Remembering Britannia: expressions of the identities by Britons on the Continent during the Roman Empire

Abstract

This paper explores the ethnic terms used by British emigrants when naming their origin. It will be argued that the memory of their ancestral land played an important part in the construction of their migrant identities and helped the self-awareness of an ethnic migrant group to emerge. Furthermore, it will be shown that the interaction of British emigrants with other migrant or indigenous groups on the Continent may have led to the formation of a different self-perception in comparison with the ‘Britons’ living inside their tribal territories. It is suggested that the ethnic names used to label the inhabitants of Roman Britain, although being Roman constructs with little self-ascriptive value, were adopted by the British emigrant community in order to distinguish themselves from others.