I do think that Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries would have been an awful place to live, like the world of Mad Max, But, I think it was more a case of a complete breakdown of centralised authority, with local warlords, fighting among themselves, rather than a generalised invasion which ethnically cleansed the Roman/British population Westwards.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
It's complete nonsense as applied to the modern world.
We are talking historians studying the 8th century
If I recall correctly you were originally talking about an Anglo Saxon identity in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Yes which is also correct as I pointed out earlier as those nations also have English Anglo Saxon heritage and the US English and German Anglo Saxon heritage
There's definitely no such thing as 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' in any universe.
There is, most of them voted for Boris and Trump (Trump has German ancestry)! Indeed Trump was originally Drumpf from the German Palatinate
Yes I was wrong - WASP is sometimes used in the US to include other 'white protestant' background people. The Telegraph should get upset about this as it is clearly a perversion of the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'!
Your link about Trump doesn't seem to mention 'anglo-saxon' at all, so not sure what the relevance is? I'm pretty sure his German ancestors would never have thought of themselves as 'Anglo-Saxon'. Also not sure which people of 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' voted for Johnson, the term doesn't seem to have any meaning in the British context.
So far as Mr Trump has UK ancestry, I believe it is primarily Gaelic - i.e. very much not Angles or Saxons or Danes or Normans.
Actually someone in the Hebrides could have more than a dash of Norse/Viking.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
Yes, BBC rolling news reporting live from Television Centre the seminal news that Holly Willoughby has arrived for work.
It is just pathetic and sad the way the media obsess about celebrity
No sooner has Willoughby made a tearful statement (not that I have seen it, indeed I have never watched the programme anyway) along comes Harry for the media to obsess about this week
The other live feed is Prince Harry of the Frozen Todger.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
It's complete nonsense as applied to the modern world.
We are talking historians studying the 8th century
If I recall correctly you were originally talking about an Anglo Saxon identity in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Yes which is also correct as I pointed out earlier as those nations also have English Anglo Saxon heritage and the US English and German Anglo Saxon heritage
There's definitely no such thing as 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' in any universe.
There is, most of them voted for Boris and Trump (Trump has German ancestry)! Indeed Trump was originally Drumpf from the German Palatinate
Yes I was wrong - WASP is sometimes used in the US to include other 'white protestant' background people. The Telegraph should get upset about this as it is clearly a perversion of the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'!
Your link about Trump doesn't seem to mention 'anglo-saxon' at all, so not sure what the relevance is? I'm pretty sure his German ancestors would never have thought of themselves as 'Anglo-Saxon'. Also not sure which people of 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' voted for Johnson, the term doesn't seem to have any meaning in the British context.
Johnson won a majority of white English voters in 2019, Labour won most non white voters and Labour also won Celtic Wales whlle the SNP won Celtic Scotland. Albeit Johnson did win Celtic Cornwall
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
Bet they were after the contents of the site lockers the builders use. Some serious resale value for some tools.
They were taking out white goods according to him. Microwave, dishwasher etc.,. The house has been gutted so there's not a lot else inside.
White goods seem rather odd things to nick, being heavy, bulky and not worth that much as second hand items. Still, I hope the police catch them and your lad's neighbours manage to sort things out.
A second hand microwave might be worth £10 or £20. My first thought was it sounded like the unofficial repossession of a fitted kitchen that had not been paid for. I gather second-hand kitchens can fetch thousands (joinery, marble etc) and there is a legitimate trade in them.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Oh, sure - sorry. I did mistake that completely! Yes; I completely agree with this perspective. The only nuance is in what you mean by "large scale".
Large enough to become the dominant cultural influence - certainly. What surprises me is that it seems that it was large enough to become the dominant genetic heritage, very rapidly.
It depends on what they were assimilating into. One of the theories which seems to be backed up by both archaeology and genetics is that the Germanic migrants were coming into a largely empty landscape. The late RB economy of southern Britain was dominated by the villa landscape with much of the non essential population having been removed or killed. Once that villa landscape collapsed there would not have been a huge RB population left - probably much smaller than that existing prior to the Roman invasion.
Added to this we know there were a whole series of devestating plagues across the Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries and these may well have contributed to a population collapse as well.
It is not difficult to become the dominant genetic heritage when a sigbificant portion of the preceding genetic population is already gone by the time you arrive.
Again, hypothesis but with a lot of supporting evidence.
One slightly odd bit of evidence which doesn't fit though is that we apparently speak Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) language but using what is thought to be a Brythonic grammar system. Also the West Heslerton example I mentioned earlier doesn't necessarily fit this empty landscape hypothesis.
