Call this a recession? It isn’t the Dark Ages

It's not like the Romans were exactly welcomed in all parts of Britain:

"We, the last men on earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by the very remoteness and the seclusion for which we are famed. We have enjoyed the impressiveness of the unknown. But today the boundary of Britain is exposed; beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks and the Romans, more deadly still than they, for you find in them an arrogance which no reasonable submission can elude. Brigands of the world, they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate plunder and now they ransack the sea. The wealth of an enemy excites their cupidity, his poverty their lust of power. East and West have failed to glut their maw. They are unique in being as violently tempted to attack the poor as the wealthy. Robbery, butchery, rapine, with false names they call Empire; and they make a wilderness and call it peace."

Part of what Calgacus is supposed to have said before the battle of Mons Graupius in North East Scotland.

I read (most of) his book on the fall of Rome. It has a lot of hard data about what happened. But the most noticeable thing about the book is how partisan it seems. He writes as if he were writing about a present day political controversy. You don't usually see that in books on ancient history.

What he's a partisan of is the idea that the western empire really fell hard. There is a continuum of opinion on that. From what I know so far I tend to be on his side, but he's so heavy handed about it that I find it makes me skeptical about everything he says.

The archaeological picture is actually a lot more complex than this article suggests, with strong evidence of large 'factories' around Europe, even in Britain, feeding extensive trading networks. No coins for 300 years? Sutton Hoo (early 7th century) contained coins from 37 different Frankish mints!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo

I recommend Barbarians to Angels for a good archaeology-based look at the Dark Ages, even if it does strain a little too far to paint a sunny picture:

http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780393060751-2

It's science fiction, but (the better) half of Stephen Baxter's Coalescent (http://www.amazon.com/Coalescent-Stephen-Baxter/dp/034545785...) is set in 4th c. Britain. Nothing else has given me that sense of being there when the wavefront of the empire receded.

So it's no longer "not as bad as the great depression?" Now we are going back to the dark ages?

Usually I hate meta-commenting but I'm sick of items behind paywalls being posted here. Please stop.

It may not be the dark ages but people losing their homes and having to deal with a bad credit rating for seven years is pretty bad.

Maybe in the dark ages, a second chance was a lot easier.

Today all our mistakes (finances, internet posts,errors of youth) will plague us for the rest of our lives (seems like).