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.
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Reviews with images
How Britain Evolved Post-Rome
Very readable. Has gather much information and educated supposition via archeological discovery through grave exhumations on life for the every-day man, the evolution of towns, culture, and social stratification. Nearly 50 pages of recommended further reading divided by chapter and subject. Only 2.5 pages of sources; no notes. No maps, diagrams or other illustrations. Mildly adequate index. Very good for the type of information provided. Excellent arguements given for suppositions taken. Recommended.
Top reviews from other countries
Mr. B. Heller
Fleming does an excellent job in making this an entirely readable book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 14, 2015Mr. Nicholas W. Le Huquet
Great Book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 11, 2012
John Ferngrove
A specifically material, not political history
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2023