I was watching a doc on the development of England.
I’m thinking why did England, this cold bitter island way up and away from Rome, become the most powerful country in the world?
You see the Romans, then much later the Saxons, then the Vikings, then the Saxons again, and the Vikings again, and the Scots and the Irish kinda stay out of it.
I guess it’s the kind of barbaric type A people that conquered and reconquered her.
Then the tens of thousands of people hanged, drawn and quartered, noblemen and women beheaded.
IN SUMMARY, what the hell were the Romans doing up there, catching fish?
The same reason they fought the Parthians bitterly over some sand piles, I guess.
Plus there was tin in Britain. IIRC.
England is awful. I won’t even go visit. Who’d go there and try and keep it?
England was the source of tin from the early bronze age. The phoenicians sent there ships there. Britian was on the map.
Even after the romans left britian, the trading ships from byzantium still came to their ports regularly. For the tin.
Tin and lead.
Vikings would take blond and redhead English slaves south to sell and finance a career as mercenaries or traders. They were well-known to the Greeks and were called Varangians in the Byzantine era. From the goods taken south to trade, Rome got a good idea of the wealth of resources in England - to Rome, England was their 'new world'. Expansion of the Roman Empire in a crowded Mediterranean was limited, and the only power controlling the assets of the North were the Vikings. And why should the Vikings control it all? So off they went to England, kicked the Vikings out, and began exploiting resources and manpower while collecting tribunes from the tribal leaders.
“Some Scandinavian laws prohibited inheritance for those who had dwelled in Greece, because it was so lucrative.”
https://www.quora.com/Did-the-Vikings-have-anything-to-do-with-the-Greeks
For a good summary, read Dickens’ “A Child’s History of England”...............
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Child‘s_History_of_England