A Pillock's Guide To British History

Nero is dead, and it got so bad after that people must have almost missed him. The Year Of The Four Emperors is exactly what it says on the tin.

Britain was in a right ole state after Boudicca's rebellion. To be fair though Rome was in a bigger state by 69, in the Year Of The Four Emperors. Let's see how the Romans and the Britons coped with that.

You've heard of Emperor Nero. We all have. We doubt it was good stuff you did hear. apart from him getting a decent tune out of a fiddle. Let's have a look at if he was as big a dickhead as he looked.

1849 – Denmark sacks off their absolute monarchy and swaps it on for a far more manageable constitutional monarchy. So what is an absolute monarchy? For that matter what’s a constitutional monarchy? And do they still exist? Yeah, they do. Transcript Denmark gets itself a constitution and becomes a Constitutional Monarchy rather than an Absolute Monarchy. The monarch to sign up to that was Frederick VII. But why should you care? Well unless you are Danish, there’s no particular reason. But we are sad like that. We think it’s important because an absolute monarchy is where the monarch, so like a king or queen, can technically do what they want. It’s pretty much how most places were ran for most of history. It wasn’t all that bad when you got yourself a decent one., who was good at winning wars or spotted that their kingdom would be worse off if all the poor people were dead from starvation. On the other hand, it was definitely a problem when the monarch wasn’t good at those things. Which can easily happen when the qualification is 50% winning the correct sperm race and 50% outliving your parent. Look at the monarchs in England. Elizabeth I was a decent queen for what the English needed. She kicked off a bit of colony building in the Americas, which was bad for the people over there, but very good for the English. She didn’t lose any important wars. And she had a quality ginger wig. Then you have Charles I. He was very much on board with the idea of an absolute king. He reckoned he was appointed by God, so he could do what he wanted. Only what he wanted was stupid, and he was a proper dick about it. So his parliament, who didn’t get a say in how the place should be run, chopped his head off. If you want a modern version of Elizabeth and Charles, just think about Elizabeth and Charles. Long live the queen I say, at least she keeps quiet. Monarchies are still all over the place. Let’s start with your absolute monarchies. There are sort of seven. Five of them are your classic absolute monarchies. They are Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Qatar, Oman and Swaziland. Oman has been ruled by Sultans of the House of Said since 1744. Brunei have had Sultans since the 14th Century. There was a little gap from the 1880s to 1984, when they were being ran by the British, but there was still technically a Sultan in place. Qatar is similar, beng ruler by emirs of the Al-Thani family since the 1850s, with it being under British rule to a certain extent from 1913 until the 70s. Your standard evil absolute monarchy bogeyman is Saudi Arabia, who are ran, unsurprisingly, by the House of Saud. The current set up was established in 1932, with Ibn Saud taking over the place. He was 57 when he got the job. Since then, there have been 6 kings, all of them his sons. That family live to quite an old age. Between our Queen and their King, it looks like monarching makes for a long life. Who would have thought it. The most interesting of all of these absolute monarchies is Swaziland, although we should say has recently been renamed eSwanti. Which makes it sound like an attempt to make Swaziland modern, although if that’s what they were going for it maybe should have been iSwanti. Turns out, that wasn’t the aim though and it’s actually what the nation used to be called. The current king is Mswati III. And technically Swaziland is a Didactic Monarchy, because the king is jointly ruler with his mother. Although we are told his mam, Ntfombi, is mostly a symbolic head of state. To be honest, we aren’t up to date on our eSwanti politics, so Wikipedia did the heavy lifting on that one. There are two other weird types of absolute monarchies. The United Arab Emirates is a federal absolute monarchy, which sounds mental to us. There are seven Emirates, ruled by 7 emirs. They joined together in 1972,

The Romans have been winding everyone up. Come 60 AD and Boudica was having none of it. She and her mates had a go at messing things up.

The Romans loved a bit of religion. We are told they took it seriously, although if you see their gods, that's hard to believe. What they did take seriously was religions they didn't like. Ask the druids. Except you can't. The Romans wiped them out.

The Romans are making progress, but it keeps going a bit wrong. From heroic sounding freedom fighters to tetchy divorces, the Britons are making it hard.

Rome was all about it's army. In fact the whole Empire feels like it was an army with some cities hanging off it. It made them terrible neighbors but a pretty successful civilisation. Who how was it organised?

The Romans have landed and they are here to stay. For a bit. So how did they get on cracking down on the Britons in the early years?

Roman citizenship was more contentious than European Union citizenship. We cover what it was, who got it and what it got you. It was pretty useful, if only as a handy bribe to the scroty regions of the Roman Empire. Like Britannia.

