Can anyone please explain to me why, after all the invasions in our past, we call ourselves Anglo-Saxons? Why not Britons, Romano-British, Jutes, Vikings, Normans etc?
The Anglo-Saxons were the dominant people in England (Angle-land) until well into the 11th Century, and were never really replaced by the Normans anyway. Only the aristocracy can really claim to be have been totally usurped by the Normans.
No other group of people has colonised this country so well as the Anglo-Saxons, because they didn't just conquer (although they did plenty of that), they also integrated with the local population, which the Romans, Vikings and so on never achieved.
The term "Anglo-Saxon" is misleading. An authority on the subject descibes it as "unhappy hybrid" of later derivation. The Germanic invaders of Britain described themselves as the "Englisc" - the English.
Bede wrote an "EclesiasticalHistory of the English People" in 731AD. They carved out a number of kingdoms in Britain from the 5th century on - and were the core element in the Old English state which emerged during the 10th century. They had subjugated the native Britons remaining in their territories, there was a lot of ethnic cleansing. These people were called "wealsc" - foreigners - which was a bit of a cheek to put it mildly. But in due course the British population of England became English themselves. Likewise the Vikings also became English - but they were conquerors rather than being conquered people, they carved out territories in eastern England, especially Yorkshire.
The Normans were a small minority who replaced the native aristocracy in a sort of top-slicing exercise, although they too eventually became English.
England was one of the oldest kingdoms in western Europe - from 1707 it was united with Scotland - to become, perhaps rather nominally for sometime, Britain. Scotland represented a threat to England's northern border in the wars with France and they were persuaded of the merits of the union - these were access to a much bigger market and also straight bribery.
But the origins of England and Scotland were quite similiar- nations formed around a dominant ethnic group. The Scots, originally from Ireland, took over the Strathclyde British, the Picts - and some of the Northumbrian English who had got as far as the rIVER fORTH.
Of course the Scots would never ask themselves why they call themselves Scots!!!!
The time of the 'Anglo-Saxon' invasions is a fascinating time as so much can be argued about what might have happened. There's no great archaeological evidence of massacres of the native britons - not like the Boudican layer in London which graphically attests to the accounts of her laying waste to the city.
Gildas claimed the Saxons were like 'wolves' and there was certainly a notable amount of emigration into Northern France - which became Brettany (little Britain). But there have been arguements as to how much the various Germanic tribes actually displaced the native inhabitants though the modern language suggests they did: I've seen figures of between 3 and 6 million inhabitants of Britain in the late Roman period and the invaders (having to come across on boats which weren't exactly the size of modern liners) being calculated as anywhere from 10,000 to about 200,000.
These figures beg the question, even if they had been feeling particularly homicidal, of how they could attempt to ethnically cleanse a country that much bigger than themselves. Which goes back to all the original arguements about wha6t actually happened to make up the tribal areas which became England ?
Modern evidence using DNA and archaelogical techniques suggests that Bede and other writer writing long after the period are (As they so often are) incorrect. The Saxons appear to have been largely settlers and only really enaged in war when there was stiff resistance to them and the refusal of the adoption of the culture. These were usually enclaves of Romano-British still trying to hold onto their Roman way of life.
So you here have the success of the Saxons they intermingled with the population, breeding with them, and so became an inserperable part of our native mix. The Vikings did this somewhat above the danelaw, especially in their strongholds such as york, but never on the scale of the saxons. The Normans just largely usurped the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy rulling over the Anglo-Saxon underclasses.
It doesn't take a great man to change the world, just a man doing great things.
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quote:Originally posted by G8: Modern evidence using DNA and archaelogical techniques suggests that Bede and other writer writing long after the period are (As they so often are) incorrect. The Saxons appear to have been largely settlers and only really enaged in war when there was stiff resistance to them and the refusal of the adoption of the culture. These were usually enclaves of Romano-British still trying to hold onto their Roman way of life.
