When it comes to invading marauders, who had more influence in shaping London? To my mind, the Romans will win this hands down. They came, they saw, and they started building drains, underfloor heating and fancy mosaics. They also had awesome military organisation and ferocious fighting techniques, but I think the Romans should be remembered as the invaders to beat all other invaders for a slightly different reason.
There’s no doubt they completely transformed the landscape of London. If it wasn’t for the Romans, Southwark would still be flooded by salt water twice a day. If Julius Caesar hadn’t landed in 55 BC, the thousands of Londoners that commute into the City would to this day be paddling across the Thames in boats instead of walking over London Bridge (fact based on the sound logic that the Romans built the first bridge across the Thames near the site of today’s London Bridge). This may not be a strict fact, but I liked the image of people in smart suits rowing across a bridge-less Thames to get to work. See, life without the Romans just wouldn’t be much fun.
London Transformed From Marshland
What is a fact, though, is that when Claudius’s armies conquered Brythonic tribes in 43 AD, the Romans arrived on the
banks of the river Thames and found… well, not that much really. At the most, there may have been a smattering of Iron Age dwellings dotted around the area, but nothing resembling a village let alone a town. There may have been quite a good reason for the lack of Celtic settlers in the area namely the fact that Southwark was marshland while much of the north side of the river was threaded with watery areas and tributaries. While the Celtic tribes had built their oppidums in places such as Camulodunum (Colchester), they hadn’t much fancied setting up home on the water-logged banks of the Thames. Who can blame them?
The Roman Business Brain
But this didn’t stop the Romans, mainly because they had a sharp eye for one thing in particular. Yes, they liked their mosaics, their hot baths and pagan temples but more than all those things, the Romans were canny businessmen. By the first century AD they had become the supreme traders of the Mediterranean and had the organisational skills, methodical planning and sophisticated knowledge of mechanics, construction and industry to enable them to make money almost anywhere.
They saw their chance to set up a colony that had good sea access, while being sheltered, and also positioned at a certain distance inland, within reach of various Celtic tribes. In short, the Romans spotted a business opportunity.
So although it was the Roman legions who first set up camp and found a good place for Londinium’s first bridge across the Thames, it wasn’t long before the traders and merchants moved in. They, in my opinion are the true Roman invaders of London. Although they initially came to provide services to the military camp, industry and long-distance trade soon followed and enabled the town of Londinium to grow and flourish.
Whether the merchants and traders would all have been Roman citizens, I’m not sure. It might be more likely that some were traders who moved to Londinium from other parts of Britain, or other parts of the empire, creating the very first cosmopolitan multi-race centre on the Thames.
Anyway, the traders were tenacious and resilient, building the town up from scratch. They probably had to endure uncomfortable conditions, and probably lived in a town that must have looked more like a muddy, swampy building site during the first century at least. It would have been a far cry from the marble-clad monuments of imperial Rome (although living conditions in Rome’s insulae weren’t great either).
When Boudica’s army sacked and burned Londinium in around 60 AD, some of the town’s inhabitants fled while thousands who couldn’t leave were killed. Nevertheless, within a decade or two, the town was rebuilt and was once again thriving.
Without the tenacity of the traders who populated, built and rebuilt early Londinium, the town might never have been much more than a Roman military camp. In my opinion, the town’s Roman traders are the real invaders who put Londinium on the map and created the blueprint for what the city was to become over the next two millennia.