Pre Roman Britain is a bit like English football before the Premier League. Loads must have happened, but nobody talks about it. To be fair, for pre-Roman Britain, that’s mostly because we don’t know all that much about it. So here’s what 21st Century Pillock could find. Transcript – The Tribes Of Britain. The One With The Pre- Roman Geography We finally have Roman Britain. They are here and they are here to stay. For a bit anyway. Hopefully, that won’t come to a surprise to anyone who was under the impression that Britain was still part of the Roman Empire. As we have mentioned before it wasn’t as simple as that., you can’t just turn up and declared a province, it’s not like the Romans were involved into the day to day running of the people in Scotland. Before we go diving back into how the Romans went about getting stuck into the rest of Britain, we should pause and go over what the state of play was around 44 AD. We are quite aware that our history of Britain has so far mostly ignored the British. Which is impressive if you think about it. This episode we are going to ask the questions, Who was around before the Romans? What does a croissant taste like with gravy on it? And have the Scottish always been like that? The Britons were Celts, like a lot of Europe. They spoke a version of Celtic called insular Celtic, as opposed to continental Celtic. It’s interesting to know the people of Britain have never had any of ladeda European shit. Except as far as we can tell the whole Celtic thing is a bit of a red herring for modern folk. Yes, there was a common language, but a language doesn’t make a culture. Austrians are not the same as Germans. Americans speak what passes for English, but we are no Americans. As we have mentioned before Britain was split into tribes, and they did have different approaches to life. As with everything so far, we are basically relying on what’s left of the Roman sources and how proper historians have interpreted them over the years. We found quite a few conflicting bits of info, and it gave us a bit of a headache. We have narrowed it down to 26 tribes which were around in Britain when the Romans found an interest in the place, and here is a whistle-stop tour, with where they were and any interesting bits of info we could find. We can start around the South East where the first pitched up, in modern Kent, which is the Southeastern tip of England. Knocking about here were the Cantium aka the Cantiaci. Julius Caesar came across this lot, and had some fairly nice words to say about them, which can be translated as: “Of all these by far the most civilised are those who dwell in Kent – a district which is entirely maritime (which district is all maritime) – and do not differ much from Gallic custom.” They popped up in Julius’ second invasion when four kings of the Cantiaci tried to attack the Romans ships while Julius was busy further north. Julius even lists the four kings as Segovax, Carvilius, Taximagulus and Cingetorix. Which, we like because it’s still cool to us that we have the names of some Celtic folk living in Britain 2000 odd years ago.  It also shows how it’s even more complicated than just Britain being split into different tribes. This one tribe had four ‘kings’ or chieftains. Were they all equal kings of different groups within the tribe? Was one of the head king, with some sub-kings? We couldn’t find any answers on that, so it looks like there isn’t a record of it. Don’t worry though. This is going to get vaguer. To the west of Kent were a group called the Atrebates. These were a strange lot. We have come across a couple of notable members of the Atrebates already. The most recent was Verica, the bloke who got deposed as a king and went crying to the Romans to literally ask for an invasion of Britain. We bet he had no friends in school. The other Atrebates VIP we know was Verica’s dad,

Has Rome got actually got themselves a decent Roman Emperor? Not only an effective Emperor but one who doesn't cause a civil war every 5 minutes? Don't get too excited though, it wasn't all beer and skittles in Claudius' Rome.

There is a new emperor in town, and Claudius wants a piece of Britain. Finally. We were starting to think it was something we said. So why did Claudius finally get it done properly? How did he get it done? Was he a master of PR?

Julius died and left the place in disarray. Octavian picks up the pieces and treats Rome to yet another civil war or two. The folk who survive that, have to put up with a bad paranoid emperor and a bad mentally unstable emperor. It's all gone to shit.

Julius left Britain after invading twice and he didn't come back. What happened in the place after that? It's all a bit fuzzy, but one thing we can know is that no bugger did any exciting invading. Find out how exactly they didn't invade here.

