Romano-Britains repulse the Saxon invasions

This particular subject is a favourite of mine and therefore I always gobble up any new scholarly article or book that’s out there. However agreeing with an earlier post it is the paucity of evidence that renders much of the debate conjecture and guesswork. I do know that Anglo Saxon dna is not as prevalent as you’d expect and only in the eastern half of England has it made any significant impact. I’ll post a link later.
 
Its starting to look like the most predictable difference would be a Celtic derived language vs a Germanic derived. I suppose there would be endless butterflies culturally & in other directions, but its 1500 years of changes to guess at.

This assumes some other Scandanavian or French invasion does not suceeed.
 
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The population of Anglo-Saxon England (outside the South-East) must have contained British-speaking elements up to the Viking era.

Even later than that -- there's a theory that Cumbria was Celtic-speaking as late as the twelfth century. (Based on the fact that some contemporary chronicles speak of "Cumbrians" as distinct from Englishmen, and that, since there doesn't seem to have been any noticeable difference in their material culture, the most obvious differentiation would be the language they spoke.)
 

Artaxerxes

Banned
Hmm. Well it is worth noting that ethnic identity in this time was fairly malleable. Although he was likely a legendary figure, Cerdic, the alleged first king of Wessex had a Brythonic name. Indeed, this name isn't too dissimilar from the Caratacus that Claudius captured. His successors also had Brythonic names.

I would imagine that much of the conquest consisted of British notables assimilating into the aristocracies of the incoming Anglo-Saxon invaders.


There are a whole heap of questions we just can't answer about the time period, and about the ethnic makeup and language of the British Islands at the time.
 
Some fair points...However, it does appear to me that due to the lack of permanent unity among the post Roman states in Britain the best the Roman-Briton culture can hope to retain is the western 2/3 rather than the 1/5 they ended up with, and even that feels too optimistic to me.

Wanted to touch on this real quick: assuming the Romano-Britons DID have that unity (or at least, more than OTL for any appreciable amount of time), where would you place the Anglo-Saxon area of settlement at? I'd think either East Anglia or Kent, but would they really have both (or neither, being somewhere else)? My own gut feeling is that the former would be the case.
 
Wanted to touch on this real quick: assuming the Romano-Britons DID have that unity (or at least, more than OTL for any appreciable amount of time), where would you place the Anglo-Saxon area of settlement at? I'd think either East Anglia or Kent, but would they really have both (or neither, being somewhere else)? My own gut feeling is that the former would be the case.
A lot depends where the Britons's "legion" bases would be but I'm assuming Kent and East Anglia with pockets along the east and south coasts as the minimum.
 
So a Germanic analogue for *Cornwall and *Wales, respectively? ;)

Been mulling role-reversals of Britons/Anglo-Saxons a lot lately, hence that question (to include how the "British" language would look with similar influences as on OTL English).
 
A lot depends where the Britons's "legion" bases would be but I'm assuming Kent and East Anglia with pockets along the east and south coasts as the minimum.

I would think that there would be rather a big "pocket" around the Humber comprising most of Lindsey and Deira. As to whether Deira would include Eboracum I'm not sure.It certainly had a rough time OTL at this time.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
I would think that there would be rather a big "pocket" around the Humber comprising most of Lindsey and Deira. As to whether Deira would include Eboracum I'm not sure.It certainly had a rough time OTL at this time.

OTL Lindsey was actually probably Celtic-governed till around the 520's, although it seems to have been a fusion of Celtic/Germanic elements. The first recorded "Anglo-Saxon" king was called Cathbad, which is almost certainly *Katubuodos, Brittonic for "battle victory". There are also three placenames containing Celtic personal names in the region, and given the level of viking era overwrite in Lincs, we can probably assume there were previously more.

Somebody did an excellent PHD thesis on the topic which can be downloaded easily. Not sure of legal ramifications of linking it but, if you haven't read it, google "Lindsey, Green, Celtic, Lincoln, Cathbad, pdf" and you should get it.

Even later than that -- there's a theory that Cumbria was Celtic-speaking as late as the twelfth century. (Based on the fact that some contemporary chronicles speak of "Cumbrians" as distinct from Englishmen, and that, since there doesn't seem to have been any noticeable difference in their material culture, the most obvious differentiation would be the language they spoke.)

I wasn't actually including Cumbria in AS England, the northern half of it was only under Anglo-Saxon control between about 700 and 865. There seems to have been a bit of a British reconquest after that which left quite large areas of the northwest and possibly Yorkshire under British control at times in the 9-10th century. In any case, the placenames Cumwhitton and Castle Carrock push the presence of British Celtic speakers in northern Cumbria into the 12th century, beyond reasonable doubt.
 
Perhaps we can make the Romano-Britons Completely christianized before the saxon invasion, that might create a wedge between the saxons and the celts.
 
Perhaps we can make the Romano-Britons Completely christianized before the saxon invasion, that might create a wedge between the saxons and the celts.

I'm not sure that native paganism still had much clout among the Britons (yet another area open for speculation) but it's pretty certain that there were some heresies (Pelagianism, Priscillianism) that had significant followings in Britain. In the 5th century this was another dividing factor.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
I'm not sure that native paganism still had much clout among the Britons (yet another area open for speculation) but it's pretty certain that there were some heresies (Pelagianism, Priscillianism) that had significant followings in Britain. In the 5th century this was another dividing factor.

