What do Moses Finley, William Harris and Jane Webster have in common? According to Danielle Hyeonah Lambert’s Decolonizing Roman Imperialism, they all advanced the study of Roman imperialism in provocative ways that put the field on a new, postcolonial footing. Across just over 200 pages, L. explores ‘the passage of how travelling ideas of postcolonialism diffused into the discourse on Romanization to prompt a paradigm shift’ (12). L.’s underlying concern is with ‘the power dynamics between the West and the East’, seen respectively as ‘the dominant Self and the dominated Other’, and more specifically ‘the dominance the West has maintained’ (62). L. presents the theoretical underpinnings of her analysis in ch. 2 (‘Postcolonial Themes’), focused on some seminal contributions to the historical study of (the interaction between) Self and Other, notably those by Foucault, Fanon, Said, Spivak and Bhabha (roughly in that order). The preceding, opening chapter (‘The Discourse on Romanization in the Age of Empires’) sets the discussion within the Anglo-American frame that characterises the book as a whole. Particular attention is given to the overlap between British and Roman imperialism in the scholarly thought of earlier generations, especially the so-called ‘gentlemen scholars’ (e.g. 18) — Gibbon, Cromer, Lucas, Bryce, et al. The rise of professional academics in the first half of the twentieth century, such as Syme and Haverfield, introduced then a critical stance and methodological shift. Yet, as L. emphasises, ‘this change of orientation itself took place within the surrounding social, political, and historical realities’ — realities that were still informed by British imperialism, the consequence of which was that ‘the expanding British Empire raised public interest in the history of the Roman Empire as a source of guidance and inspiration’, in turn promoting the writing of ‘elite-driven Roman history for the [British] elite’ (27). Instead of challenging the idea of Romanisation as a vehicle of civilisation and the associated European dominant Self, this scholarship emphasised rather ‘the exceptionality of Europeans in their capacity to reap the benefits of civilization’ (40). The work of Tenney Frank is featured to exemplify a similar perspective across the Atlantic, echoing ‘the early American tale of manifest destiny to civilize and organize the Wild West’ (44).

Chs 3 and 4 explore notable developments in the second half of the twentieth century. Some of L.’s exemplars, however, sit oddly in the chosen Roman imperial frame, throwing up a larger issue. Thus, Finley’s recast of The Ancient Economy affects classical history generally, rather than specifically (imperial) Romanisation studies — tacitly implied in the acknowledgement that the poststructuralist epistemological shift in Finley’s work ‘has failed to seize much attention’ (103). Conversely, Harris’ critique of Rome’s defensive imperialism is concentrated on republican history, which otherwise hardly gets a look-in. Overall, because there is so little discussion of scholarship on Romanisation in the republican period, i.e. the period that has become decentred in Anglophone academia in recent decades, the imperial age continues to dominate also in L’s study. Regardless, L. underlines how these ‘Early Adopters’ destabilised the respective contemporary conceptual frameworks of Roman imperialism by distancing ‘Romans from the modern Western Self as the Other’ (116). Martin Millett’s The Romanization of Britain from 1990 is subsequently identified as a ‘tipping point’ at which postcolonial thought impacted scholarship in different ways again: notwithstanding that work’s continuation of a teleology of Romanisation, L. foregrounds how Millett powerfully highlights the role of mutual negotiation in Romanising processes, thereby recasting the Britons — from ‘colonized subjects’ to ‘resourceful mediators’ (129). The chapter closes with Greg Woolf’s Becoming Roman from 1998. Exploring especially the book’s Foucauldian and Saidian leanings, L. underscores the discursive and conceptual dimensions in Woolf’s exposition of how the power that drives Romanisation ‘vindicates imperialism’ (146).

Despite these novel advances in deconstructing traditional narratives and conceptual frameworks of Romanisation, there remained postcolonial work to do, as ch. 4 illustrates, to move ‘Towards a Paradigm Shift in the Age of Globalization’. Focused on three scholars and their respective postcolonial innovations of interest to L. — Webster’s creolisation of the Roman provinces, Richard Hingley’s globalising vista on Roman culture, Mattingly’s introduction of discrepant experiences into Britannia — the chapter depicts major conceptual shifts early in the new millennium that ‘reinstitute an independent epistemology and historiography of the colonized and silent Other to the mainstream historical narrative of the Roman Empire’ (192). L. concludes with an expression of hope for the ‘paradigm of Romanization’ eventually to be replaced conclusively (193). A brief modern contextualisation of the broader issues that the book explores through the lens of scholarship on Romanisation closes the discussion.

Several short appendices add information on concurrent developments outside Anglophone scholarship, notably in French academia. The concentration on primarily British research gives the volume nevertheless a somewhat disjointed feel. How would the narrated story of postcolonial progress in classical scholarship chime with, say, the wealth of Italian scholarship on Roman republican imperialism? Thereby also breaking down the noted stress on Romanisation in the imperial age? More broadly, can the effort to decolonise Romanisation studies be achieved through adherence to prominent paradigms — like, here, the Anglophone concern with the imperial age for discussing Romanisation, and Anglophone scholarship generally? Overall, the claims that the cited works engineered paradigm shifts are stated rather than demonstrated, leaving the ‘audiences’ essentially out of sight. To be sure, L. does not claim that the presented ideas travelled directly from the discussed works to the next set of innovators (and even states that this was not necessarily the case, as noted above with Finley). Wider and deeper historiographic contextualisation could have been marshalled to address these matters.