What happened to Julius and the Roman Republic after he invaded Britain? Quite a lot. Including a few civil wars and a shiny new Empire. Transcript – The End Of The Roman Republic   We have spent a couple of episodes of our History of Britain with Julius Caesar. He features a bit in British history, but he was a bit more important for Rome. He was a massive nail in the coffin of the Roman Republic and brought about the Roman Empire. It doesn’t sound like a massive difference, but if you think about how that would go down now you get a better picture of it. The Roman Republic was ran a bit similar to a modern democracy. There was the Consuls, who were like Presidents or Prime Minister, the Senate who were like an Upper House similar to the American Senate and Assemblies where normal folk could get involved, like the House of Commons. In theory, this meant that Rome was run by its people. The move to an Empire meant that the place was run by one bloke, no matter how mad he was. Our politicians may be arseholes, but they are the arseholes we picked. Let’s roll back a bit, and have a look how the change came about. Before, and during the time Julius was knocking about in Gaul and Britain he was a member of a trio of politicians called the First Triumvirate. This was Julius Caesar himself, a very popular commander and politician, Pompey the Great, a very successful military general and Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of the richest people in Rome. The three of them worked together to help each other dominate the Senate. They formed the Triumvirate in 59 BC, when they worked together to get Julius elected to the top job of Consul. The general tone of all of this is that the three men worked together for their own personal ends and they didn’t particularly get on. They didn’t even necessarily share a political view. Pompey and Crassus had both been Consul at the same time, and they didn’t get much done because of all the disagreements between the two of them. At the time politicians divided into two rough camps. They weren’t exactly political parties, but the two groups didn’t get on. The groups were the Populares, who were pro ‘the people’, and the more conservative Optimates who wanted to limit the power of the assemblies in favour of the aristocratic Senate. There weren’t just your standard squabbling political groups. Their conflicts contributed to a number of civil wars in the first half of Julius life. Julius was firmly in the Populares camp, while the others weren’t so much. As a bit of an intro into how powerful these three men were, you can look at their CVs during this Triumvirate period. Crassus was Consul in 55 BC (having already had the job, Pre-Triumvirate in 70 BC) He was also the Governor of Syria in 54 BC. Pompey had already been Consul at the same time as Crassus in 70 BC, but he got the job again in 55 BC (again with Crassus) and separately in 52 BC. Between 58 and 55 BC he was the Governor of Hispania. Julius himself was Consul in 59 BC and from 58 BC he was governor of Cisalpine and TransAlpine Gaul and Illyricum. The Triumvirate officially ended when Crassus died at the Battle of Carrhae, in 53 BC. fighting the Parthians in what is now Turkey, but it was unravelling before that. As has been the case through much of history, the political alliance was ‘strengthened’ by marrying one member’s daughter to another. While Julius Caesar was in Britain in 54 BC, his daughter died in childbirth. This was an issue, beyond the obvious grief, because she was married to Pompey, and there weren’t even any familial ties to stop the inevitable betrayal. As a side point, this sort of family ties comes up constantly throughout European history. It sort of makes sense, joining together two powerful families to make sure they can dominate a political landscape.

Following his first invasion in 55 BC, which he bollocksed up, would Julius’ second invasion in 54 BC go any better? Sort of, yeah. Both he and the Britons have a better showing this time. Transcript – Julius Has A Second Go At Britain | The One With The Sort Of Victory   If you remember our earlier episode, Julius Caesar turned up and attacked some of the tribes in South East England in 55. He won, but it was a bit of a farce. Julius obviously knew this and decided to have another go as soon as possible in 54 BC. And to be fair to old Julius, he acknowledged the things he had messed up in and had a go at doing them better. The first example of that would be the number of men he decided to take. As we mentioned before, the 55 BC attempt may have been a bit of expedition, rather than a proper invasion. This time, it looked like he meant it. Instead of the mere 10,000 men from 55 BC, the 54 go involved 25,000 men. He has also learnt his lesson regarding those cool chariots the Britons used so well. We are told that he took half the Roman cavalry in Gaul with him, and historians have worked out this would be about 2,000 of them. Presumably, that would be able to neutralise those pesky charioteers as well as making it harder for the Britons to run off and regroup when the Romans were winning a battle. We have tried getting our head around the size of this invading army. Is 25,000 loads for the ancient world? Is it loads for little ol’ Britain? Well first off the total Roman Army was massive. About 60 years later, around the turn of the millennium, there were 125,000 legionnaires. The whole army was about 250,000 when you include the auxiliaries. Auxiliaries being soldiers who were not Roman citizens, like Germanic tribesmen for example. Of the 250,000, 30,000 of them were cavalry. So we can guess that Julius was using a fair bit of what the Romans had to play with, but not a ridiculous amount. You are looking at around 10%ish, although that assumes there weren’t too many changes over 60 years. But what about a bit of modern context. Well, the population of the whole of Britain at the time was about 1.5 million. Given our population is about 60 million now, an army proportional to our modern population would be an invasion of 1,000,000 soldiers. Considering that the initial invasion would likely just have the Romans come up against the tribes of Southern England, it does start to look like overkill. Whether you think it was overkill or not, it showed an intent. This was no small expedition to have a recce over the channel. Julius was going over there to mess some folk up. Julius’ other lesson learnt, other than just when it comes to soldiers less is not always more and horse are good for chasing stuff, was, if you are going to cross the channel, you need the right sort of ships. Not only did he build 600 new ships, but they were more suited to landing on the coast of Britain than the last years. He stole the design from the Veneti, who he had beaten in 55, and mass produced them like only a Roman could. So he was better prepared, but you will also remember an issue he had with his current provinces kicking up a fuss and delaying him. Well, it happened again, although not as bad this time. This time the issue was round Illyricum, one of his provinces. The Germanic tribes were again gearing up for having a crack at Roman lands. Even once that was fixed, Caesar had more trouble back in Gaul. This must have been particularly frustrating as a fair chunk of the soldiers of Gaul were about to leave. In fact, this whole jaunt seemed incredibly risky. The Gallic kerfuffle came from the Treveri Tribe. Julius called a council, which the tribal leaders were to attend. The Treveri didn’t fancy it, so Julius had to show them who was boss. It wasn’t just the Treveri Julius has to worry about.

