Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070

Preamble:Overall this is an insightful, honest and comprehensive work. This is not, however, as at least reviewer points out, a narrative history. If you're looking for a "big history" narrative style of kings, queens, dates, battles and vikings this is not the book for you. The reader may note some surprise at this state of affairs given that this work comprises the 2nd volume of Penguin's History of Britain. Obviously when a reader sees a publisher's "History" of such-and-such notions of streamlined narratives and grandeur fill the head. And editor David Cannadine's penultimate volume certainly fit that bill, at least within the confines of what's acceptable in post-modern historiography!The simple fact of the matter is: the paucity of documented (and incontrovertibly reliable) sources from the time of the departure of Rome's legions to the Normal Conquest is so severe that any narrative style history must necessarily founder on the twin rocks of factually-unwarranted overgeneralization and hubristic misinterpretation (those are some big rocks!). Instead our author reverts to the archaeological record as the original source of truth. In this she has a masterly command of the subject matter and comes across as eminently well qualified to such an extent that when she does make a generalization it carries with it the weight of fact. Most of what she discusses though is (and must be) caveated with the probabilistic language of incomplete inquiry. Which is to say that sometimes it can seem there is very little we can be certain about during this period.Here are some key takeaways I was left with:-The Anglo-Saxon "invasion" of the British Isles is misnamed as the evidence doesn't suggest a uniform migration of Germanic peoples to the Isles using violence and rapine to achieve settlement. Instead the evidence suggests extended family groups travelling in small boats (plus ca change?) to forge small settlements (often in marginal, unpopulated areas) over a period of many decades. Here the archaeological evidence is very convincing. No stone is unturned (pardon the pun) in extracting and inferring information from burials and settlement sites.-The amount that can be discerned about material culture by excavating said sites shames anyone who believes that narrative history is the end-all and be-all of historiography. We learn vast amounts about intercultural European trade; who had which luxury goods and who broke their backs for a living; fashion and styles of a variety of socio-economically placed individuals; and the rise of towns and agriculture. The student of modern day inequality could learn much from how resources and surpluses appeared to be divided in such times.-The notion of "Dark" ages must be continually revisited. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't. We find silks from Byzantium and garnets from India as well as countless goods from the Rhine and France. While these goods were no doubt few and limited it was not as if Britain reverted to some Stone Age after Rome.-The immediate post Roman world included many features that I was previously unaware of. While Roman cities were mostly abandoned, many towns were not and settlement patterns indicate that Brittons were not immediately struck with poverty and ruin - in fact an argument could be fashioned that the century following Rome's retreat life was quite idyllic for many. However in the absence of the sustained capital investment the Roman military occupation provided (along with collateral trade benefits - traders routinely used extra storage space aboard military transports for moving civilian goods) British material culture declined with increasing rapidity... though the evidence of an anarchistic break-down of law and order is only limited.-This book does not attempt to draw any conclusions about the nature of the human political condition and how it may have given rise to Feudalism and the social structures thereof. This may have been deemed outside the author's scope but it does allow the reader to form their own opinions - how nice! It does provide many facts (based on the excavatory evidence) based on the evolution of material culture that the informed reader may add to their arsenal and deploy in concluding how society in post Roman Britain transformed from Imperial "freedom" to Feudal submission (or however one feels inclined to characterize it).-While there is scant evidence of prosperity in the 6th and 7th century, the 8th and 9th centuries were ones in which those with surplus producing property become ever wealthier, deployed their surpluses in ways that resulted in increased trade and town formation and resulted in agricultural intensification and settlement clustering (that had the effect of reducing the lifespans and health of the surplus producing population). This was not a period devoid of prosperous people.Overall one comes away from this book armed with much evidence about how lives where shaped economically and socially, an awareness of what's still missing from the record, a healthy skepticism of whatever contemporary sources are extant and a sense of what many aspects of life must have been like. One does not come away with much knowledge of which rulers did what (if indeed they did) or the strategy of the viking Great Army or Alfred the Great (who's sobriquet was invented by 19th century historians) or what lead to the end of Anglo-Saxon control of Britain. But the emphasis on material culture archaeology does leave me convinced more than ever that so-called trends and movements in history, articulated in narrative history, are not necessarily wrong as much as they must be integrated into existing societal/economic/cultural trends of those times. If I may savage the analogy: we don't so much get an answer to the hoary chicken-egg paradox but we get plenty of compelling evidence about individual chickens and eggs, to the extent that we cannot help but be irreversibly informed.

A bit dry at times, which isn't really a surprise I guess. It is a long slog through to the end, as century gets layered onto century. But one thing is for certain, if you want to sweep away all the misinformation and junk you think you know about the period after roughly 300AD in Britain, this will clear it all up. It will provide a much clearer picture of regional differences in Britain. and mostly it will change how you think about the so called Dark Ages.(I put 'so called' in front of 'Dark Ages' because that is the term people mostly will recognize, otherwise when you see someone put 'so-called' in front of that term they are about to tell you how they weren't Dark after all. well that isn't going to happen here. In fact, a lot of what happened is pretty dark in truth, but it isn't the history that you have come to know. And the actual story is pretty interesting, anyway, that is enough for a parenthetical remark).The story is grim, it isn't often pretty, but it also isn't necessarily as brutal as you might think. in fact, the brutal story you hear about is pretty much invented almost contemporaneously, that is the main point of this book. these weren't all nice people, but they invented or vastly exaggerated the big battles, wars, invasions and ethnic annihilation as a way to validate the new leaders' claims of authority ("we won our rights by battle, fair and square", which, if you are a warlord looking for a validating origin story is a lot better I guess than "we just moved into the neighborhood and took over eventually"). I know this book forever changed how I looked at early British history and the beginnings of the thugs that became ennobled in short order as kings. I mostly had a lot of it backwards before, accepting the assumptions from even very early writers who essentially were publicists for their local kings. Now it is cleared up.4 stars only because it is dry and it takes some work to finish it. Otherwise well worth the effort.

After Mattingly's excellent (though dense) 'An Imperial Possession' I was really looking forward to this book. However, what a disappointment. The approach is agenda driven not historical. Thus the book lacks the necessary frame to process and understand the evidence. Rulers are deliberately avoided which means we are given fragmentary evidence with no context. How did kingdoms interact? How did this affect the people? Quite simply there is not enough evidence available for the kind of approach Fleming wishes to adopt. She then compounds this by saying practically nothing on Scotland, Wales or Ireland. This is supposed to be a history of Britain. However this is a remarkably history free account. An inclusion of kings and famous people is essential for this period but pretty much all of the writings have been ignored. Others have handled the era much better and it is sad to see such a second rate work included in such a prestigious series.

I completely agree with the previous reviewer. This book is disappointing and lacks substance. There are many statements about the development of societies in eastern Britain but no references to back them up. True, there is a long list of further reading, but this does not help to identify the sources of the assertions made. There is a great deal of emphasis on the development of a class system but again, with no direct references. Western Britain is almost an afterthought. I have given 2 stars because there are some interesting passages, specifically about archeological excavations but I would not recommend this book if you are looking for a serious historical work on the period.

Relatively easy reading for the subject. Not too detailed so fairly light touch.

An excellent read on the life and times of ordinary people living at this time

Present for my husband as he wanted to know more about British history. This book didn’t disappoint, as it explained away a lot of previously believed myths.The book arrived on time in good condition.