Rome, Britain and the Anglo Saxons

by Nicholas J. Higham

An examination of the accepted view that the foundation of Anglo-Saxon England derives from mass immigration, stressing instead the evidence for population continuity as well as the continuity of administrative and land use characteristics. This book tackles the problems of transition from Roman Britain to England through all the relevant academic disciplines, with a greater emphasis given to landscape evidence than has been done before and offers an alternative view based on acculturation, by which Anglo-Saxon England was largely peopled by communities whose ethnic origins were Celtic but who adopted the culture and language of the warrior aristocracy who had evicted the British landowners.

Genres: History, British Literature

Paperback

First published April 25, 1992

About the author

Librarian note: There are other authors with the same name.

Dr. Nicholas John Higham, aka N.J. Higham, is Professor in Early Medieval and Landscape History in the History Subject Area in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester. His research interests focus on two interrelated areas: the History and Archaeology of the Early Middle Ages in Britain, and the Landscape and Settlement History of North West and North England in the Middle Ages. He has supervised many successful research students in both areas and is always interested in enquiries concerning future research.

Reviews

[Peter Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons, by Nick Higham, 1993, 236 pages,

This is a superb book. It details the economic and social decline of Roman Britain, showing the effects this had upon the place. Higham uses this to establish the foundations of Sub-Roman Britain, which he sees as essential to understanding the conditions prevailing at the arrival of the Saxons and for explaining how parts of eastern Britain became England. It is an excellent account of what the decline of the Roman system meant for Britain and it really does lay a very plausible foundation for the subsequent condition of Britain.

The first chapter, though, is a great introduction to the historiography, explaining how the Germanist school of thought was the default one for a long time, but without really being tested and how ideas were matched to it rather than the other way around. It is following this that Higham provides the context of how Romanisation affected Britain and then how the destabilisation of that system had a detrimental affect. He then applies these conclusions to the Sub-Roman period, taking into account the differences between highland (not so Romanised) and lowland (by comparison, highly Romanised) Britain. During all of this, he provides evidence from archaeology, texts, palaeobotany, place-name studies, language studies, etc, that demonstrate that his theories are supportable. Higham then concludes with his own hypothesis, which builds upon what he has written. This hypothesis, that of an elite take over, is highly plausible from the evidence.

This book is a bit dated now and there have been advances in archaeology, technical developments and subsequent interpretations, but if anything, subsequent work has reinforced his conclusions.

There are no end or footnotes, although there are citations in the text.

Errata: 337 AD is the date of death of Constantine instead of Diocletion.

This is a book well worth reading.

[Flint Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hated this book! And then I read it again. We have this picture in our heads, generated by scholars most people don't even know the names of, that hordes of Germanic-speaking tribesmen migrated to Britain. Professor Higham here quietly and completely dispels that myth. He does it using his formidable knowledge of landscape archeology and supplements it well with other evidence. He also writes in a relaxed style that a layman can follow without too much trouble. That I hated it at first was because of my own shortcomings. In reading Higham, I have learned to keep my mind open.