Surely more important - EVEN more important - than the Telegraph stories on Philip Schofield and “the Anglo Saxons” is the Telegraph story on lockdowns being a total economic and human disaster
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
So the Woke academics of Cambridge University have banned the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon' and also haven't offered an alternative suggestion?
Sounds interesting, where can I read more about this?
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
Such a myth Italy has elected a hard right government to turn back the boats and Spain is about too and much of the current government is pushing back hard about the need to get control of the boats crossing the Channel as is Macron given the rise of Le Pen.
Now you are getting desperate. We are talking about Britain, not Spain or Italy. Why don't you quote the US- Mexican border if you think it helps your argument (hint - it doesn't)
Anyway, fuck you guys. I’m flying to CINCINNATI later today. Doesn’t get more glamorous than that
Here is a list of 17 things for tourists to do in Cincinnati. Number 2 is visit a cemetery. I'm sure it is a very nice cemetery, as cemeteries go, but I shall wait for your report before rushing to Heathrow. https://travel.usnews.com/Cincinnati_OH/Things_To_Do/
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England, his influence at most only ever extended to the Midlands and Southern England NOT Northumbria and the North.
Only Aethelstan could proclaim himself King of the English after he defeated the Vikings, who had overrun the North, at York (albeit the Vikings took it back when he died).
Your understanding of late Roman and early medieval history is infantile.
Romano-British is not a term differentiating classes or groupings within Southern Britain. It refers to everyone who lived in the Roman occupied province of Britannia irrespective of their ethnicity or social standing. It is done this way because it is pretty much impossible to differentiate archaeologically between the Romans, the Romanised Britons and the non Romanised. Their material cultures are bascially identical across ethnic boundaries. It is only with the arrival of foedorati from other fringes of the Roman Empire that we are able to make any differentiation and even then they are subsumed to large extent into the RB culture, both taking from it and adding to it.
If you are really interested in this I talk about it with Dan Jones on the Walking Britain's Roman Roads TV programme that was shown a couple of years ago.
Your understanding of when England came into being is infantile
I think we are now safe to add Early Medieval HIstory to the very long list of things you know Sweet FA about.
Surely more important - EVEN more important - than the Telegraph stories on Philip Schofield and “the Anglo Saxons” is the Telegraph story on lockdowns being a total economic and human disaster
Dubious report by dubious authors.
Mind you I blame those cowards who fled to the country at the start of the pandemic and demanded the government lock us all up.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
Such a myth Italy has elected a hard right government to turn back the boats and Spain is about too and much of the current government is pushing back hard about the need to get control of the boats crossing the Channel as is Macron given the rise of Le Pen.
Now you are getting desperate. We are talking about Britain, not Spain or Italy. Why don't you quote the US- Mexican border if you think it helps your argument (hint - it doesn't)
Same issue there, why did Trump win in 2016? In large part because of white Americans concern over the large numbers of Hispanics crossing the US-Mexican border. See also Abbott's win in 2013 in Australia largely to stop the boats coming from Indonesia and south Asia
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
Such a myth Italy has elected a hard right government to turn back the boats and Spain is about too and much of the current government is pushing back hard about the need to get control of the boats crossing the Channel as is Macron given the rise of Le Pen.
I don't think it helps to conflate the words migration and invasion.
Invasion is what the Russians are currently doing in Ukraine - using force to take control of land and driving out or suppressing the natives. The aim of migrants, on the other hand, is generally to live in peace among the natives, although that's not to say their presence may not be resented by the natives. Of course, it is in the interests of those natives who resent the arrival of the migrants to refer to them as invaders in an effort to whip up sentiment against them.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
It is fascinating that the client journalists of the right-wing lockdown naysayers are putting a value on lives saved. I suspect if one of those lives saved from lockdowns was theirs or their loved ones, they might have an alternative view on the relative success of Government action.
Or were shape-shifting lizards immune from the effects of COVID?
NICE put values on lives saved all the time.
If you object to it, you can do it the other way if you like: how much money does it take to prolong a life by a year? If you quantify the financial impacts of lockdown by how much we could have spent on the NHS, you can take money out of the equation entirely: how many life years could we have had in future if we hadn't locked down?
The argument 'you can't put a price on saving a life' is nonsense.
Of course government has to do that all the time, but you are suggesting the sacrifice of an unknown and unchecked number of lives by deciding not to lock down on data you didn't possess. As it turned out each late lockdown lost several thousand additional lives according to government data, and we know the exact number with hindsight. But you weren't to know whether the cost would be a thousand lives or a million lives lost with each of your aborted lockdowns. Yes you had modelling, but the ranges were humongous. So your costs benefit analysis is a waste of time as you have no idea of the costs.
