What If The Anglo-Saxons Hadn’t Invaded England (Celtic Briton)?
Channel: Celtic History Decoded
Date: 2023-01-15

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What If The Anglo-Saxons Hadn’t of Invaded Celtic England?

Chapters:
0:00 Intro and Anglo-Saxon Invasion
1:34 No English Language
2:40 Genetic Makeup 
3:27 Brittany and Celtic Breton  

The Anglo-Saxon migration and invasion into ancient England inhabited by Celts is a defining event in the history of England and Britain in general? But what if this didn’t happen, and there was no Anglo-Saxon flux into ancient England?

The vantage point of history allows us to look back on events after they happened, but this creates a problem. Reading history after the events happened often makes these events seem a forgone conclusion, like what else could have happened. 

In Niall Ferguson’s podcast appearance on Tim Ferris however, he notes the importance of asking the question: what if things happened differently?

Very briefly, the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain refers to the period shortly after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410 AD, when groups of Angles and Saxons from places such as ancient Germany and Denmark began flooding into ancient England, with Frisia, a region in parts of modern Germany and the Netherlands, thought to have been a key region the Anglo-Saxons came from. 

They were initially invited to defend the Celtic Britons of ancient England against attacks from groups such as the Picts and the Scotti, but they then began flooding in at an alarming rate for the Britons.

If the Anglo-Saxons hadn’t of migrated into the land we call England today, the greatest consequence would have been that the English language would never have been forged. English itself gets its name from the Angles, and it’s a West Germanic language, although it is influenced by French, Latin and Old Norse. 

English is a Germanic language, and Old English is actually very Germanic, and a synonym for Old English is Anglo-Saxon. Prior to the Anglo-Saxons, the people, known as Britons, mostly spoke a Celtic language, called common Brythonic, or variations of this language. 

If the Anglo-Saxons hadn’t of migrated into ancient Britain, Brythonic and other Celtic languages may have still been the dominant languages in these islands. Obviously, there is still Celtic languages spoken in Britain today, including Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, but English is the most widely spoken language on average. English in many ways went on to become the international language as well. 

The genetic makeup of the English people today would also be different with no Anglo-Saxon settlement, and even the term English wouldn’t be used. The People of the British Isles study found with large parts of the eastern, central and southern parts of England form a single genetic group with between 10 and 40 per cent Anglo-Saxon ancestry. 

Sources:

Heptarchy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heptarchy 

Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_settlement_of_Britain 

BBC - Why did the Anglo-Saxons come to Britain? https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zxsbcdm/articles/z23br82 
 
Schiffels, S., Haak, W., Paajanen, P. et al. Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history. Nat Commun 7, 10408 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10408 
 
Bede - Ecclesiastical History of the English people (Oxford World’s Classics)

Britannica, Anglo-Saxon https://www.britannica.com/topic/Anglo-Saxon
 
English language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language 
People of the British Isles https://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/population-genetics 

Genetic Ancestry and the People of the British Isles, Oxford University Museum of Natural History - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8k9LMaFeRM 

#england #history #english