So you here have the success of the Saxons they intermingled with the population, breeding with them, and so became an inserperable part of our native mix. The Vikings did this somewhat above the danelaw, especially in their strongholds such as york, but never on the scale of the saxons. The Normans just largely usurped the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy rulling over the Anglo-Saxon underclasses.
It doesn't take a great man to change the world, just a man doing great things.
I believe that you are wrong here. There is genetic evidence of ethnic cleansing.
It is not right to simply write off the authority of Bede because what he says is considered unacceptable. He seems to have ben fairly meticulous in his research - he says that he had access to lost Northumbrian and Kentish English sources.
He wrote his book around 731 AD - and descrbes savage ethnic warfare only about 100 years before that between the Northumbrians and the British kingdom of North Wales.
"The Saxons appear to have been largely settlers and only really enaged in war when there was stiff resistance to them and the refusal of the adoption of the culture"
You mean the people who were being invaded fought back!!!!1
Sure there were "enclaves" of British territory in what became England. But the overall picture is one of subjection. The word welsh comes from the English "wealsc" which means foreigner - in their own country. The Brits were also enslaved - the further west, the more Brits, the more slaves. And there was discrimination in law codes - for instance that of Ine, king of Wessex - who set down that the life of an Englishman was worth more than a Briton residing in his territories. This was conquest pure and simple - by a people originally invited in as mercenaries.
This is really interesting as the genetic evidence would appear to support the linguistic evidence - the 'Anglo-Saxons' replaced most of the Britons. Although that doesn't confirm the maternal replacement - being on the XX gene.
I wouldn't argue against warfare between the groups - the various Germanic tribes fought amongst themselves as there may have been an overking (Bretwalda) but there was no single 'England' itself until about the 10th century and that was just a joining of the states with English people. Certainly the Irish did the conversion rather than the Welsh who hated the Saxons.
But we're driven back to the mechanics of the replacement again. How could a comparatively smallish group of incomers got rid of a much larger native group of peoples ? I don't believe the native Britons were a bunch of wusses who went 'aah - Saxons - lets run away: right out of the country'. So what happened ? The numbers suggest that even if the Germanic incomers were inclined to ethnically cleanse, it wouldn't have been possible. So how did it happen ? There is no archaeological evidence of many massacres - I don't believe they just turned tail and ran.
I'd love the know the impact of the late fifth century plague that swept Europe. The fourteenth century equivalent epidemic took approx half the then population. Was the wasteland of medieval Arthurian tales including a much older remembrance of the devastation of this period ? Did the Saxons settle amongst the weakened survivors or in emptied countryside ? But then why didn't the eastern side of the country get equally hit ?
"there was no single 'England' itself until about the 10th century and that was just a joining of the states with English people."
No but there were English kingdoms that had originally established themselves under tribal leaders as far back as the mid-5th century. The "joing-up" is traditionally seen as a kind of reconquista under the Wessex kings of Alfred's line.
"Certainly the Irish did the conversion rather than the Welsh who hated the Saxons."
The above is highly significant - as you say the Brits(Welsh)hated the "English". So much so that they wouldn't share Christianity with them. To think that they in anyway voluntarily adopted Germanic culture is I think ludicrous. The Germanics were on the outer fringes of the Roman world. From the Brit point of view they must have seemed very unpreposessing. Pagans, pirates, mercenaries, poachers turned gamekeepers - why would the Brits abandon their language, religion, and culture - and adopt the ways of these people if they didn't have to?
"But we're driven back to the mechanics of the replacement again......"
We can never know the numbers - I have seen estimates of 2-300000 "English" incomers - but it must be the case that they had sufficient military manpower to impose their will. ok "armies" were small - hundreds, a couple of thousand might have been relatively rare. But the important thing is that this was a kind of on and off attritional warfare which went on over several centuries - so the population numbers must have ben there to fight the battles, it wasn't one-way traffic.