A look at how the Romans expanded from a settlement on a hill to being ready to have a go at messing up Celtic Britain.

Julius Caesar turns up in Britain for the first time. How did he plan it? How many men did he take? Is he a massive wuss? Answers: badly, loads, probably not

What was going on before the Romans came to Britain? Who were the Celts? Who built Stonehenge? What is Doggerland? We go over all things ancient Britain, before the Romans turned up and took all our jobs.

Roman Britain might have kicked off in 55 BC when Julius Caesar planned his invasion. Why exactly did Julius and his Roman friends want to invade Britain? It turns ancient political leaders are just as selfish and twatty as their modern descendants. This episode goes over the reasons that the Romans wanted to launch that important era of British history; Roman Britan. Transcript – Julius Caesar & Britain In our first episode of the history of Britain, we look at Rome’s first crack at taking over the British Isles. Rome was founded in 753 BC, but it wasn’t until 55 BC that they found themselves at the English Channel looking over and thinking, ‘fuck it’ we might as well have that bit as well.     And the bloke doing that high-quality strategic thinking was non-other than Julius Caesar. He wasn’t at the height of his powers in 55 BC, and frankly, he bollocksed the whole thing up. Before we stick the boot into one of the most famous generals in history, let’s look at why Rome fancied attacking Britain.   We covered one reason already. It’s just what they did during that period. They had spread from a town in Italy to having control over a chunk of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. They were bad neighbours to have.   The second reason is incomprehensible to modern ears. We are far too used to our current political systems, but we will do our best to explain. It was a question of personal prestige, power and legacy. Unbelievable isn’t it?   Exactly what power was on offer for Julius? Well, the top job in Rome was called a Consul. They were a republic, so they didn’t have a king or a chief, and a Consul was like a president and in fact, a Consul was like two presidents, as there was always two of them. That was so if one of them went power mad, the other could veto their crazier decisions.   Each pair of Consuls had the job for one year at a time and they couldn’t be reelected straight away. Julius Caesar had already been Consul in 59 BC, and after that, he did what Consuls traditionally did, they went and ruled a province for a bit. A province was a bit of the territory that the Romans ran, so it could be anywhere from Spain to Syria. Usually, they did that for 1 or 2 years then headed back to Rome. That wouldn’t have worked for Julius. He had spent a lot of money to become Consul, and since he spent a lot of other people’s money, he had seriously pissed off a lot of people on his way to the top. Roman politics could be a bit less forgiving than British politics. There are not just sarcastic comments at Prime Minister’s Question Time. As Julius would later find out, spoilers, folk were getting stabbed. He needed cash and a bit of distance between him and his stabbier enemies, so instead of running a province for a year or two, he set himself up to run 3 of them for a decade. He went big and became governor of Cisalpine Gaul (which is Northern Italy) Illyricum (which is a bit of the Balkans, around Albania, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia) and Transalpine Gaul (basically, what is now France and bit of the Benelux nations).   What does this have to do with Britain? Well, like we said it was all about personal glory. The way to get elected to Consul was to have loads of money, but more important was to have a massive reputation, which in Rome meant military success. Rome was basically an army with an empire hanging off it. As much as we all like to laugh at British politics, our American friends will be more familiar with how Roman politics worked. Cash was crucial, fetishising the military was essential and backstabbing was all the rage, although Romans were occasionally a bit more literal about that than Americans. Romans also had crazy men occasionally rise to the top, who looked like they were going to bring the whole thing crashing down.     Anyway,

Roman Britain might have kicked off in 55 BC when Julius Caesar planned his invasion. Why exactly did Julius and his Roman friends want to invade Britain? Well, it turns our ancient political leaders are just as selfish and twatty as their modern descendants. this episode goes over the reasons that the Romans wanted to launch that important era of British history; Roman Britain. You can find any images we talk about in the podcast at: https://21stcenturypillock.com/why-julius-caesar-invaded-britain/