Product Description

The centuries after the end of Roman control of Britain in AD 410 are some of the most vital in Britain's history - yet some of the least understood. "Warlords" brings to life a world of ambition, brutality and violence in a politically fragmented land, and provides a compelling new history of an age that would transform Britain. By comparing the archaeology against the available historical sources for the period, "Warlords" presents a coherent picture of the political and military machinations of the fifth and sixth centuries that laid the foundations of English and Welsh history. Included are the warring personalities of the local leaders and a look at the enigma of King Arthur. Some warlords sought power within the old Roman framework; some used an alternative British approach; and, others exploited the emerging Anglo-Saxon system - but for all warlords, the struggle was for power.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41170 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Stuart Laycock studied Classics at Cambridge. He has worked as a writer, and as an aid worker in Bosnia and Kosovo. His particular combination of original research combined with first-hand experience of the dynamics of tribal conflict brings a unique perspective to this subject. He is also the author of Britannia: The Failed State, nominated for Book of the Year 2009 by Current Archaeology.

Customer Reviews

Warlords
This seems to be Laycock building on the theories he put forward in his last book Britannia the Failed State about how Britain fragmented at the end of Roman Britain into kingdoms based on the British tribes, in a sort of Bosnia scenario. I thought the scenario he presented there was certainly one of the more convincing approaches to the end of Roman Britain and, judging by this book, it works reasonably well in terms of post-Roman Britain as well.

What Laycock does is look at Warlords, both British and Anglo-Saxon, in terms of their geographic background and sees how they could have interacted to create 5th and 6th century history. He uses text as well as archaeological evidence, to build his picture and it seems to work. He's also quite easy to read compared to some historians which is always a plus.

He's got in here the kind of people you'd expect like a bit on Arthur and a chapter on Ambrosius Aurelianus. But he's also got people you don't see so much about like Gerontius, a guy who conquered Spain just at the end of the Roman period. There's quite a fun bit on some Welsh warlords with some juicy details of private lives. He's also got some new theories on where people like Vortigern and Ambrosius might have been based and how they operated, and he's quite convincing on the way he sees the period as a battle between different kingdoms, not just between Britons and Anglo-Saxons.

An interesting attempt to get to grips with the 5th century
I found this book enjoyable and well written. Laycock seems to be to some extent defying the modern convention that you can't say anything much about what happened historically in the 5th century in this country. He uses archaeology to show that a lot of what the traditional sources say about the periods makes sense, but he is usually careful to point out that this does not necessarily mean that what the sources say is all true. He doesn't for instance go anything like as far as people like Morris in The Age of Arthur.

He argues plausibly enough that the Warlords of tradition fit easily into his view of the 5th century as a period dominated by wars between British and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms based on the old British tribes and he's got some interesting things to say on the formation of separate British and Anglo-Saxon identities after an initially much more mixed period. His view of the Anglo-Saxon invasion seems to fit more with other modern views than the old simplistic version. He's good on Vortigern too. It never seemed feasible to see Vortigern as ruling all across Britain at a time when Britain had basically collapsed and all the evidence points to small political units, not big ones. And his linkage of Riothamus with the contemporary start of Byzantine trade in the region is thought-provoking.

All in all an interesting read, and at least you feel the author is not afraid to come up with some new ideas and say a few controversial things.

Consistency and Written Sources
This book is refreshing because it dares to use written sources, and shows Post Roman Britons as something other than hapless victims. It also references some good archaeology, to include the author's belt buckle studies. But the book cannot give any clear-cut examples of its main contention: that the Britons retained their tribal hostilities over 400 years of Pax Romana, and then engaged in civil wars so intense that they somehow failed to notice the Saxon Conquest. This also requires that each British warlord be the leader of only one small tribal civitas. Vortigern becomes leader of just the Dobunni because of a very dubious genealogy; Ambrosius becomes an Atrebate simply because he's Vortigern's foe; Riothamus, the leader of a 12,000 man expedition to Gaul, becomes a ruler of sparsely populated Dumnonia because of later artifacts from Byzantium. But ironically, Gildas and Patrick, our best sources, never mention "tribal" affiliations; they call all Britons "citizens".

What is most puzzling in a book using written sources is the author's disregard of what Patrick, Gildas and others say was Britain's main danger: the sea-borne threat from Pict, Scot and Saxon. Also, while the book eagerly accepts Gildas' single mention of Saxon mercenaries as the key to Britain's fall, anything else Gildas says that happens to disagree with the author's hypothesis is labeled an "exaggeration."

This is sad, because much of the information the book presents actually confirms the written sources. The author's belt buckle study shows that Britain had plenty of local armed forces to defend herself after the break with Rome--and, as he acknowledges at one point, were probably better disciplined than the Saxons. British belt buckles from every corner of Britain found between Dorchester on Thames and Cirencester confirm just what Gildas says: Britons were being driven into the sea (i.e. Bristol Channel) in the 440's, but recovered in the 450's. Finally, the Germanic artifacts from the 450's in eastern Kent confirm that the first federates were intended to see off sea-borne foes--not putative British warlords at the other end of Kent.

No, it is not impossible that Britain was ridden with tribal wars after the break with Rome. But literally dozens of competing theories that also ignore Gildas' testimony could equally be true. It might thus be time for scholars to go back to square one. Re-examine every scrap of evidence--not just the archaeology--and then come up with some good hypotheses for what really happened when the Romans left.