Protecting the Empire’s Frontier tells stories of the roughly eighty officers who served in the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot, which served British interests in America during the crucial period from 1767 through 1776. The Royal Irish was one of the most wide-ranging regiments in America, with companies serving on the Illinois frontier, at Fort Pitt, and in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, with some companies taken as far afield as Florida, Spanish Louisiana, and present-day Maine. When the regiment was returned to England in 1776, some of the officers remained in America on staff assignments. Others joined provincial regiments, and a few joined the American revolutionary army, taking up arms against their king and former colleagues. Using a wide range of archival resources previously untapped by scholars, the text goes beyond just these officers’ service in the regiment and tells the story of the men who included governors, a college president, land speculators, physicians, and officers in many other British regular and provincial regiments. Included in these ranks were an Irishman who would serve in the U.S. Congress and as an American general at Yorktown; a landed aristocrat who represented Bath as a member of Parliament; and a naval surgeon on the ship transporting Benjamin Franklin to France. This is the history of the American Revolutionary period from a most gripping and everyday perspective. An epilogue covers the Royal Irish’s history after returning to England and its part in defending against both the Franco-Spanish invasion attempt and the Gordon Rioters. With an essay on sources and a complete bibliography, this is a treat for professional and amateur historians alike.

The Roman army enjoys an enviable reputation as an instrument of waging war, but as the modern world reminds us, an enduring victory requires far more than simply winning battles. When it came to suppressing counterinsurgencies, or deterring the depredations of bandits, the army frequently deployed small groups of infantry and cavalry based in fortlets. This remarkable installation type has never previously been studied in detail, and shows a new side to the Roman army. Rather than displaying the aggressive uniformity for which the Roman military is famous, individual fortlets were usually bespoke installations tailored to local needs. Examining fortlet use in north-west Europe helps explain the differing designs of the Empire's most famous artificial frontier systems: Hadrian's Wall, the Antonine Wall, and the Upper German and Raetian limites. The archaeological evidence is fully integrated with documentary sources, which disclose the gritty reality of life in a Roman fortlet.

A novel interpretation of Roman frontier policy

The Roman Empire was one of the most powerful forces in history. However, few people realize that this vast empire was guarded by one frontier, a series of natural and man-made barriers, including Hadrian's Wall. It is impossible to have a true understanding of the Roman Empire without first investigating the scope of this amazing frontier. The boundary ran for roughly 4,000 miles--from Britain to Morocco via the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates, the Syrian Desert, and the Saharan fringes; reinforced by walls, ditches, palisades, watchtowers, and forts. It absorbed virtually the whole imperial army, enclosed three and a half million square miles, and defended forty provinces (now thirty countries) and perhaps eighty million Roman subjects. In protecting the empire the frontier made a substantial contribution to the Pax Romana and ultimately to preserving the inheritance of future Europe. Yet this static mode of defense ran counter to Rome's tradition of mobile warfare and her taste for glory, born of centuries of conquest. The emperors' choice of a passive strategy promoted lassitude and conservatism, allowing the military initiative slowly to pass into barbarian hands. The Reach of Rome is the first book to describe the entire length of the amazing imperial frontier. It traces the political forces that created it and portrays those who commanded and manned it, as well as those against whom it was held. It relates the frontier's rise, pre-eminence, crises, and collapse and assesses its meaning for history and its legacies to the post-Roman world. Finally, it also tells the story of the explorers who rediscovered its lost works and describes the nature and location of the surviving remains. Includes thirty beautifully designed maps.

Whittaker begins by discussing the Romans' ideological vision of geographic space - demonstrating, for example, how an interest in precise boundaries of organized territories never included a desire to set limits on controls of unorganized space beyond these territories. He then describes the role of frontiers in the expanding empire, including an attempt to answer the question of why the frontiers stopped where they did. He examines the economy and society of the frontiers. Finally, he discusses the pressure hostile outsiders placed on the frontiers, and their eventual collapse.

On the Edge of Empires explores the mixed culture of North Mesopotamia in the Roman period. This volatile region at the eastern edge of the Roman world became during the imperial period the theater of confrontation for multiple political entities: Rome, Parthia, Sasanian Persia. Roman presence is only recognizable through military installations – forts, barracks, military camps – yet these fascinating lands tell a story of frontier people and soldiers, of trade despite war, and daily life between the Empires. This volume combines archaeological and historical, literary and environmental evidence in order to explore this important borderland between east and west. On the Edge of Empires is a valuable addition to researchers engaged in the historical and archaeological reconstruction of the frontier areas of the Roman Empire, and a fascinating study for students and scholars of the Romans and their neighbours, borderlands in antiquity, and the history and archaeology of empires.

Protecting the Empire's Humanity lays bare the contradictions of mid-nineteenth-century imperial Britain and the fatal flaws in imperial 'humanitarianism'.