it's not like the King of Denmark was toothless, same thing with the other vikings.

Anyway, if it worked there would have been no Vikings, you know why? Because the North was always in a state of war somewhere, and the Vikings always raided each other. With your logic they would have stayed hoem to protect themselves from each other. With your logic that flottilla would never have left England, because they would be home defending their coastal villages.

[fortyseven]

POD: Roman "Legions" remain under Maxentius

5th-6th Centuries Germanic peoples invade and settle

Late 6th/early 7th Centuries: Germanic Dynasty replaces Britano-Roman

9th-10th Centuries: Vikings repulsed

Late 9th/early 10th Centuries, Neo-Roman, Brittanic Dynasty established

Late 10th Century: Britannic Church breaks from Rome

[wkwillis]

Quinn
The latest chromosome research I read said that the Celtic Y chromosomes stuck around in England, that it looked like the German X chromosomes moved in by way of the women. It is still a new field.
Peter
The Viking era came and went. The large countries suppressed it pretty easy, and it wasn't by posting large castles at every beach and creek. Same deal in the Mediterranean. The Romans regularly ran down their navy for the civil wars, and then built it up again to suppress piracy.

[Peter]

Originally Posted by wkwillis

Quinn
Peter
The Viking era came and went. The large countries suppressed it pretty easy, and it wasn't by posting large castles at every beach and creek. Same deal in the Mediterranean. The Romans regularly ran down their navy for the civil wars, and then built it up again to suppress piracy.

They never suppressed the Vikings! They were conquerd by the Vikings (Normandie, Rus, Engand). The reason the Viking age ended was mostly because of developments in the North, not because of say France.

And you are comparing the middle age kingdoms to the Empire and the Vikings to cilician pirates? The Vikings were more then that and the middle agers less then that... If say Britain decided to attack Denmark she would see her fleet destroyed very fastly. The Vikings didn't rule the sea for 250 years by a fluke....

[carlton_bach]

Originally Posted by Matt Quinn

Well, I did read once that it wasn't an expulsion-genocide...those conquered by the Saxons simply assimilated into their culture and it was mostly the leadership that evacuated into the West.

However, I'd expect more Romano-Celtic stuff in the Saxon culture if there really was a lot of assimilation.

The process of assimilation was very similar for the Franks and Gopths, too. No wholesale slaughter or displacement can be proven. It is likely that the pattern was roughly similar although the initial Saxon 'spearhead' would have been smaller.

The main thing was that Romano-British culture by the 6th century really couldn't offer the Saxons all that much to adapt to. The Franks and Goths had the urban civilisation of the Late Roman Empire. The Saxons got what? A handful of monasteries and an upper-class bickering over the ruins of cities they couldn't afford to maintain properly? Where's the appeal in being weak *and* poor?

[Faeelin]

The fate of the Romano-British population is a matter of conjecture. At one point, historians believed the account of Gildas uncritically, and thought that the invaders slaughtered all whom they encountered in an act of genocide. More recent historians, such as H.P.R. Finberg, have argued that they largely survived, and lived under the Anglo-Saxon invaders as slaves or serfs. By the time reliable historical records begin once again, it is clear that the territory of the native inhabitants had been reduced to just Cornwall and Wales in the west of the island and Strathclyde, which itself, like most of Scotland, was experiencing similar migration and displacement at the hands of the Scots from Ireland. Recent genetic testing of the inhabitants of England, Wales and the Low Countries does seem to show, according to some specialists, a large scale displacement of the earlier British populations out of England at some point in time in favor of people who are very closely related to the people inhabiting modern Friesland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons

[wkwillis]

Originally Posted by Peter

They never suppressed the Vikings! They were conquerd by the Vikings (Normandie, Rus, Engand). The reason the Viking age ended was mostly because of developments in the North, not because of say France.

And you are comparing the middle age kingdoms to the Empire and the Vikings to cilician pirates? The Vikings were more then that and the middle agers less then that... If say Britain decided to attack Denmark she would see her fleet destroyed very fastly. The Vikings didn't rule the sea for 250 years by a fluke....

Yes, I am. The rise of nation states wiped out the vikings and other pirates that operated out of land bases. It's too easy to capture a pirate, find out where the base is, and burn the countryside around it.
The vikings always appeared when there was no defence, overwhelmed a locality, and left. When the nations built a navy and went counterraiding, they stopped. No civil wars, no vikings. Vikings have to make a profit. Navies can tax people who don't want to be raided, and can kill instead of capture. It's easy to suppress pirates when you know who they are, and the vikings were just groups of pirates organised to take on bigger prey.
In Normandy and Sicily and Russia, the vikings weren't raiding. They moved in and lived there, they settled there. A plague or war wipes out or refugees a lot of the locals, there is good land available, some group moves in when the locals don't want or need or defend it anymore. They were a counterweight in local politics, called in by one side or the other.