If you decided you would prefer to let the pandemic rip and take your chances, you'd better have hoped your luck held out and you and your loved ones did not become just numbers in the fatality statistics.
While I naturally welcome this as balance for the £5m recently given to the Tories by another donor, I do think the party spending arms race is a thoroughly bad thing. It should be possible to have a lively debate with all parties being heard without going in the direction of the US, where you can't run for anything without lining up an array of donors with bulging wallets. At best they want to help parties who will favour their particular view, which biases politics towards wealthy individuals. At worst they hope for financial benefits (I am not suggesting that's the case here.
I don't think you can stop parties fund-raising. But strict limits throughout the electoral cycle on what parties can spend money on combined would contain the damage. As usual I hark back to the Danish model - all parties who clear a hurdle of 20K signatures to show they're not joke parties get an hour on TV (smallest parties first) to present their views and have them questioned by a panel of journalists. Combine that with a ban on paid media advertising (which we already have for TV and radio, unlike the US) and parties will have much less need for megabucks to win. Healthier politics, and the donors can give their money to charities if they want to improve the world.
Well said. Political funding is a cancer in the United States and explains much of the inability to solve problems.
I'm surprised you didn't mention state funding. I can't say it excites me but I wonder if there are better alternatives.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England...
Richard didn't say that: "Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan.."
Why are you having an argument with a king dead over a thousand years ago ?
He never conquered Northumbria so on no definition was Offa ever King of England
Either yours being deliberately obtuse, or you genuinely have no understanding of Richard's point. But by all means carry on railing about how an 8thC king self identified.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
Bet they were after the contents of the site lockers the builders use. Some serious resale value for some tools.
They were taking out white goods according to him. Microwave, dishwasher etc.,. The house has been gutted so there's not a lot else inside.
They might get a few quid for a high end fridge, not much for the rest of the white goods.
The second hand value of some tools is quite high, on the other hand. On a house rip out, the builders will store all the tools in big metal lockers they bring in.
The reason they caught the Hatton Garden thieves who dug into the basement was the serial numbers on the concrete boring machine bit they left behind. They are expensive and often stolen. One of the robbers bought the bit on a credit card in his own name….
Much excitement in the junior Cyclefree household in London last night. House next door - empty as being done up by builders for new owners - was burgled. Group of men in balaclavas loading stuff into van. Son challenged them. Got license plate number and has told police. Also wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to me.
We shall see what the police do about this. They have some evidence to go on at least.
Poor owners are in shock. It's not what you want to hear on a Monday morning.
Yikes - fair play for challenging them but tbh I don’t recommend taking on groups of men with balaclavas on. Hopefully that’s at least enough for the coppers to be going on with. Burglary is a nasty crime.
Bet they were after the contents of the site lockers the builders use. Some serious resale value for some tools.
They were taking out white goods according to him. Microwave, dishwasher etc.,. The house has been gutted so there's not a lot else inside.
White goods seem rather odd things to nick, being heavy, bulky and not worth that much as second hand items. Still, I hope the police catch them and your lad's neighbours manage to sort things out.
A second hand microwave might be worth £10 or £20. ...
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Oh, sure - sorry. I did mistake that completely! Yes; I completely agree with this perspective. The only nuance is in what you mean by "large scale".
Large enough to become the dominant cultural influence - certainly. What surprises me is that it seems that it was large enough to become the dominant genetic heritage, very rapidly.
It depends on what they were assimilating into. One of the theories which seems to be backed up by both archaeology and genetics is that the Germanic migrants were coming into a largely empty landscape. The late RB economy of southern Britain was dominated by the villa landscape with much of the non essential population having been removed or killed. Once that villa landscape collapsed there would not have been a huge RB population left - probably much smaller than that existing prior to the Roman invasion.
Added to this we know there were a whole series of devestating plagues across the Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries and these may well have contributed to a population collapse as well.
It is not difficult to become the dominant genetic heritage when a sigbificant portion of the preceding genetic population is already gone by the time you arrive.
Again, hypothesis but with a lot of supporting evidence.
One slightly odd bit of evidence which doesn't fit though is that we apparently speak Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) language but using what is thought to be a Brythonic grammar system. Also the West Heslerton example I mentioned earlier doesn't necessarily fit this empty landscape hypothesis.
