Roman Britain

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Its actually quite difficult to know. It has been taken as a simple axiom that Brittania was a Romanised province, and that the Roman presence improved life in Brittania. There are questions, however. Why was there such a large military presence throughout the Roman period, for example? Archaeology has tended toward finding Rome, and so Roman villas, temples, toens etc have been given, perhaps, more emphasis than they merit. The great majority of the inhabitants of the province still lived in pre-Roman type round houses and small farmsteads. Sure, 'Roman' goods entered these households sometimes, but can we really claim that having Roman type pottery made you Roman?

A couple of interesting books on this are 'An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54BC-AD409' by David Mattingly and 'UnRoman Britain:Exposing the Great Myth of Brittania' by Miles Russell and Stuart Laycock.

They tend to raise more questions, rather than give answers, but then I think the 'standard' history of Roman Britain, and its collapse, is built upon some false assumptions and sweeping classifications, in my humble opinion.

[Kralizec]

Roman culture in Britain largely dissapeared after the Saxon migration. You mentioned loanwords; most Latin words in the English language were introduced (reintroduced, in a way) by the Normans, who spoke a French dialect.

In other parts of Europe the ruling Germanic tribes made an effort to preserve some parts of Roman civilization. The Franks for instance had been in contact with Roman culture for centuries and had adopted christianity. The Saxons were still pagan at this point and probably didn't appreciate Roman civilization as much as the Franks or the Goths.

I suppose it's possible that Britain never was as thoroughly romanized (or in general: developed) as Gaul or Hispania, and that Roman culture was less durable because of it. Actually Great Britain has always been sparsely populated compared to other parts of Europe until modern times.

[Ibrahim]

layman's view here:

on the cultural level, if it was romanized, then probably not to the same extent (or nature) as elsewhere--at least judging from the languages and customs that survived the Roman occupation: unlike in Gaul or Spain, the Celtic languages there survived in numbers, spawning languages like Cornish, Manx, Welsh, and Breton (which is a descendent of British, not continental, dialects). Not that they lasted long as the dominant languages for the most part, once the Germanic people came in. If there was a local dialect of Latin, then it was probably extirpated early, seeing that the places it was likely spoken in were also the first places settled by the Germanic peoples (i.e. southern and eastern Britain).