This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Boudica and British historical culture, c. 1600 - 1916 Vandrei, Martha Lynne Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 Martha Vandrei, Boudica and British historical culture (PhD, King’s College London, 2013) The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. Preface: heroism and history In its original form, this project was to be a study of ideas of female heroism, or the ways in which the concept was constructed and perceived by the British public during the great age for hero-worship, the nineteenth century. In what in hindsight appears to have been a deeply naive endeavour, my initial plan had been to focus on a series of case studies of women who had achieved notoriety during the reign of Victoria in order to identify and compare the different heroic ideals to which women were held. My first case study was to be of Boudica (or Boadicea, as she was known to Victorian audiences). During the course of researching the first case study, it became increasingly clear that to write about the concept of heroism and the distant past was to engage with the process of “making history”: in the sense both of relating a hero or heroine’s impact on a given narrative of events, and in the sense that heroic reputations reveal the role of mediators (that is, the historian, poet, artist, etc. who interrogates a body of evidence) in interpreting the past, as well as in relating the element of the past in question to the intended audience. But I also found that in choosing Boudica, I was faced with a historical figure for whom the historical scholarship was vanishingly slight, but whose reputation had long been the almost exclusive purview of scholars of literature. Soon I was overwhelmed with questions about the relationship between past and present, fact and fiction, and even time and space. The whole project shifted, and Boudica became its sole focus, but it was clear that literary scholarship, heroism studies, and the history of history could offer few answers on their own. A new approach was needed, and so this project became not a study of Boudica, but an articulation of the idea of historical culture. Martha Vandrei, Boudica and British historical culture (PhD, King’s College London, 2013) The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. Introduction Boudica and the idea of historical culture Part I. Introduction Look round, and view your numbers. Behold the proud display of warlike spirits, and consider the motives for which we draw the avenging sword. On this spot we must either conquer, or die with glory. There is no alternative. Though a woman, my resolution is fixed: the men, if they please, may survive with infamy, and live in bondage.1 With these moving words, the warrior queen Boudica2 entered, and very soon afterward, exited British history. This was not a permanent exit, however. Following a lengthy period of obscurity, Boudica has remained one of the most enduring figures in British history, as well as in poetry, drama, imagery, and sculpture which takes the past as its inspiration. There have been some studies of the phenomenon of Boudica, but none have understood her in the context of historical culture in Britain. The speech quoted here is from Tacitus’s Annals, one of only two original sources for Boudica’s life. But the moment of its delivery – and Boudica’s story as a whole – has evolved over the course of many centuries to become the subject of poems, plays, and historical novels. The statue of Boudica that stands on Westminster Bridge 1 There are a number of versions and translations of the speech. For a discussion, see E. Adler, Valorizing the barbarians: enemy speeches in Roman historiography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), pp. 117-176. 2 “Boudica” is now the accepted spelling, though references to “Boudicca” persist. See K. Jackson, “Queen Boudicca?” Britannia (1979), p. 255. In this thesis, I will employ “Boudica” almost exclusively, but I will refer to “Boadicea”, “Boadicia”, “Bonduca” and “Buddug” where contemporary authors have done so. “The character of Boudica” should be taken to refer to any name under which the historical character appears, especially in a fictional context. Martha Vandrei, Boudica and British historical culture (PhD, King’s College London, 2013) The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. shows the warrior queen in full battle array, just as she was described in classical sources. One of the foundational questions which this thesis attempts to address is how two slim records (the details of which are given below) from nearly 2000 years ago survived long enough to be transformed into the iconic statue of Boudica so prominently displayed on across the road from the Houses of Parliament in 1898. The story behind the statue itself will form part of Chapter Five. Boudica is still well-known to twenty-first century audiences, but a recapitulation of her story seems apposite at this early stage. It will also serve as an introduction to the enormousness and complexity of her posthumous life, with its beginnings in classical history, its sixteenth-century rediscovery, and its subsequent iteration over five hundred years and more. According to the extant sources, Boudica was the queen of the Iceni who flourished during the initial stages of the Roman invasion of Britain.3 The Romans had first arrived in Britain, then populated by tribes of indigenous peoples, in 55-54 BC under the leadership of Julius Caesar. The emperor chose not to lead a full-scale invasion of the province of Britannia and contact between the Romans and the Britons remained relatively placid, with the former viewed as fairly benign by the latter. This remained the state of affairs throughout the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula. It was the emperor Claudius (reigned 41-54) who finally resolved to conquer Britannia in 43 AD. Claudius sent four legions to occupy the island and subdue the native Britons. The sudden violent turn in the relationship between the Romans and the Britons did not fail to provoke an equally violent response from a people whom Tacitus described as “broken in to obedience, not to slavery.”4 But British resistance 3 Many archaeologists have attempted to piece together the story of Boudica’s revolt. See for example G. Webster, The British revolt against Rome AD 60 (London: Routledge, Rev. Ed. 1999). 4 Tacitus, Agricola and Germania (London: Penguin, 2009) 10. Martha Vandrei, Boudica and British historical culture (PhD, King’s College London, 2013) The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. was shambolic and sporadic; the Romans benefitted from the lack of cooperation between the numerous and often quarrelsome British tribes. The rebellion of Caractacus (known Caradog in Wales), king of the tribe known as the Silures, who were settled in what is now Wales, was notable for its length and, at least initially, for its successes. However, it ended with Caractacus’s capture by the pro-Roman queen Cartismandua of the Brigantes in 51 AD, and his subsequent extradition to Rome. Lacking any coherent strategy, each British tribe reacted to the state of war in its own way. Like the Brigantes, Boudica’s Iceni tribe of modern-day East Anglia were on relatively good terms with the Romans, although the relationship proceeded with some caution on the part of the Iceni. The Iceni king, Boudica’s husband Prasutagus, died in 60 AD and, believing that by doing so he could protect his kingdom from wholesale annexation by Rome, he left half of his lands and riches to the emperor Nero. The other half he bequeathed to his two daughters, whose names and ages go unrecorded, under the guardianship of their mother, Boudica. The effect of Prasutagus’s decision was the opposite of what he had intended: Roman soldiers plundered the whole of the Iceni kingdom, the King’s relatives were enslaved, Boudica was scourged, and the two royal children were raped.