From the time of the "Saxon revolt", say around 450AD, there were lodgements in what's now Kent, East Anglia, Thames Valley, Yorkshire, Northumberland. There was the British revival associated with "Arthur" and the battle of Mons Badon, which is mentioned in Gildas in connection with Ambrosius. I gather that this check to English expansion is supported by archaelogical evidence - and may have lasted a generation or two, Gildas certainly says say.
Towards the end of the 6th century British resistance starts to break-down and the English make relatively rapid ground gains - for instance there is an advance along the Icknield Way, the Battle of Dyrhram(577AD) results in the capture of Bath, gLOUCESTER, Cirencester- although they were only remants of what had once been. In the north the Northumbrians advance and fight the Battle of Chester with the British kingdom of North Wales.......
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......the Battle of Chester(616AD) is described in some detail by Bede.
On the plague point I have read that the Brits suffered disproportionately worse than the English because they were relatively more "urban", and so more exposed. But that needs a lot of qualification. After a generation follwing the Roman military pull-out urban life stated to breakdown - probably associated with the Saxon mercenary revolt. The towns depend on an ordered society, a currency, a well organised countryside. Increasingly that goes out of the window - and the towns are either abandoned or become a pathetic remnant. So for instance in Circenster there's a few pathetic huts huddled in the amphitheatre - and apparently unburied corpses have been discovered, though whether they died through plague or massacre isn't clear. Hillforts are reoccupied at this time which says it all about the overall level of security.
In any event as we've got a conflict lasting centuries bouts of plague aren't enough to account for the eventual outcome - though it was well have been a factor. Also I would think that the gradual decay of urban life makes any massacre analogy with what the Iceni did in Colchester and London inappropriate.
There is some evidence of warfare. The historian Morris says "excavation has uncovered a number of groups of executed prisoners, of warriors buried with broken weapons and fatal wounds, of swords and spears dredged in quantity from river crossings". How much are we likely to find now anyway? How good a guide is this anyway? I gather that nothing much has been turned up at the battle of Hastings site - though this was major engagement which unusally lasted for hours and resulted in thousands of deaths on both sides - the English army being virtually destroyed, but the Normans losing heavily as well.
It also occurs to me that we are often far too sniffy about the sources. Gildas is written off because what he says is seen as a rant.....though on the face of it he had much to rant about, as he forsaw the imminent destruction of his people. Other sources are admittedly much later - the Alfredian Chronicle is the obvious example - but they are said to be based on earlier West Saxon royal annals, and we should surely be appreciative of the oral tradition in largely pre-literate cultures. In any case as I wrote above Bede, who it is accepted tried to research meticulously, described events almost within the historical memory. Going back to the 5th century the A/S Chronicle and the Kentish Chronicle of Nennius seemed to complement each other fairly well in naming battle sites - from the opposite perspective, though I say that with less confidence.
Overall the picture as I see it is one of lot of ethnic cleansing and a lot of subjection - a conquest essentially.
Interesting - I wouldn't disagree that there were generations of conflict and warfare involved but apparently the 'new orthodoxy' in history, considering all the evidence does agree that there was no ethnic cleansing:
In fact when I looked at some secondary sources, a recent one (2001) 'Britain in the First Millenium' by Professor Edward James mentions the lower figure for the incoming Germanic tribes of 10,000 to 100,000. (pg 114).
I wouldn't dismiss primary sources such as Gildas but he has to be taken with a pinch of salt in areas where it appears to conflict with what little hard evidence is available.
quote:Originally posted by Lurker: Interesting - I wouldn't disagree that there were generations of conflict and warfare involved but apparently the 'new orthodoxy' in history, considering all the evidence does agree that there was no ethnic cleansing:
In fact when I looked at some secondary sources, a recent one (2001) 'Britain in the First Millenium' by Professor Edward James mentions the lower figure for the incoming Germanic tribes of 10,000 to 100,000. (pg 114).
I wouldn't dismiss primary sources such as Gildas but he has to be taken with a pinch of salt in areas where it appears to conflict with what little hard evidence is available.
