Industrial Activities in Britannia
As the Roman Empire expanded throughout Europe, it brought profound changes to newly conquered lands. One of the later territories to be absorbed as a province was Britain, in the first century A.D. There, with the arrival of the Roman army and its-relatively speaking- very rapid advance north, a number of new, or at least improved, technologies were introduced. Although ceramics had been made in Britain for several millennia, new kiln (furnace) technology allowed far-better-quality vessels to be made.Furthermore, Iron Age Britain had developed a specialized and highly artistic metalworking industry; with Roman technologies came the ability to mass-produce items. Consequently, while iron Age communities had mastered many crafts and industries, what the Empire brought was the apparatus and the will to exploit these activities, with the initial impetus coming from the army.
It has long been recognized that the army was responsible for many industrial activities early on in the life of the new province of Britannia, and this conformed to the well-established pattern of conquest and Romanization. While undertaking and controlling industrial production had obvious fiscal, political, and even social benefits, it is unlikely that these were the initial motives for the role the army took in manufacturing. First and foremost the army was the largest consumer of goods in early Roman Britain, and what the legions required had to either be produced locally or more expensively imported from abroad. Consequently it made far more sense for the army to produce as many of its own goods as possible, on one hand saving limited financial resources but also ensuring a controlled supply of items that were vital to the day-to-day existence of the legions.
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