So the question I'm asking is what if the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians had already settled Britain long before Julius Caesars invasion? How could this happen and what would the divisions of Britain be. Would it be like OTL, with Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria ect, etc, or would it be different?
WI The Ingvaeones already inhabited the British Isles before 55 BC?
- Thread starter American Empire
- Start date
With the possible exception of the Frisians, those specific tribes did not exist around the time of 55 BCE.
The Ingvaeones yes, but most of those actual groups derived/descended from the Ingvaeones did not formalize until after the First Century BCE.
Well, Tacitus (who wrote his "Germania" approximately 150 years later) mentions the Frisii and the Anglii), and the first time the Saxones are mentioned is in Ptolemy's Geography (Ptolemy places the so-called "Saxon Isles" near the mouth of the Elbe).
@ American Empire: I hope you have not read this terrible book.
Ah yes that terrible book.
My dad owns it so I've recently read it.
The author's agenda to have Germanic tribes in Britain pre-Roman Conquest that become one of the Founders of England is rather pervasive. Fortunately it's also rather weak to any with an inquiring mind: just because Caesar says the Belgic tribes were not Gaulish and mostly descended from the Germanic doesn't make them Germanic-speaking rather than Germanic-influenced Celtic-speaking.
He does have a point with the Angles being Scandinavian influenced (and Frisians not) but then they were adjacent to Scandinavian tribes (while the Frisians weren't) for generations prior to the Angles invading Britain.
He also has a point that the Saxon shore might have been populated by Saxon foederati during Roman times - but that doesn't make them pre-Roman either.
So my advice to anyone wanting to read the book: go ahead but bear in mind that the DNA data is now heavily outdated and that the author is pushing a Germanic Southeast Britain being pre-Roman (the annoyingly inaccurate phrase "Roman England" is prevalent throughout!).
Basically while the book is mostly inaccurate there are 1 or 2 points that you may want to look up elsewhere.
My condolences.
My main point regarding the Belgae was always mainly linguistic: there is basically no evidence for Germanic settlements in Britain before the Anglo-Saxon invasion, especially not amongst the Belgic tribes that settled in southern Britain. Likewise, the case for the Belgae being Germanic in any way (other than Caesar labeling them that) is very weak at best, due to overtly Celtic town names, place names, personal names. It's far more likely that the Belgae were either Celticized Germanic tribes, or even more probably Celtic tribes that were displaced from the other side of the Rhine in earlier times (thereby making their claim that they were "Germanic" actually accurate!), or a combination thereof.
Yes, it's certainly likely that there were Germanic mercs operating in Gallia Belgica and in Roman Britain, even relatively shortly after the Romans conquered these areas.
The genetics part is HEAVILY outdated. The whole idea that the R1b marker (which Oppenheimer sees as having originated on the Iberian penninsula during the last glacial max) has been in Europe all along and that the general genetic makeup of Western Europe hasn't changed much since the start of the Neolithic has been decisively disproven. Since 2008 it's known that R1b must have arrived in the Neolithic or later, and due to the absence of the marker from Neolithic sites, the current consensus is that it arrived in Europe either in the Copper Age or even as late as the Bronze Age, which also points toward a substantional population replacement in Western Europe. Likewise, recent genetic results also show that that the Anglo-Saxons actually had a quite substantial genetic impact im Britain, contrary to what Oppenheimer claims.