Explain Like I'm Five

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How did Celtic culture survive in Wales and Cornwall despite Roman invasion? (feddit.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I understand that the Romans were unable to conquer Scotland so they build Hadrian's Wall (which explains the survival of older cultures there). But as far as I know they occupied Wales and Cornwall, so how is it that the Celtic culture (language etc.) survived in those places?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As @[email protected] correctly highlighted, it wasn't even Latin that displaced so much of the local language. It was the Germanic tribals invading the islands later on. So I'll focus specifically on the Roman role.

The Roman process of Latinisation was rather slow. For reference: Gallia was conquered in 58-50 BCE, but odds are that Gaulish survived until the ~sixth? century of the common era, 600 years later. That's because the Romans didn't really give much of a fuck about what rural local folks spoke - if they rebel you kill them and done, problem solved.

Instead they were actively placing colonies in the conquered regions (to give land to Roman citizens) and converting the local elites to Roman habits and customs, because unlike the farmers the elites could be actually dangerous if rebellious.

The same applies to Britannia. Except that it was conquered ~a century after Gallia, it's a fucking island in the middle of nowhere with harder access, it doesn't grow grapes or olives, grain production in the Empire was mostly in Africa and Egypt so odds are that they couldn't reliably grow their wheat variety there either... really, the island was mostly a tin mining outpost.

Another factor to consider is the distribution of the Roman settlements in the area:

Are you noticing a pattern? Most settlements were in the Southeast, specially the larger ones (in yellow, full of Roman citizens). Perhaps not surprisingly the extant Brittonic languages are spoken further West, when you couple this with the tribal invasions. (That's simply because of the Fretum Oceani aka Strait of Dover. It was easier to reach the island by there.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for explaining this. So were there many Roman citizens in Britannia, or was it a pretty small ratio of Romans to locals? Did the Roman soldiers give commands to the local elites, who would then tell the locals what to do? And would you say that life changed much for the locals under the new rule?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

So were there many Roman citizens in Britannia, or was it a pretty small ratio of Romans to locals?

Relevant detail: this changed a lot in 212.

Before that date, Roman citizenship basically implied Roman culture, language and lifestyle; but in that year Caracalla passed an edict granting citizenship to all free men in the Empire, so a lot of non-Latin-speaking locals were to be considered Roman citizens. (And taxed as such).

That said, I'd estimate the ratio of Latin speakers in the province to be 3~6% in the 4th century, based on a few Wikipedia numbers:

Roman army, family, dependents: 125k people. Likely 100% Latin speakers. You also get a few bureaucrats but they're numerically insignificant.
Urban population: 240k people, including the above. The others were likely a mix of Brittonic and Latin speakers.
Total population: 3.6 million people. Unless urban, likely to be Brittonic speakers.

Did the Roman soldiers give commands to the local elites, who would then tell the locals what to do?

Not quite. The army was responsible for the enforcement of the rules, but the ones commanding the local elites and the army were former consuls appointed as governors.

And would you say that life changed much for the locals under the new rule?

I'm not sure at all. But I guess that, for both the slaves and the general working class, there was barely a difference. You still work to the bone, and die an ungrateful death, no matter if you're doing it for the sake of a local tribal chief or for some "imperator" in the middle of nowhere.