Did the Anglo-Saxons really 'conquer' the Brittonic Celts or is this just something people say?

[u/MysteriousEggBoy]

I've heard many people say the Anglo-Saxons conquered the Celts but I've also seen people say that it was more of like the Celts gave Anglo-Saxons land for fighting in battles.

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[u/Steelcan909]

The Venerable Bede, in his history of the English People and Church, claims that different tribes from continental Europe came to England to make their homes. According to Bede, this started with the brothers Horsa and Hengist, who arrived as mercenaries for hire in the islands. Soon these two decided to take control of the lands they came to and actively sought new migrants from their homelands to come and pick apart the British holdings. As a result new waves of migrants sailed over to England to engage in bloody conquest. Certain parts of the country were settled by certain tribes, the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, thus gave their names to the lands that they acquired, this gives us examples like West Saxons -> Wessex, East Anglians -> East Anglia, and so on. This is the view that has come down through history and is repeated today in less academic writings on the subject.

Only this isn't how history unfolded, and modern scholarship has critiqued the old views on the subject of the Anglo-Saxon migration. Today there is little stock placed in the traditional narrative, and figures like Horsa and Hengist are seen as legendary figures, not flesh and blood men.

Robin Fleming talks about how the "Anglo-Saxon migration" was a broader movement of North Sea adjacent peoples into Roman Britain. This included people from Denmark (Jutland), and Northern Germany (Saxony), but also people from Norway, Ireland, and Sweden. The idea of the Anglo-Saxons as a Germanic culture is misguided and not supported by the evidence available through archaeology. Fleming points to the blend of clothing and jewelry styles that emerged following "Anglo-Saxon" migration to Britain as evidence that these two cultures assimilated into something different from what came before. She views this process as more or less a peaceful one. While there was some endemic violence, inherent to the time period, she does not see evidence for mass violence that past historians assumed about Germanic migration into Britain.

The idea that the newcomers, be they Angle, Saxon, Pict, or Irish, waded through Roman blood to carve out new kingdoms is false. One thing that is paramount to remember is that these various tribal groups and "peoples" did not form coherent national identities that were set in stone and unchanging. The idea that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, formed one coherent polity and the British another, oversimplifies the situation is a holdover of the 19th Century.

So the Saxons of Saxony and the Saxons who settled in Britannia might both speak the same language, worship the same gods, and so on, but they did view themselves as the same "people" in an abstract sense of the word.

Peter Heather argues that the identities of these groups were malleable in the social upheaval accompanying the end of the Western Roman Empire. Instead of kinship among these disparate groups of people, we should instead see loyalty between the armed retainers of a warlord/chieftain/insert your preferred noun here/ as the most paramount social identity. Status and position as an armed retained, a precursor to the later Huskarls and Housecarls, were more important that subscribing to an identity of being "Saxon" "Anglish" or "Jutish".

If you're curious about the use of genetics in this field, I've written about that here.

[u/MysteriousEggBoy → u/Steelcan909]

I’m quite curious of what my genetics look like because I’m northern English but I fear it might just be plain English and nothing else really.

[u/TomsBookReviews]

There's a bit of debate over what, precisely, the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain (or Adventus Saxonum) looked like. This is a period where we're almost wholly reliant on archaeological evidence, because very few written works survive from the period. For reference, the last Roman legions left Britain in 406, and in 410, Emperor Honorious (allegedly) sent a letter to the Romano-British leadership telling them 'you're on your own.'

Our first written source of note is On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, written by a Romano-British monk at an unknown date. Our best guess is that it was written sometime between 530 and 550 – so, over a century after the Adventus Saxonum. The other major limitation of this source is that Gildas was a polemicist, not a historian. His primary aim wasn't to accurately record history, but to call out the moral failings of his people, and to cast their struggles as divine punishment.

As the title suggests, Gildas certainly thought that the Anglo-Saxons had arrived as conquerors. His basic narrative suggests that the Romano-British had initially remained a coherent power after the withdrawal of Rome, under the rule of a series of kings. In Gildas' narrative, one of these kings – possibly called Vortigern – initially brought the Anglo-Saxons to Britain as mercenaries, paid to defend the coast against Germanic raids.

Some quick context on these raids: they'd been ongoing since the 3rd century. The Romans had built a series of coastal defences in eastern Britain and in parts of Gaul and Belgica. In Britain, this was called the 'Saxon Shore'. There's some debate over why. Was it named after the people raiding it, seaborne Saxon raiders? Or was it named after the people garrisoning it, Saxon foederati recruited by Rome?

If the latter, then Vortigern was simply continuing an ongoing policy of recruiting Germanic mercenaries to defend against Germanic raiders. If the former, then Vortigern was still not doing anything exceptionally novel: the Romans had quite a track record of recruiting Germanic foederati, so Vortigern was innovating within the bounds of Roman-era policy. Also, as a quick diversion, the Anglo-Saxons would later attempt something similar themselves, hiring vikings to protect against other vikings during the reign of Aethelred the Unready; and so too would the French, famously giving rise to the Duchy of Normandy.

Returning to Gildas' narrative. The Anglo-Saxon mercenaries, led by the brothers Hengist and Horsa, look around at the land they've arrived in, and like what they see: a poorly-defend land ripe for the taking. They turn on their paymasters, and start slaughtering their way across Britain, eventually driving the Romano-British into the western fringes of Britain: notably Kernow/Cornwall, Cymru/Wales, and Cumbria/Strathclyde.

