Summary of Max Adams' The First Kingdom

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The past is a collection of fragments that cannot be pieced together to form a coherent sequence. But through the accumulation of these fragments, it is now possible to furnish the set on which the lost drama was performed.

#2 The First Kingdom is a chronicle of how Anglo-Saxon kings were chosen by God to bring about a single, universal church and people. It is difficult to tear one’s eyes away from a drama whose beginning is lost in obscurity, but whose dénouement was recorded by a towering intellect in the Early Medieval world, the Venerable Bede.

#3 The village of Imber, which means Imma’s pond, is a reminder of the British army’s land in the chalk downs of Salisbury Plain. Other abandoned villages can be found in Wiltshire, such as Knook Down, which was inhabited long before Imber.

#4 The Roman countryside of Britain is littered with the remains of villas, which were the stately homes of retired army officers, absentee Gaulish civil servants, and the stewards and bailiffs of distant emperors. But archaeological research has shown that these were quite atypical of Roman Britain’s housing stock.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822545038

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on Max Adams's The First Kingdom

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The past is a collection of fragments that cannot be pieced together to form a coherent sequence. But through the accumulation of these fragments, it is now possible to furnish the set on which the lost drama was performed.

#2

The First Kingdom is a chronicle of how Anglo-Saxon kings were chosen by God to bring about a single, universal church and people. It is difficult to tear one’s eyes away from a drama whose beginning is lost in obscurity, but whose dénouement was recorded by a towering intellect in the Early Medieval world, the Venerable Bede.

#3

The village of Imber, which means Imma’s pond, is a reminder of the British army’s land in the chalk downs of Salisbury Plain. Other abandoned villages can be found in Wiltshire, such as Knook Down, which was inhabited long before Imber.

#4

The Roman countryside of Britain is littered with the remains of villas, which were the stately homes of retired army officers, absentee Gaulish civil servants, and the stewards and bailiffs of distant emperors. But archaeological research has shown that these were quite atypical of Roman Britain’s housing stock.

#5

The downland people of Britain were very rural and spent their days doing things like cooking, weaning infants, and spinning yarns. They were very preoccupied with fate and the unknowable future, and they offered gifts, promises, and incantations to their spiritual pantheon.

#6

The villages of the chalk plains were not exploited for their pasture, but rather for their pottery and metal goods, which were then sold in the marketplace. They were extremely large, and their population thrived. But they were eventually abandoned.

#7

The downlanders of Britain were not involved in large landed estates, but they did enjoy access to the trappings of what was then modern technology. They were not a minority, but they did feel like they were being oppressed by the Romans.

#8

The downland villagers were administratively supposed to belong to their nearest civitas capital, Winchester. However, they may have looked to Venta Belgarum, three days away, for Roman power and privilege.

#9

The cult temple and town at Aquae Sulis, where celebrated hot baths attracted wealth and the wealthy from across the region, may have been a more magnetic draw for downlanders’ produce and for social interaction with a Romanized world.

#10

The Romans conquered Britain in the first century, and the ultra-Roman Britons, who had done well out of being incorporated into the European superstate, lived in stone houses in a well-mannered landscape. They were the ultimate success story of a colonizing Mediterranean superpower.

#11

The Old Testament is a vade mecum for modern historians, who want to understand how a productive, ordered, taxed, administered, and highly functional society was apparently so rapidly laid low and, after many tribulations, was rebuilt in a new fashion.

#12

The search for a route map to guide the modern traveler through these obscure centuries is being done by geographers. They want to know how ideas about and physical forms of territoriality changed or did not change.

#13

Archaeology has been able to extract and describe sequences from material processes, but it cannot get to grips with empty space and time. The excavator could say a lot about what the downlanders of Salisbury Plain got up to in their daily lives, but rarely why, when or how they left.

#14

The most detailed analysis of the British population in the first four centuries CE estimates that with perhaps 250,000 people living in towns, the total population could have been in the order of 3. 5 million.