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Title: The End of Roman Britain by Michael E. Jones ISBN: 0-8014-8530-4 Publisher: Cornell University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: An excellent book, even if its main thesis misses
Comment: The great Classical historian Theodor Mommsen once said that Britain did not give up on Rome, but Rome gave up on Britain. Although Mommsen was technically correct in a legal or military sense, Jones would reverse this statement more generally, insisting that the Britons had expressly chosen to reject their Roman heritage. Jones correctly points out that the relatively small number of Anglo-Saxon immigrants could not by itself account for the collapse of Romanization in east Britain. He also does an excellent job of documenting the growing disenchantment of the Britons with the Roman Empire. Where he falters is in his failure to realize that the Britons were not unique in their disenchantment. Roman citizens throughout the west shared this attitude. Jones's discussion of St. Patrick exemplifies the flaw in his thesis: although born in Britain, Patrick spent his youth in Ireland, and was then educated and ordained in Gaul; many Patrician scholars, in fact, trace his special sense of mission to the influence of the contemporary Gallic Church. The reason why the British people today are divided between Celtic and Germanic nations (unlike their Romance cousins in France) lies not in a special failure of Roman civil institutions in Britain, but in the arrested development of the Christian Church in Britain; if more Briton-born Churchmen had St. Patrick's Gallic-learned dedication, the Britons might have earlier developed a national identity capable of surviving barbarian conquest, rather than having to wait for St. David in Wales and St. Kentigern in southwest Scotland. Jones's book is nonetheless well worth reading; although his main thesis misses, he does ably describe the sorry state of late Roman civil institutions in Britain (albeit correctly a microcosm, rather than a special case, in the west).