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Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire
Despite what history has taught us about imperialism's destructive effects on colonial societies, many classicists continue to emphasize disproportionately the civilizing and assimilative nature of the Roman Empire and to hold a generally favorable view of Rome's impact on its subject peoples. "Imperialism, Power, and Identity" boldly challenges this view using insights from postcolonial studies of modern empires to offer a more nuanced understanding of Roman imperialism.
Rejecting outdated notions about Romanization, David Mattingly focuses instead on the concept of identity to reveal a Roman society made up of far-flung populations whose experience of empire varied enormously. He examines the nature of power in Rome and the means by which the Roman state exploited the natural, mercantile, and human resources within its frontiers. Mattingly draws on his own archaeological work in Britain, Jordan, and North Africa and covers a broad range of topics, including sexual relations and violence; census-taking and taxation; mining and pollution; land and labor; and art and iconography. He shows how the lives of those under Rome's dominion were challenged, enhanced, or destroyed by the empire's power, and in doing so he redefines the meaning and significance of Rome in today's debates about globalization, power, and empire.
"Imperialism, Power, and Identity" advances a new agenda for classical studies, one that views Roman rule from the perspective of the ruled and not just the rulers.
In a new preface, Mattingly reflects on some of the reactions prompted by the initial publication of the book.
Rejecting outdated notions about Romanization, David Mattingly focuses instead on the concept of identity to reveal a Roman society made up of far-flung populations whose experience of empire varied enormously. He examines the nature of power in Rome and the means by which the Roman state exploited the natural, mercantile, and human resources within its frontiers. Mattingly draws on his own archaeological work in Britain, Jordan, and North Africa and covers a broad range of topics, including sexual relations and violence; census-taking and taxation; mining and pollution; land and labor; and art and iconography. He shows how the lives of those under Rome's dominion were challenged, enhanced, or destroyed by the empire's power, and in doing so he redefines the meaning and significance of Rome in today's debates about globalization, power, and empire.
"Imperialism, Power, and Identity" advances a new agenda for classical studies, one that views Roman rule from the perspective of the ruled and not just the rulers.
In a new preface, Mattingly reflects on some of the reactions prompted by the initial publication of the book.
376 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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January 5, 2023
You Have to Really Hate the Romans…
David Mattingly has been writing post-colonial literature for quite a while now and this book seems to really sum up his view of the Romans. Basically his conclusion is that the Romans sucked. They sucked a lot. And people didn’t like living under them. This was the main theme of his book on Roman Britain (An Imperial Possession) as well. Mattingly seems to be driven by a moral imperative that, while admirable in itself, doesn’t seem to have much place in historical studies. It can be summed up in a simple argument: Empires are evil; Rome was an empire; Therefore Rome was evil. Mattingly is a postcolonialist which means that he feels the need to rescue the voice of the underclass (to use a term I despise: the subalterns) from behind the exploitative screen of the upper classes (who don’t get themselves a fancy new term). This is a book about identity and the way in which people define themselves. More importantly it’s a book defending the way he looks at the Romans as a people.
As you might be able to tell I don’t have much liking for the new breed of post-imperialists and some of their cultural historical brethren. They seem to spend more time inventing buzzwords or redefining old ones (gender, identity, memory, etc.) than actually contributing to the field. ‘Identity’ alone shows up more than 100 times in this book. Still, this isn’t the worst book on the topic. It does after all have a genuine purpose: to convince everyone else to hate the Romans. Most people (scholars not excluded) would be willing to admit that the Romans could be pretty nasty people. While Mattingly does provide the interesting point that the opinion of the Romans is rather darker in novels and films than in historical works I don’t really think there’s nearly as much whitewashing of them as he makes out. Sure, some people may admire them, but there’s a major difference between admiring someone and trusting in them blindly. The darker side of Roman imperialism could indeed use some study, but he isn’t likely to win many converts the way he goes about it.
Having got that out of the way I do think that this book has much to offer. It certainly has its heart in the right place. It’s not a bad goal to recover the lost voices of history. I’d argue that it isn’t possible except at rare sites such as Pompeii, but it can’t hurt to try. It’s just that rather than doing this by looking at how the common people lived he wants to look at how they suffered. Because that is the common theme of everyone in this book: Suffering and resistance. If you are an elite living in an unfair power relationship then it is impossible to have an honest relationship with your inferiors. If you are among the poor you have to resent your superiors. It’s good of Mattingly to demonstrate that the Romans were not the monolithic block that we tend to think of them as, but he does so with such extremism and disdain that it’s hard to sympathize with his point of view even when you want to be in complete agreement.