Lurker
I couldn't get the R4 progs. unfortunately but I have come up with something interesting on tooth enamel
I am not suprised there is a new orthodoxy because the past is continually reinvented to serve the concerns of the present - but does is it make sense?
Looking at the link it seems to me that it is drawing very conclusions from an extremely small sample.........and that the point made in the second para below is a bit of a killer objection
"Researchers from the University of Durham and the British Geological Survey looked at different types of the elements strontium and oxygen in the teeth of 24 skeletons from an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at West Heslerton, North Yorkshire that spans the fifth to the seventh centuries AD.
However, Dr Neal Bradman, also of University College London, suggested that, since the teeth of immigrants' descendents would take on the isotopic composition of the local area, it was impossible to know whether the burials were of Britons or not without conducting genetic analysis."
This talk of "complete replacement" here sounds like a strawman;
"I don't think there ever was evidence for a massive population replacement. From the genetics, it's pretty clear there was not complete replacement on the paternal side in England," Professor Goldstein told BBC News Online."
Nobody's is talking about complete replacement but it seems equally impermissible to talk of just a relative few and the natives taking on board their "culture". If some big hairy German barbarian turns up and asks you nicely to adopt his language and ways......then you're not going to do it. If however he has a big sword and his mates to back him then it is offer you can't refuse. Therefore there must have been a sufficient immigration to provide the military manpower to do that. And as that was an attritional war over several centuries, not like winning one battle as in Hastings, then that's a lot of them.
It just seems to me to be wrong to ignore stuff(in favour of flimsy archaelogical findings) like the 7th century laws of Ine, king of Wessex - whose laws codes placed a lesser value on the life of a Briton in his domain as compared to an Englishman(the blood price - wergild). I think the Briton's word counted less in court as well. That's subjection and you can only do that by force....and you can only do it if you've got enough muscle to impose your will.
Reservations about Gildas are possibly fair enough but if we have cast iron evidence later of battles and domination then it seems to me not very sensible to say that the early period(5/6th centuries) were one of a kind of voluntary adoption of A/S culture.....and that things only turned nasty later. I would think that the opposite is true and that the earlier it was the nastier it got.
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Here's the link - the 2 mins edit isn't long enough
I guess most of the 4 million estimated Brits wouldn't have been affected by the invasions of the eastern side of the island, certainly not over the short-term, and so wouldn't be a factor in resisting them.....anything like 10000 A/S seems far too low, I would think it's got to be in the hundreds of thousands.
On the numbers game this is interesting;
"Many may subsequently have fled before the invaders, and many more may have been killed or been driven to an early grave; but the large majority must have remained, since only a thorough policy of `racial cleansing', which would be uncharacteristic of the Germanic invaders of continental Europe (and which, as we shall see, is contradicted in Britain by the evidence of Ine's law code), could have driven the majority of a population into the grave or into miserable exile.(2) The Anglo-Saxon invasion may well have been violent and brutal, and Anglo-Saxon texts certainly occasionally celebrate the massacre of Britons;(3) but even brutal invasion is most likely to have left the vast majority of the native peasant population physically unharmed, if only in order to exploit them and their land more effectively. Perhaps, at the very least, 800,000 Britons survived to become subjects of the new Anglo-Saxon rulers. How many of these there were is even more difficult to guess at; but 200,000 immigrants in all may be a generous estimate, given rough (and admittedly scarcely reliable) figures that we have for invading Germanic peoples on the continent.(1) So, even taking a fairly high Anglo-Saxon figure (200,000) and a low British one (800,000), Britons are likely to have outnumbered Anglo-Saxons by at least four to one. In parts of Anglo-Saxon Britain they almost certainly outnumbered them by very much more."
This article is very long but worthwhile. He mentions genetic evidence being discovered....the article is from 2000. The link I posted before does seem to contradict the authors view that there wouldn't have been much ethnic cleansing, and to have impt. implications for the numbers;
"Gene scientists claim to have found proof that the Welsh are the "true" Britons. The research supports the idea that Celtic Britain underwent a form of ethnic cleansing by Anglo-Saxons invaders following the Roman withdrawal in the fifth century.
