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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9189296" data-attributes="member: 18">It's still going on. There's been a lot of wild special pleading in the last thirty years about how Boudicca was "really the baddy" from all sorts of people (particularly UK writers who are not historians or are pop-historians) who otherwise critique imperialism/colonialism because they're seemingly desperate (for unclear reasons) to paint the destruction of Colchester as mean and bad, when ten minutes later they're turning around and praising (for example) various bloody rebellions against the British empire. I think it says something weird about the character of the British establishment and particularly people educated within that framework that it's vital to them that the Romans are "flawed good guys", even though they'll happily critique the British empire (which I swear links to good old-fashioned British self-deprecation).It's like, I can completely understand being neutral about it, it's nearly 2000 years ago, and I could also understand when, in some Empire periods, they tried to make her bad because the British saw themselves as the Romans (though weirdly more often they tried to make her good and just play down the anti-colonial aspects), but this whole 21st century thing where she's supposed to be bad because she burned a city and killed some civilians? That's so weird. What do they think the Romans did lol? Come with flowers and wine and lovely hot baths for all? To hear some upper-middle-class British authors tell it, you'd think so! I've been trying to figure out the agenda here for years, as best I can tell they see the Romans are orderly and representing the cosmopolitan, diverse and worldly, and the Celts are chaotic and representing nativist sentiments (?!?! nonsensical but there we are) so are siding with horrifically violent colonial oppressor of precisely the kind they critique in other situations. It's also somewhat obviously racist, because other ancient cosmopolitan empires not run by groups perceived as White don't get the same benefit (c.f Xerxes/Persia for example).</blockquote>

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