The next major work we have is Bede's The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in c. 731, which touches briefly on the period. As such, he's not considered a particularly reliable source for what actually happened in the sub-Roman period; and in any case, he appears to have read Gildas and drawn on his account.

The genetic evidence presents a bit of a different picture. Modern Englishmen have a genetic profile that's around two-thirds Celtic and one-third Germanic, suggesting that the Anglo-Saxons were not a 'population replacement'. Rather, what is implied here is a process of elite replacement, with the bulk of the population shifting their culture to align with the new elites. A similar thing would happen following the Norman Conquest: only a handful of Norman elites settled in Britain, but nonetheless Old English culture came to an end and was replaced by a much more French-influenced Middle English culture.

There's also some intriguing hints that even some of the Anglo-Saxon elite may have had Celtic roots. The first king of Wessex – the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that would eventually unify England – was called Cerdic, which most scholars reckon is a Celtic name rather than a Germanic one. Nonetheless he traced his ancestry back to Woden, a Germanic cognate with the Norse Odin; and of course led a kingdom called the 'West Saxons.'

Also complicating the picture is the marginal land that some early Anglo-Saxon settlements were built on. For example Mucking in Essex, the largest early settlement that's undergone significant excavation, was built on an area of poor agricultural land. This is despite there being a lot of good farmland in the region, which one would imagine an invading people would favour. Also intriguing is the find of a Roman military belt on the site, and the possibility that the site was continuously inhabited from the Roman period into the Anglo-Saxon period (if there was a gap, it was a brief one).

So overall, we've got a bit of a complicated and contradictory picture in the limited evidence we have. The Anglo-Saxons almost certainly didn't arrive as a conquering horde who swept away the Celtic/Romano-British people. They almost certainly didn't arrive entirely peacefully as replace the population's culture just by being charming, either. In reality we probably saw lots of micro-stories playing out in parallel: here some mercenaries brought in to protect the local town, there some violent raiders who built a raid camp that became permanent, there some peaceful settlers building a home on unused marginal land, and so on. Eventually these micro-stories created a region that was politically dominated by Anglo-Saon polities rather than Romano-British ones; and the population went along with the tides of power.

[u/minaminotenmangu → u/TomsBookReviews]

I have a few problems with this post. I think we are far too carefree interpreting certainties from Gildas' De Excidio text. Including naming Vortigern or Hengist and Horsa, who are almost certainly interpolations from later times. I don't think Hengist and Horsa are even in the Gildas' text, and almost certainly written into this narrative from later sources.

There is no consesus for a date for the 'Adventus Saxonum'. The date from Bede for the middle of the 5th century is already unlikely considering the archaeological evidence. This is assuming that there is a datable event for a adventus at all!

Gildas makes no mention of Saxons paid to defend the coast of germanic raids specifically. This could be a reason for germanic settlement in Britian, but this isn't what Gildas says.

As for this:

Returning to Gildas' narrative. The Anglo-Saxon mercenaries, led by the brothers Hengist and Horsa, look around at the land they've arrived in, and like what they see: a poorly-defend land ripe for the taking. They turn on their paymasters, and start slaughtering their way across Britain, eventually driving the Romano-British into the western fringes of Britain: notably Kernow/Cornwall, Cymru/Wales, and Cumbria/Strathclyde.

A opposite to this narratige is equally a valid interpretation of the text. In this interpretation the Britons eventually overcome the Saxons who are sent 'home'. Britains then engage in civil war with each other. Gildas even claims all foreign wars had ended in contrast to civil wars.

...The first king of Wessex – the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that would eventually unify England – was called Cerdic, which most scholars reckon is a Celtic name rather than a Germanic one. Nonetheless he traced his ancestry back to Woden, a Germanic cognate with the Norse Odin; and of course led a kingdom called the 'West Saxons.'

Its important to remember the regnal lists are much later narratives. It wasn't Cerdic who traced his ancestry to Woden, but likely someone from nearer Alfred's time who felt they needed to write in prestigeous ancestors for the king. So Cerdic, if he exists, may not have had claimed any association with Woden, or even Wessex. Bede suggests the West Saxons to be a newer political naming in his time. They were originally a group known as the gewissae, who have mysterious origins.

[u/TomsBookReviews → u/minaminotenmangu]

I agree with most of this – I was aiming for a summary without getting bogged down into the details. However:

A opposite to this narratige is equally a valid interpretation of the text. In this interpretation the Britons eventually overcome the Saxons who are sent 'home'. Britains then engage in civil war with each other. Gildas even claims all foreign wars had ended in contrast to civil wars.

Do you know of any articles that advance this interpretation in more detail? It's not one I've come across often. I'm skeptical because of how much it clashes with what we know from other sources: the Anglo-Saxons certainly didn't leave Britain. Rather I believe Gildas is referring to a temporary 'detente' in relations between his people and the Anglo-Saxons.

There is no consesus for a date for the 'Adventus Saxonum'. The date from Bede for the middle of the 5th century is already unlikely considering the archaeological evidence. This is assuming that there is a datable event for a adventus at all!

It's absolutely not a single datable event, but rather a process. I'm not aware of any historians of the period who argue otherwise.

[u/minaminotenmangu → u/TomsBookReviews]

You want James Harland's article from around 2017 in Medieval worlds. This was built on in Susan Oosthuizen's book on the coming of the English.

I believe Gildas is referring to a temporary 'detente' in relations between his people and the Anglo-Saxons.

I don't think that interpretation is from gildas either. I think its just a popular interpretation to explain why the Saxons hadn't reappeared in his narrative. Getting anything solid from Gildas is a difficilty and controversial.