Genetic tests show clear differences between the Welsh and English
It suggests that between 50% and 100% of the indigenous population of what was to become England was wiped out, with Offa's Dyke acting as a "genetic barrier" protecting those on the Welsh side.
And the upheaval can be traced to this day through genetic differences between the English and the Welsh.
Academics at University College in London comparing a sample of men from the UK with those from an area of the Netherlands where the Anglo-Saxons are thought to have originated found the English subjects had genes that were almost identical.
But there were clear differences between the genetic make-up of Welsh people studied.
The research team studied the Y-chromosome, which is passed almost unchanged from father to son, and looked for certain genetic markers.
Ethnic links: Many races share common bonds
They chose seven market towns mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and studied 313 male volunteers whose paternal grandfather had also lived in the area.
They then compared this with samples from Norway and with Friesland, now a northern province of the Netherlands.
The English and Frisians studied had almost identical genetic make-up but the English and Welsh were very different.
The researchers concluded the most likely explanation for this was a large-scale Anglo-Saxon invasion, which devastated the Celtic population of England, but did not reach Wales.
Dr Mark Thomas, of the Centre for Genetic Anthropology at UCL, said their findings suggested that a migration occurred within the last 2,500 years."
quote:Originally posted by G8: Modern evidence using DNA and archaelogical techniques suggests that Bede and other writer writing long after the period are (As they so often are) incorrect. The Saxons appear to have been largely settlers and only really enaged in war when there was stiff resistance to them and the refusal of the adoption of the culture. These were usually enclaves of Romano-British still trying to hold onto their Roman way of life.
G8, I find this whole subject very problematic from a number of angles, and my take on it is this.
Without being able to know how many Saxons went to Britain, they must have been an exceptionally dominant people - how else can one explain the almost complete absence of Celtic words in the English language, and the relatively small number of Celtic placenames in England?
Dominance of that overwhelming nature - and it is overwhelming - can only be achieved by sheer numbers, and there is no other explanation, so far as I can see.
However, there are two significant questions that don't back this notion, one being the DNA evidence, and the other being the small number of Saxon ship-finds in archaeology.
I can't give a qualified answer on the DNA question, because I know nothing about it, but I'm inclined to believe that somewhere there must be some misinterpretation of the evidence, and that the science is not perfect.
This position is open to question, I know, but to suggest that the Saxons mixed in equally with the locals, or anything like it, and absorbed no more than about 10 words into a language of about half a million is stretching credulity much too far, in my opinion. On the face of it, one of the sciences has got to be wrong, and it certainly can't be linguistics!
The question of why so few boats have been found is an equal mystery to me, and as with the DNA question, one awaits further developments.
"The armies coming to this country were usually far smaller than their Roman predecessors. Most of the accounts tell of the armies arriving in only two or three ships, and as ships of this time generally carried no more than 50-60 men, most of these armies probably only numbered 100-200 men. Despite the small size of these armies, the Germans were able to carve themselves out many small kingdoms, killing, driving off or enslaving the native population as they went, but it should be remembered that they did not always have things their own way. This was the time of Arthur who, through his use of Roman cavalry tactics against the Germanic infantry, was able to defeat the invaders so heavily, they were unable to advance any further for almost fifty years. However, by the end of the sixth century the Germanic, or as they were then starting to call themselves, Anglo-Saxon invaders had taken over much of lowland Britain and carved out many small Kingdoms of varying strengths and hierarchies much as they had had in Germany."
This is a particularly good quote,
The size of these armies was quite small; King Ine defined the size of an army in his law code:The size of these armies was quite small; King Ine defined the size of an army in his law code:
13. §1. We use the term "thieves" if the number of men does not exceed seven, "band of marauders" [or "war-band"] for a number between seven and thirty-five. Anything beyond this is an "army" [here]
The mechanics of ethnic cleansing aren't difficult to understand. The British had depended on Roman military power - when that was withdrawn in 410AD they were at something of a loss. They had actually, as far as we know, sub-contracted various military functions to the Saxon mercenaries, and the start of the takeover is associated with their revolt against their employers.