As far as the structure of the book goes it’s pretty logical. This was based off a string of lectures so each chapter is unconnected to the last apart from a few recurrent themes. They all revolve around exploitation in some way, but they focus on theses such as the nature of imperialism (in general and in the Roman context), the way that Roman power would have been felt by the conquered, the ways in which the Romans extorted money from their population, and the way in which individuals defined their identities outside of the standard Roman system. The title actually does a remarkably good job of covering each of these strands. Every theme is passionately argued (often in a way that makes clear their parallels to modern imperialist states) and contains useful information, even if they often verge on the theoretical.
So that’s the book really. It has a lot of good ideas and seems to sum up his views pretty well. I won’t claim that there isn’t good material in here, but I feel like his 100% negative bias is not a good counter to the maybe 60-70% positive bias going the opposite way. Making everything positive into a negative is not correcting a bias, it is removing all nuance. The thing is that I don’t much like the Romans as a people. I find them cruel and unbearably self-righteous. But I can’t bring myself to think of them as nothing but villains because they just weren’t. Mattingly is very conscious of the connection between the Romans and modern imperialism and seems determined to force people to judge the Romans by modern (liberal) standards. I disagree. The Romans were a different beast altogether. Judging them by modern standards is a fairly useless exercise. It’s as simple as that.
This is a book that should be read though, even if you end up dismissing what is said. It provides a very strong point of view that needs to be grappled with in order to truly understand the period. Even though I ended up rejecting most of his arguments the way he constructed them did make me question my inbuilt assumptions. Which is useful every once in a while.
David Mattingly has been writing post-colonial literature for quite a while now and this book seems to really sum up his view of the Romans. Basically his conclusion is that the Romans sucked. They sucked a lot. And people didn’t like living under them. This was the main theme of his book on Roman Britain (An Imperial Possession) as well. Mattingly seems to be driven by a moral imperative that, while admirable in itself, doesn’t seem to have much place in historical studies. It can be summed up in a simple argument: Empires are evil; Rome was an empire; Therefore Rome was evil. Mattingly is a postcolonialist which means that he feels the need to rescue the voice of the underclass (to use a term I despise: the subalterns) from behind the exploitative screen of the upper classes (who don’t get themselves a fancy new term). This is a book about identity and the way in which people define themselves. More importantly it’s a book defending the way he looks at the Romans as a people.
As you might be able to tell I don’t have much liking for the new breed of post-imperialists and some of their cultural historical brethren. They seem to spend more time inventing buzzwords or redefining old ones (gender, identity, memory, etc.) than actually contributing to the field. ‘Identity’ alone shows up more than 100 times in this book. Still, this isn’t the worst book on the topic. It does after all have a genuine purpose: to convince everyone else to hate the Romans. Most people (scholars not excluded) would be willing to admit that the Romans could be pretty nasty people. While Mattingly does provide the interesting point that the opinion of the Romans is rather darker in novels and films than in historical works I don’t really think there’s nearly as much whitewashing of them as he makes out. Sure, some people may admire them, but there’s a major difference between admiring someone and trusting in them blindly. The darker side of Roman imperialism could indeed use some study, but he isn’t likely to win many converts the way he goes about it.
Having got that out of the way I do think that this book has much to offer. It certainly has its heart in the right place. It’s not a bad goal to recover the lost voices of history. I’d argue that it isn’t possible except at rare sites such as Pompeii, but it can’t hurt to try. It’s just that rather than doing this by looking at how the common people lived he wants to look at how they suffered. Because that is the common theme of everyone in this book: Suffering and resistance. If you are an elite living in an unfair power relationship then it is impossible to have an honest relationship with your inferiors. If you are among the poor you have to resent your superiors. It’s good of Mattingly to demonstrate that the Romans were not the monolithic block that we tend to think of them as, but he does so with such extremism and disdain that it’s hard to sympathize with his point of view even when you want to be in complete agreement.