Have you ever been to Sutton Hoo? The tombs themselves are disappointing tumps - all the finds are in Bloomsbury - but the wonderful landscape around it, with its primitive early English place names - leaves the visitor in no doubt. These people were a people. Distinct and unique with their own culture and language. No question
It’s like the cradle of Englishness, that corner of Suffolk
Near to Sutton hoo you will find “Saxmundham”, “Eyke”, “Swilland”, “Ufford” - you can almost hear the vowels and consonants in a guttural Germanic tinged voice. You can sense Englishness struggling to be born, and with it the mighty English language. Birthed here by a little wooded river, now bestriding the world
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Most Celts were not Romano-British, most Romano-British tended to be wealthier for starters.
Offa was King of Mercia NOT England, his influence at most only ever extended to the Midlands and Southern England NOT Northumbria and the North.
Only Aethelstan could proclaim himself King of the English after he defeated the Vikings, who had overrun the North, at York (albeit the Vikings took it back when he died).
Your understanding of late Roman and early medieval history is infantile.
Romano-British is not a term differentiating classes or groupings within Southern Britain. It refers to everyone who lived in the Roman occupied province of Britannia irrespective of their ethnicity or social standing. It is done this way because it is pretty much impossible to differentiate archaeologically between the Romans, the Romanised Britons and the non Romanised. Their material cultures are bascially identical across ethnic boundaries. It is only with the arrival of foedorati from other fringes of the Roman Empire that we are able to make any differentiation and even then they are subsumed to large extent into the RB culture, both taking from it and adding to it.
If you are really interested in this I talk about it with Dan Jones on the Walking Britain's Roman Roads TV programme that was shown a couple of years ago.
Your understanding of when England came into being is infantile
I think we are now safe to add Early Medieval HIstory to the very long list of things you know Sweet FA about.
England was not united first ie South, Midlands and North until Aethelstan at the earliest (and then only until the Vikings retook York) and to say otherwise is historically false
Anyway, fuck you guys. I’m flying to CINCINNATI later today. Doesn’t get more glamorous than that
Here is a list of 17 things for tourists to do in Cincinnati. Number 2 is visit a cemetery. I'm sure it is a very nice cemetery, as cemeteries go, but I shall wait for your report before rushing to Heathrow. https://travel.usnews.com/Cincinnati_OH/Things_To_Do/
In the PR they sent me point 2 on the attractiveness of Cincy is that it has the “largest contiguous collection of 19th century Italianate housing in the USA”
When you have to use the word “contiguous” in your PR you have a problem
On the morning of day 2 we are visiting the “American Sign Museum”. The afternoon of day 2 is free as they apparently run out of ideas at that point. Day 2
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
Such a myth Italy has elected a hard right government to turn back the boats and Spain is about too and much of the current government is pushing back hard about the need to get control of the boats crossing the Channel as is Macron given the rise of Le Pen.
I don't think it helps to conflate the words migration and invasion.
Invasion is what the Russians are currently doing in Ukraine - using force to take control of land and driving out or suppressing the natives. The aim of migrants, on the other hand, is generally to live in peace among the natives, although that's not to say their presence may not be resented by the natives. Of course, it is in the interests of those natives who resent the arrival of the migrants to refer to them as invaders in an effort to whip up sentiment against them.
I don't disagree but I expect many ordinary working class and lower middle class voters in western Europe are more concerned about the boats crossing the channel and getting that under control than they are even about Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Hence many of them are voting for Nationalist parties like Meloni's, Vox or Le Pen's or the AfD or Orban
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Oh, sure - sorry. I did mistake that completely! Yes; I completely agree with this perspective. The only nuance is in what you mean by "large scale".
Large enough to become the dominant cultural influence - certainly. What surprises me is that it seems that it was large enough to become the dominant genetic heritage, very rapidly.
It depends on what they were assimilating into. One of the theories which seems to be backed up by both archaeology and genetics is that the Germanic migrants were coming into a largely empty landscape. The late RB economy of southern Britain was dominated by the villa landscape with much of the non essential population having been removed or killed. Once that villa landscape collapsed there would not have been a huge RB population left - probably much smaller than that existing prior to the Roman invasion.
Added to this we know there were a whole series of devestating plagues across the Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries and these may well have contributed to a population collapse as well.
It is not difficult to become the dominant genetic heritage when a sigbificant portion of the preceding genetic population is already gone by the time you arrive.
Again, hypothesis but with a lot of supporting evidence.
One slightly odd bit of evidence which doesn't fit though is that we apparently speak Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) language but using what is thought to be a Brythonic grammar system. Also the West Heslerton example I mentioned earlier doesn't necessarily fit this empty landscape hypothesis.