Even a small group of armed men is terrifying to a population ill-equipped and unprepared for war. So it must have been like Bosnia with people fleeing in panic when they saw columns of smoke on the horizon and heard the atrocity stories from refugees. The A/S Chronicle tells us that the Britons fled from the Germanics as though "from fire".
Having established themselves more and more migrants came over from North Germany. One of the sources tells us that one Germany kingdom was virtually denuded of population, as they crossed the North Sea in search of land.
The much later battle of Brunanburh poem(937AD) refers to the English tradition;
"No slaughter yet was greater made e'er in this island, of people slain, before this same, with the edge of the sword; as the books inform us of the old historians; since hither came from the eastern shores the Angles and Saxons, over the broad sea, and Britain sought, fierce battle-smiths, o'ercame the Welsh, most valiant earls, and gained the land."
Meanwhile from the link above, "Why the A/S did not become more British";
"While, on the other side of the same coin and at roughly the same time, the Welsh author of the prophetic poem the Armes Prydein looked forward to the day when the Cymry (the Welsh) would drive back the Saxons with such slaughter that their corpses would `stand up, supporting each other as far as the port of Sandwich'; then `the foreigners (will be) starting for exile, one (ship) after another returning to their kinsmen'.(4) And that will be the end of the English, foreigners killed, or compulsorily repatriated, after their brief 500-year sojourn in Britain."
quote:Originally posted by SallyatHillside: Can anyone please explain to me why, after all the invasions in our past, we call ourselves Anglo-Saxons? Why not Britons, Romano-British, Jutes, Vikings, Normans etc?
Sally
Even the Celts (ignored in English Historiography) were not the first 'invaders'. More can be said here!
Were not 'invasions' economic/political migrations/asylum seeking?
Germanic migration is ignored. History did not exist previously! Odd!
I'm afraid I don't accept the DNA aspects of this as being evidence of a post-Roman genocide of the Britons or the cause of a diaspora throughout the island.
The term 'Celtic' is not a racial one, it represents a linguistic grouping of peoples. According to Julius Caesar (who never referred to the inhabitants of Britain as Celts) the peoples of the South East of the island were most similar to those Belgic tribes in the Gauls. Even then he believed them to be relative newcomers to Britain compared to the more inland inhabitants who regarded themselves as being indigenous. Therefore, even before the inclusion of Britain into the Roman Empire there had possibly been a large population movement into the area that is now southern England, with a different population further north and west quite feasibly already showing different DNA groups.
Then comes Rome and the population movement is momentous. Four legions came and there veterans soon were setting up home in Britain; on top of that there were many civil migrants as South Eastern Britannia became increasingly cosmopolitan.
My point here is that DNA studies of a certain period seem often to fail to take into account population trends of other periods. On top of the population changes before the arrival of the Saxons, it should be bourne in mind that there were to further conquests of the area in question the Danes, who shared the DNA of their Saxon predecessors and the Normans, whose origins could suggest the same.
The language element is seperate. It is quite fair to use the lack of 'Celtic' words in English, and of 'Celtic' place-names in England, as a reason for suggesting at least a cultural, if not actual, genocide. However, I've thought about this after similar discussions on other forums. The main area for post-Roman Saxon domination corresponds with the most Romanized part of the Britannias. There was less evidence of Romanitas in the military zones and these were in the exteremities of the island now regarded as the 'Celtic' homelands. I would suggest that after 400 years of being Roman Britannia, the language of the lands annexed by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes was Latin and not Brythonic.
quote:Originally posted by SallyatHillside: Can anyone please explain to me why, after all the invasions in our past, we call ourselves Anglo-Saxons? Sally
Oi! Who's we?
Seiously though, I don't know many people who go around referring to themselves as Anglo-Saxons, do you? Don't most English people refer to themselves as English (or British)?