Yeah Gildas never accuses anyone of Paganism or heresy, and he accuses them of everything else, so we can say religious division wasn't a big deal around 500-550. The POD's here are really easy and really difficult, we know so little that you can have almost anything but it is difficult to say how plausible it is. My personal belief is that a few victories for the Britons in the West Midlands around 600 would have allowed a Celtic *Mercia, which would be enough to pen the AS into the home counties and East Anglia. Mercia already contained British elite individuals so this isn't much of a stretch. Wessex would also be a hybrid Celtic/As policy that leans Celtic due to early conversion to Christianity
 

Artaxerxes

Banned
Yeah Gildas never accuses anyone of Paganism or heresy, and he accuses them of everything else, so we can say religious division wasn't a big deal around 500-550. The POD's here are really easy and really difficult, we know so little that you can have almost anything but it is difficult to say how plausible it is. My personal belief is that a few victories for the Britons in the West Midlands around 600 would have allowed a Celtic *Mercia, which would be enough to pen the AS into the home counties and East Anglia. Mercia already contained British elite individuals so this isn't much of a stretch. Wessex would also be a hybrid Celtic/As policy that leans Celtic due to early conversion to Christianity


It's also hard because we don't know the actual make up of Britain at the time. There are suggestions that the south east was seeing Germanic populations long before the invasions and that the romano-british were only skin deep. Couple that with the difficulty of splitting out Celtic and Saxon culture definitively and mapping that to actual ethnicity...
 
Yeah Gildas never accuses anyone of Paganism or heresy, and he accuses them of everything else
Well, Cuneglasus is probably the closest he does to that, where the king is described as:
  • "You bear, you rider and ruler of many, and guider of the chariot which is the receptacle of the bear"
  • "You contempter of God and vilifier of his order"
  • "You tawny butcher, as in the Latin tongue thy name signifies"
  • one who raises war against men, indeed against his own countrymen, as well as against God
  • one who has "thrown out of doors your wife" and lustfully desires "her detestable sister who had vowed unto God, the everlasting chastity of widowhood"
 
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I would think that there would be rather a big "pocket" around the Humber comprising most of Lindsey and Deira. As to whether Deira would include Eboracum I'm not sure.It certainly had a rough time OTL at this time.

As someone of Lindsey birth and having read and re read the history of Anglo Saxon Lindsey and related articles by the regions foremost expert (probably) Kevin Leahy I would agree almost entirely with one or two contradictory thoughts. Leahy has long since considered that Lincoln and it’s provincial outposts remained Romano-British for far longer than the surrounding country side, graves dated to the late 6th century in the villages of cleatham and manton give credibility to this notion according to what I’ve read. Apologies for the lack of referencing.

Secondly and tantalisingly in the legendary list of Kings of Lindsey one King retains an obvious Brittonic name. If there is any historicity to this list then it may add small credibility to Arthur’s battles in Linnius (Lindsey) itself according to Nennius. Probably wishful thinking on my behalf but you never know.

My own wishful fantasy is that this particular Lindsey king was left by Arthur after a successful campaign against the Saxons of Lindsey.
 
All the sources I've read seem to consider this the moment when the Saxon conquest became truly irrevocable, although given the poor state of our information we can't really know for sure. Regardless, though, the Britons still did better than the other Roman provincials -- Gaul, Spain, etc., all fell as soon as the Roman armies were defeated; Britain was one of the few places where the provincials were able to successfully organise their own defence for some time.

This is a debatable point: the invaders weren't necessarily "bad guys" that needed to be stopped at all costs.

in Gaul, the Frankish invasion was almost a coup d'état, with the Franks basically just replacing the Romans as the overlords. For the average Gaul life was hardly changed. Britannia OTOH was in a much more chaotic situation overall, where the old Roman society seems to have mostly collapsed, and it took time to rebuild a new one.
 
Wanted to touch on this real quick: assuming the Romano-Britons DID have that unity (or at least, more than OTL for any appreciable amount of time), where would you place the Anglo-Saxon area of settlement at? I'd think either East Anglia or Kent, but would they really have both (or neither, being somewhere else)? My own gut feeling is that the former would be the case.

Being no expert on the matter, but having just read by Britain After Rome, I get the impression that the Romano-Britons having that unity is actually a pretty big challenge. Fleming gives the impression that Roman Britain utterly collapsed, almost on its own, in the aftermath of Roman withdraw, with the already economically debased form of life that existed in 410 more or less gone a generation later (a thought I find fascinating: She makes it clear that Britain in 340 was still pretty much classical, with relatively large cities engaged in production for long distance trade, with those urban centers as homes of an elite with 'Romanized' attitudes, but that this situation changed fast and, by the turn of the 5th century, it was replaced by a still economically sophisticated but much more localized and 'small town' oriented market economy. Elites moved into suburbs that were becoming more and more like rural manor houses, with the leftover cities becoming more and more agricultural in orientation. Even this was gone after the Romans left, however, with old urban centers pretty much abandoned and elites concentrating in new, fortified strong points and focusing entirely on local society. I can just about imagine someone born in the 340's living to a ripe old age in the 430's and having an experience something like someone in a post-apocolyptic Hollywood movie). The Anglo-Saxon invasions (and this is part of where the author's thesis gets weird: Her take on the 'invasions' is that they were more like 'new neighbors' than marauding barbarians....yeah) only came maybe another generation after that.

The collapse of Roman Britain was more comprehensive than just the removal of the Roman Army, in other words, it was a totalized social collapse, central authority didn't just wane, it completely disappeared, and the kind of social structures that you might build a replacement on also ceased to exist. Might be why sub-Roman Britain experienced an actual, literal Dark Age where we have practically zero extant writings and literacy may have dried up almost entirely, versus the situation on the Continent, which never got that dire.
 
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