BY STEWART SLATER
Successful architects generally build for the environment they have, not the environment they want. The Japanese traditionally use wood because it is flexible, likely to bend not break when an earthquake hits, and it is cheap – there is little point in spending much on what will be, one might confidently expect, a pile of rubble within 20 years. The house in cold, rainy Glasgow in which I spent part of my childhood was built from thick sandstone with a pitched roof, the house in dry, sunny Greece to which I moved from it, was flat-roofed and covered in such thick white render that its building material remains a mystery.
It is, thus, a surprise that the largest Roman villa outside Italy is not in Provence or Spain, but Sussex, a location which, while not inclement exactly, is far from the Mediterranean. For one of the key functions of a house is to provide shelter from the elements and those elements are rather wetter in Britain than they are in Italy. The type of house one would build here is not the type of house one would build there.
And yet, build it someone did.
Who this person was, however, is unknown. For while Fishbourne Palace is a large, impressive building, it is not sufficiently large and impressive that records of its construction have come down to us. Where history fails, archaeology must step into the breach and speculation has centred on two individuals – Cogidubnus, a local king, or Sallustius Lucullus, a Roman official thought to be the son of Adminius, another British king.
Equally obscure is the date of construction, although c. 65 A.D. (none of that silly “C.E.” nonsense in this article, thank you very much) for the first phase seems likely and there is evidence that craftsmen from Italy were involved in producing the ornate decoration discovered.
“Rich guy builds big house” is not exactly a news story for the ages. Rich guys still build big houses (just ask your local Premier League footballer with his oh so tasteful McMansion). The point about Fishbourne, however, is that just 20 or so years after the Roman conquest, a wealthy, powerful Briton decided that building a Roman villa (designed for a completely different climate) was a good use of his time and resources.
It is reasonable to assume that the mere provision of shelter was not uppermost in the mind of Cogidubnus (if it was he). He was trying to do more than just build a house. Building a Roman-style dwelling was a way of signalling that he was a Roman-style man. And we know that he was. Sufficiently loyal to be mentioned approvingly in Tacitus, he was accorded the title of legatus Augusti and dedicated statues to his masters’ gods. A man born to be king compensated for the loss of status the conquest represented by, to all intents and purposes, becoming a Roman.
Historical boots rarely stay on historical feet, and almost two millennia later, Cogidubnus’ descendants turned from conquered to conquerors as Britain expanded its dominion across the globe. And a similar phenomenon occurred. Upper caste Indian families started sending their offspring to English public schools (Nehru was a Harrovian) and Oxbridge (my father was sold on my choice of college when he discovered that cricket’s Nawabs of Pataudi were old boys) where they imbibed the new culture and became “more English than the English”. Such adoption of the new overlords’ customs may not have guaranteed a seat at the top table (one unfortunate was blackballed from a club in Allahabad having previously been elected to London’s Reform) but it allowed those who did to retain their status relative to their peers.
Obituarists struggling to explain John Le Carre’s habitual anti-Americanism hit on the idea that, part of a generation raised to rule an empire, he could never quite forgive its successor for denying him his birthright. But his attitude was very much of his time. For we live in a country whose current elite is in thrall to our more powerful cousins across the pond in whose world they now live. Compare the airtime and column inches dedicated to November’s election to the recent one in France which only dominated the agenda on the day it happened. Our closest continental neighbour does not yet have a government which reflects its latest trip to the polls, but you probably didn’t realise that, so little attention does the fact garner in the press (I had to check myself – further coalition talks are, apparently, imminent. Yet again, Country Squire brings you the news the mainstream media won’t touch…).
More than just a fascination with American politics (similar to an ancient Gaul awaiting news of the consular election or an Indian hunting out the score of the Eton-Harrow match), our elite (used in the sense of “those at the top”, not “the best”, Britain’s tragedy being that those to whom the former applies are rarely those to whom the latter does) is also in thrall to American customs and beliefs.
Consider Black Lives Matter. Prominent politicians (including one whose name rhymes with “Steer Calmer”) rushed to take the knee. Sportsmen took the knee. Sportsmen continued to take the knee long after everyone else has stopped. What started in America as a specifically American response to a specifically American event did not stay in America, but, like Rome’s gods, gained devoted followers in the conquered lands.
But it is not just the rituals which have been adopted, it is the beliefs behind them even when, like Cogidubnus’ villa, these are not necessarily well-adapted to the local climate. Britain is now, we are told, a “nation of immigrants”. This is true in the trivial sense that human beings did not evolve in these isles. I myself am probably descended from someone who moved from the Med to the Western Isles c. 3000 B.C. but since my direct ancestors stayed there until the late 1800’s, we might reasonably assume that the more recent generations had long sloughed off their ancestral language, beliefs and practices (whatever they might have been – the early Bronze Age is not really my period) and became part of the island furniture. All countries may be “nations of immigrants” but not all countries are, like America, “nations of recent immigrants”.
Nor, as Tomiwa Olowade showed in his book This is not America, is Britain’s history of race the same as our erstwhile colony’s. Slavery ended earlier and more peacefully. There was no segregation after it did. Britain as a whole strongly supported the Union in the Civil War (The Guardian being a notable exception) and a certain amount of disbliss occurred during the war when our allies attempted to export their prejudiced customs to the mother country. Our history regarding race may not be unimpeachable but it is not impeachable in the same way or to the same extent as that of our cousins across the pond.
The preceding paragraphs are not, I grant, words of startling originality. They are not the product of long original research. They are, instead, banally self-evident. But, despite this, many behave as if they were untrue. And those who do are generally those at the top of society. The good burghers of Clacton do not habitually describe their home as a racist little island built on the misery of others. Those who do are generally, and I say this kindly, those with the education to know that they should not.
But they are also those who have the most to gain by doing so. A peasant in Roman Britain, or in British India, would have noticed little difference in his new masters. He had been at the bottom, and he stayed at the bottom. It was those at the top who suffered because they no longer were. So, to regain their position, to show to their new masters that they belonged in the new ruling elite, they adopted its beliefs and behaviours, taking the knee merely being a modern version of Cogidubnus making his sacrifices to Neptune and Minerva. They are not the first (Mark Lawson satirises a similar process in the post Big Bang City in his story Teach Yourself America in Seven Days) nor will they be the last. It is, it appears, just what those used to being at the top do when they find themselves closer to the bottom.
Fishbourne remained in use for 200 years until it was burned down during some building works. It remained a Roman villa until the end because it suited its owners for it to be such. In the same way, Britain’s elite will believe and behave like Americans for just as long as it suits them to do so.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.