As far as the structure of the book goes it’s pretty logical. This was based off a string of lectures so each chapter is unconnected to the last apart from a few recurrent themes. They all revolve around exploitation in some way, but they focus on theses such as the nature of imperialism (in general and in the Roman context), the way that Roman power would have been felt by the conquered, the ways in which the Romans extorted money from their population, and the way in which individuals defined their identities outside of the standard Roman system. The title actually does a remarkably good job of covering each of these strands. Every theme is passionately argued (often in a way that makes clear their parallels to modern imperialist states) and contains useful information, even if they often verge on the theoretical.
So that’s the book really. It has a lot of good ideas and seems to sum up his views pretty well. I won’t claim that there isn’t good material in here, but I feel like his 100% negative bias is not a good counter to the maybe 60-70% positive bias going the opposite way. Making everything positive into a negative is not correcting a bias, it is removing all nuance. The thing is that I don’t much like the Romans as a people. I find them cruel and unbearably self-righteous. But I can’t bring myself to think of them as nothing but villains because they just weren’t. Mattingly is very conscious of the connection between the Romans and modern imperialism and seems determined to force people to judge the Romans by modern (liberal) standards. I disagree. The Romans were a different beast altogether. Judging them by modern standards is a fairly useless exercise. It’s as simple as that.
This is a book that should be read though, even if you end up dismissing what is said. It provides a very strong point of view that needs to be grappled with in order to truly understand the period. Even though I ended up rejecting most of his arguments the way he constructed them did make me question my inbuilt assumptions. Which is useful every once in a while.
October 29, 2018
This is definitely a book for those who study Roman History, but I still discovered many intriguing (and useful) insights within Mattingly’s work.
As I’m not a historian, and I’ll struggle to review this as a result, I’ll just whet your appetite with some words from the author’s conclusion:
.
“It should not be controversial to state that the Roman Empire was not a universally loved institution, but the academic agendas sustaining the study of its literature, history, art and archaeology have tended to perpetuate an unrealistically rosy view of its operation. If nothing else, I hope to have reminded readers that experiencing empire is not always comfortable and that, for many subjects, exploitation was all they ever knew of the voracious behemoth that was Rome.” —Professor David J. Mattingly (p.273-274).
As I’m not a historian, and I’ll struggle to review this as a result, I’ll just whet your appetite with some words from the author’s conclusion:
.
“It should not be controversial to state that the Roman Empire was not a universally loved institution, but the academic agendas sustaining the study of its literature, history, art and archaeology have tended to perpetuate an unrealistically rosy view of its operation. If nothing else, I hope to have reminded readers that experiencing empire is not always comfortable and that, for many subjects, exploitation was all they ever knew of the voracious behemoth that was Rome.” —Professor David J. Mattingly (p.273-274).
July 16, 2016
This book is obviously not for general reader.
There is a huge chunk of footnotes, references, and background that may look challenging and alien to readers unfamiliar with the subject. But when the readers get past that, Mattingly illuminates on how we traditionally see Roman Empire.
Roman Empire is not just a civilization - it is an imperial power, an ancient colonialism, if you may. Back and forth, Mattingly elucidates the experience of marginal subject as people living and being integrated to a colonial power, that is Roman Empire. Through violence and indirect acculturation - or "Romanization" as the traditional look usually employs it - the subject of the empire is integrated, akin how the colonial Dutch and British worked their way centuries later. The most fascinating part is how colonial discourse on the empire affects our modern perception of Roman Empire, as Mattingly shows in one chapter investigateing the narrative in 19th century Libya (at that time under the subjugation of Italian and French)
Mattingly's writing can be tedious at times, but it collects many amount of models and various references that makes this book a worthy read.
There is a huge chunk of footnotes, references, and background that may look challenging and alien to readers unfamiliar with the subject. But when the readers get past that, Mattingly illuminates on how we traditionally see Roman Empire.
Roman Empire is not just a civilization - it is an imperial power, an ancient colonialism, if you may. Back and forth, Mattingly elucidates the experience of marginal subject as people living and being integrated to a colonial power, that is Roman Empire. Through violence and indirect acculturation - or "Romanization" as the traditional look usually employs it - the subject of the empire is integrated, akin how the colonial Dutch and British worked their way centuries later. The most fascinating part is how colonial discourse on the empire affects our modern perception of Roman Empire, as Mattingly shows in one chapter investigateing the narrative in 19th century Libya (at that time under the subjugation of Italian and French)
Mattingly's writing can be tedious at times, but it collects many amount of models and various references that makes this book a worthy read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews