Decolonizing Roman Imperialism

Investigates how postcolonialism has motivated Roman scholars to question the paradigm of Romanization.

The articles collected in this volume share a very similar goal: to decolonize our understanding of antiquity, thus allowing modernity to converse with antiquity without constraining the latter to be either the direct precedent or the thoroughly other of the former. It is certainly true that the past is a foreign country. However, history has repeatedly demonstrated that colonialism never contributed to mutual understanding and constructive exchange of ideas, and that such is the dialogue we should strive forthwith our contemporaries as well as with our ancestors.

The articles collected in this volume share a very similar goal: to decolonize our understanding of antiquity, thus allowing modernity to converse with antiquity without constraining the latter to be either the direct precedent or the thoroughly other of the former. It is certainly true that the past is a foreign country. However, history has repeatedly demonstrated that colonialism never contributed to mutual understanding and constructive exchange of ideas, and that such is the dialogue we should strive forthwith our contemporaries as well as with our ancestors.

Historical archaeology studies once relied upon a binary view of colonialism: colonizers and colonized, the colonial period and the postcolonial period. The contributors to this volume scrutinize imperialism and expansionism through an alternative lens that rejects simple dualities and explores the variously gendered, racialized, and occupied peoples of a multitude of faiths, desires, associations, and constraints. Colonialism is not a phase in the chronology of a people but a continuous phenomenon that spans the Old and New Worlds. Most important, the contributors argue that its impacts—and, in some instances, even the same processes set in place by the likes of Columbus—are ongoing. Inciting a critical examination of the lasting consequences of ancient and modern colonialism on descendant communities, this wide-ranging volume includes essays on Roman Britain, slavery in Brazil, and contemporary Native Americans. In its efforts to define the scope of colonialism and the comparability of its features, this collection challenges the field to go beyond familiar geographical and historical boundaries and draws attention to unfolding colonial futures.

Despite what history has taught us about imperialism's destructive effects on colonial societies, many classicists continue to emphasize disproportionately the civilizing and assimilative nature of the Roman Empire and to hold a generally favorable view of Rome's impact on its subject peoples. Imperialism, Power, and Identity boldly challenges this view using insights from postcolonial studies of modern empires to offer a more nuanced understanding of Roman imperialism. Rejecting outdated notions about Romanization, David Mattingly focuses instead on the concept of identity to reveal a Roman society made up of far-flung populations whose experience of empire varied enormously. He examines the nature of power in Rome and the means by which the Roman state exploited the natural, mercantile, and human resources within its frontiers. Mattingly draws on his own archaeological work in Britain, Jordan, and North Africa and covers a broad range of topics, including sexual relations and violence; census-taking and taxation; mining and pollution; land and labor; and art and iconography. He shows how the lives of those under Rome's dominion were challenged, enhanced, or destroyed by the empire's power, and in doing so he redefines the meaning and significance of Rome in today's debates about globalization, power, and empire. Imperialism, Power, and Identity advances a new agenda for classical studies, one that views Roman rule from the perspective of the ruled and not just the rulers. In a new preface, Mattingly reflects on some of the reactions prompted by the initial publication of the book.

Roman tradition preserved in the first book of Livy presents a very circumstantial account of the several battles by which Rome supposedly razed the Latin cities one after another until she was supreme mistress of the Tiber valley. Needless to say, if the Latin tribe had lived in such civil discord as legend assumes, it would quickly have succumbed to the inroads of the mountain tribes, which were eagerly watching for opportunities to raid. Of course legend had to account somehow for the abandoned shrines and old place names scattered over Latium, and being unable to comprehend the slower processes of civilization, it took a more picturesque route, attached a rumor of war to a hero's name, and made the villages disappear in fire and blood.