Fighting Scotians, Gratillonius thinks:
"If Rome had civilized Hivernia, long ago when that was possible, what soldiers for her its sons would be!" (p. 284)
One Irish response to the idea of fighting for another country:
Twas far better to die ‘neath an Irish sky, Than at Suvla or Sud el Bar‘
-see here.
An old man in a Dublin pub told me, "The one thing the English did for us: If they hadn't been there, we'd've had the French or the Spanish over and they'd've been worse!"
How might history have diverged if the Roman Empire had conquered Ireland? What Gratillonius speculates about, the Time Patrol might experience.
12 comments:
The Roman Empire -could- have conquered Ireland (or Scotland, which came close three times) if it had been worth their while.
The two campaigns in Scotland which showed the possibilities were the product of an ambitious general-governor (Agricola), a policy decision by an Emperor who rarely left Rome (Antonius Pius, the Antonine Wall) and Septimus Severus.
The basic reason they didn't follow through, apart from sudden emergencies demanding troops elsewhere, was that the country was the ass-end of nowhere and didn't have much worth taking. Britannia itself was an expensive proposition; three full legions and their ausxiliaries (nearly 30,000 men) in a province much smaller and poorer than, say Spain or Africa Proconsuliaris, both of which needed only one.
In the -long run-, it would provably have been worth the effort to subdue the whole of the British Isles, with lower long-term expenses.
But in the long run, as the saying goes, we're all dead.
But a few things falling out differently -- an Emperor living a decade longer, and so forth -- and it would have been done.
Note that modern nationalist historiography doesn't apply to the Roman Empire.
Britannia was not a Roman -colony-, in the modern sense of the term. As far as the local elites were concerned, after a few generations it was -Roman-. They were Romans, as much as people in Gaul or Pannonia or Italy or Hispania.
Yes. Hivernians, if "civilized," would also have been Romanized. In fact, in our history, they adopted a Roman religious identity.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: In many ways some kind of union of the British Isles would have been beneficial for all concerned, and could have come about naturally if Protestants hadn't come to power in England after 1558. The English Protestants, driven by anti-Catholicism, proceeded to treat a stubbornly Catholic people with a short sighted callousness and oppressive stupidity which alienated the Irish.
A Catholic Ireland in some kind of union with a Catholic England would probably have bumped along together no worse than Catholic Brittany did with the rest of Catholic France.
Mr. Stirling: I agree, the Roman Empire could have conquered Ireland and, after a few generations, been so thoroughly Romanized the people there would consider themselves Romans. The conquest might have been best achieved during the reigns of Domitian or Trajan.
Also, I think Ireland was a much richer place than was Scotland north of the Antonine Wall, and hence well worth the trouble of conquering.
Ad astra! Sean
I have seen the claim that English-Irish relations were already so bad that if England had stayed Catholic Ireland would have gone Protestant, just to not be the same variety of Christian as England.
Jim: snerk.
Though Henry VIII probably caused a lot of the problems because he pretty much ignored Ireland.
He could probably have carried a fair chunk of the island with him when he broke with Rome; at the time, the Church presence in Ireland was rather feeble. Clergy were few and far between, for example.
By Elizabeth's time, the Counter-Reformation church had an increasing presence.
Kaor, Jim and Mr. Stirling!
Jim: I am skeptical, if only because we don't know what would have happened if Elizabeth I had decided to honor her promises to Queen Mary and stay a Catholic.
By the 1700's even decent Protestants were shamed and appalled by the degrading cruelty and corruption of English "rule" of Ireland. E.g., see Jonathan Swift's satirical "Drapier's Letters" and "A Modest Proposal."
I mentioned Brittany because, up to the late 1500's, there were strong separatist sentiments there. The beef Bretons had with the rest of France was political, not religious.
Mr. Stirling: And that was good, that by 1558 the Catholic Reformation had cleaned up so much of the laxity, abuses, and venality marring the Church in Ireland and the rest of Europe!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it also became a much more efficient persecutor...
Sean: Elizabeth promised Mary that because Mary would have killed her otherwise.
It's an ancient principle of English law -- dating back to Anglo-Saxon times -- that "a forced oath is no oath".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
True, one thinks of the Spanish Inquisition. IIRC, from 1490 to 1790 about 3000 persons were sentenced to death by the Inquisition. I have no doubt at least 90% should not have been executed. The other ten percent might have been guilty of serious crimes like murder.
I still disagree with you about Elizabeth I, a woman I continue to regard VERY coldly. The English Catholics were no threat to her and loyally accepted her accession as queen. There was no need for her to ram thru a RELUCTANT Parliament the Second Act of Supremacy in 1559.
As a Protestant Elizabeth was very unsatisfactory to many Protestants. Notoriously, she disliked the Calvinists and continued to retain some Catholic beliefs.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the Protestant element only accepted Elizabeth because she -was- (moderately) Protestant. If she'd tried to maintain Catholicism, she'd have ended up in exile or dead.
Furthermore, that accurately represented her own beliefs, and her assessment of English national interests, which were threatened by Spain.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
While I agree your argument is reasonable, the problem is other arguments, just as reasonable, can be proposed in rebuttal. We don't know what would have happened if Elizabeth had decided to maintain the Marian settlement--my view remains that since English Catholics were AT LEAST as numerous as the Protestants, she still had a good chance of remaining queen by winning their support.
As for Spain an alliance with France, or even just a semi-alliance, would have checked the threat from Madrid. And remaining Catholic would have made that much easier to do.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment