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Particularly striking was the fact that the Romans had been able to
extend full political rights to so many of their subjects: ‘the Romans
stood out beyond almost all peoples in the extent to which they
disregarded race, and in the liberality with which they widened
their citizenship’.
9
The creation of Romans out of foreigners and
citizens out of subjects was the primary reason for seeing Rome as
a relevant comparator for modern imperialism.
Its imperial system, alike in its differences and similarities, lights
up our own Empire, for example in India, at every turn. The
methods by which Rome incorporated and denationalised and
assimilated more than half its wide dominions, and the success of
Rome, unintended perhaps but complete, in spreading its Graeco–
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106
ThE roman EmpIrE
Roman culture over more than a third of Europe and a part of
Africa, concern in many ways our own age and Empire.
10
In contrast, the British experience of trying to assimilate the natives
in India and Africa was judged to be an unmitigated failure.
11
Of
course, it could be argued that, in some respects, the Romans had
had an advantage in the nature of their conquests, since they had to
deal with tribes rather than nations and with easy-going polytheism
rather than ‘proper’ religion’, and they faced comparatively few
racial problems: ‘the Romans were not called upon to deal with
large numbers of coloured races’.
12
However, it was also seen as a
matter of attitude; the Romans saw conquered natives as barbarians,
undoubtedly, but barbarians capable of acquiring civilisation,
whereas Europeans suffered from a basic prejudice against all other
races. Roman civilisation was regarded as something that could be
exported, and, more importantly, a native who had successfully
adopted Roman ways could be accepted as a full member of Roman
society – one simply had to list the number of leading Romans under
the Principate, from a philosopher and imperial advisor like Seneca
to a poet like Martial and a whole line of emperors, who came from
provincial backgrounds:
In the third century A.D. a Gaul, a Spaniard, a Pannonian, a
Bithynian, a Syrian called himself a Roman, and for all practical
purposes was a Roman. The interests of the Empire were his
interests, its glory his glory, almost as much as if he had been born
in the shadow of the Capitol. There was, therefore, no reason
why his loyalty should not be trusted, no reason why he should
not be chosen to lead in war, or govern in peace, men of Italian
birth. So, too, the qualities which make a man capable of leading
in war or administering in peace were just as likely to be found
in a Gaul, or a Spaniard, or a German from the Rhine frontier
as in an Italian… It is far otherwise in India, though there was
among the races of India no nation. The Englishmen does not
become an Indian, nor the Indian an Englishman. The Indian
does not as a rule, though of course there have been not a few
remarkable exceptions to the rule, possess the qualities which the
English deem to be needed for leadership in war or the higher
posts of administration in peace. For several reasons…he can
seldom be expected to feel like an Englishman, and to have that
full comprehension of the principles of British policy which may
be counted on in an Englishman.
13
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ThE dynamIcs of culTural changE
107
The importance of these two factors, the complete cultural transfor-
mation undergone by the natives and their subsequent acceptance by
the imperial power as full and equal members, is also emphasised in
more recent writings on empire. The nature of empire, incorporating
a wide range of different groups into a single political body, means
that imperial rule is above all concerned with and dependent upon
the management of diversity.
14
For Michael Doyle, the longevity of
any empire – and Rome is once again his basic model – depends not
only on administrative coordination but on continuing integration,
passing the ‘Augustan threshold’ from conquest to domination and
developing towards the ‘Caracalla threshold’ where the empire
ceases to be organised around the domination of diverse groups
by a single power – even if that is understood as assimilation under
a common tyranny.
15
Michael Mann similarly sees a shift from a
conquering empire of domination to a territorial empire, based on
the integration of its subjects into the imperial system; the crucial
difference is that he sees this in terms of the integration of local
elites into the common culture, with changes in the culture of the
mass of the population regarded, implicitly, as irrelevant to the
fate of the Empire.
16
In other words, the cultural transformation of
the provinces was not only Rome’s greatest achievement, bringing
civilisation to the barbarians, it was also the foundation of Rome’s
success in ruling a large and diverse area for so long.
‘romanIsaTIon’
The creation of a uniform world-wide civilization and of similar
social and economic conditions is now going on before our eyes
over the whole expanse of the civilized world. This process
is complicated, and it is often difficult to clear up our minds
about it. We ought therefore to keep in view that this condition
in which we are living is not new, and that the ancient world
also lived, for a series of centuries, a life which was uniform
in culture and politics, in social and economic conditions. The
modern development, in this sense, differs from the ancient only
in quantity and not in quality.
17
The term that is usually invoked in discussions of the transforma-
tion of the provinces is ‘Romanisation’. This approach is closely
associated with the nineteenth-century German historian Theodor
Mommsen and the British archaeologist Francis Haverfield, and
in the development of the discipline of ancient history their work
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ThE roman EmpIrE
represented a significant shift in understanding.
18
Mommsen’s
writings, especially his book on
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