Roman Britain / by R.G. Collingwood.

R. G. Collingwood

Date:: 1924

Credit: Roman Britain / by R.G. Collingwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$to the present day, when tracts of country like England and France have been painfully and slowly welded into conscious unity. Before that process began, the unity was simply not there. A Brigantian from York had no more reason to feel away from home among the Atrebates of Arras than among the Atrebates of Hampshire. Britain, for him, was not a unit of national con¬ sciousness but simply an arbitrary division of the Roman Empire; his loyalty was divided be¬ tween the Empire and his tribe or town. For this reason the very title of this book is apt to be misleading. For a citizen of the Roman Empire, Britain had no individu¬ ality of its own except a purely political individu¬ ality, like that of an electoral district. The student who approaches Roman Britain as merely an episode in English history cannot see this very simple fact. His point of view makes him forget that England herself, at the beginning of English history, did not exist, even by the name of Britain ; and that England is the product of a historical process. Thus, in the history to which we have already referred, Gardiner remarks on the melancholy fact that the Britons had no patriotism, that they did not feel called upon to c die for Britain \ Such lack of patriotism he feels to be a reproach both to the Britons and to the Roman Empire. But the fact is that, writing from the distorting point of view of a historian of England, he expects the .THE SfAL ERKIVS'VEXLAl KITANO S-LXVIII Tombstone of Barates 2535.1 B$

Roman Britain / by R.G. Collingwood.

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