Have you ever been to Sutton Hoo? The tombs themselves are disappointing tumps - all the finds are in Bloomsbury - but the wonderful landscape around it, with its primitive early English place names - leaves the visitor in no doubt. These people were a people. Distinct and unique with their own culture and language. No question
It’s like the cradle of Englishness, that corner of Suffolk
Near to Sutton hoo you will find “Saxmundham”, “Eyke”, “Swilland”, “Ufford” - you can almost hear the vowels and consonants in a guttural Germanic tinged voice. You can sense Englishness struggling to be born, and with it the mighty English language. Birthed here by a little wooded river, now bestriding the world
What I always find so utterly incredible about Sutton Hoo is that they were excavating a ghost. There was no ship in the way people usually imagine. That had rotted away centuries before due to the acidic soil. They were excavating shadows in the sand and the remains of nails. It is one of the finest pieces of archaological excavation in history. And having worked on 50 or more excavations over the years I know it is a work of extraordinary ability.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
And also, as I have said already, the point of holding the Inquiry is to answer these questions, so can everybody please wait until the evidence is laid out and the Inquiry reports?
No. We all* know for a fact that the enquiry is rigged. Boris Johnson rightly called it out as rigged when praising the senior judge
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
We didn't know much more by June 2020 than we did in March. And when they started to let us out of our padded cells to mingle, we had catastrofuck policies like Eat Out to Help Out which then drove another surge of deaths and hospitals teetering on the verge of collapse.
Even if we had had the spectacle of Bunter first injected with Covid on live TV and then his funeral, with no real restrictions, people would have self-restricted themselves. When people are falling seriously ill and dead in such vast numbers, you're not likely to fancy going out for a nice meal or to the football. No matter how hard right wing zealots demand that the plebs do so.
No-one HAS to go out. But I might have quite fancied my kids going to school though. Just that one aspect of lockdown alone has been catastrophic for a generation.
Sure - a terrible impact. Then again, schools were a horrible spreading ground for the pox (and still are - both of my kids schools have closed / restricted opening recently due to notCovid tearing a hole through their staff). "Leave schools open" is fine, but a stack of them would have closed anyway, and an uncontrolled close where even less learning would have been done.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Oh, sure - sorry. I did mistake that completely! Yes; I completely agree with this perspective. The only nuance is in what you mean by "large scale".
Large enough to become the dominant cultural influence - certainly. What surprises me is that it seems that it was large enough to become the dominant genetic heritage, very rapidly.
It depends on what they were assimilating into. One of the theories which seems to be backed up by both archaeology and genetics is that the Germanic migrants were coming into a largely empty landscape. The late RB economy of southern Britain was dominated by the villa landscape with much of the non essential population having been removed or killed. Once that villa landscape collapsed there would not have been a huge RB population left - probably much smaller than that existing prior to the Roman invasion.
Added to this we know there were a whole series of devestating plagues across the Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries and these may well have contributed to a population collapse as well.
It is not difficult to become the dominant genetic heritage when a sigbificant portion of the preceding genetic population is already gone by the time you arrive.
Again, hypothesis but with a lot of supporting evidence.
One slightly odd bit of evidence which doesn't fit though is that we apparently speak Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) language but using what is thought to be a Brythonic grammar system. Also the West Heslerton example I mentioned earlier doesn't necessarily fit this empty landscape hypothesis.
Have you ever been to Sutton Hoo? The tombs themselves are disappointing tumps - all the finds are in Bloomsbury - but the wonderful landscape around it, with its primitive early English place names - leaves the visitor in no doubt. These people were a people. Distinct and unique with their own culture and language. No question
It’s like the cradle of Englishness, that corner of Suffolk
Near to Sutton hoo you will find “Saxmundham”, “Eyke”, “Swilland”, “Ufford” - you can almost hear the vowels and consonants in a guttural Germanic tinged voice. You can sense Englishness struggling to be born, and with it the mighty English language. Birthed here by a little wooded river, now bestriding the world
Yes, went there in February, the museum itself is relatively small but certainly you get a great view of where the tombs were dug up from from vantage points around them
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Oh, sure - sorry. I did mistake that completely! Yes; I completely agree with this perspective. The only nuance is in what you mean by "large scale".
Large enough to become the dominant cultural influence - certainly. What surprises me is that it seems that it was large enough to become the dominant genetic heritage, very rapidly.
It depends on what they were assimilating into. One of the theories which seems to be backed up by both archaeology and genetics is that the Germanic migrants were coming into a largely empty landscape. The late RB economy of southern Britain was dominated by the villa landscape with much of the non essential population having been removed or killed. Once that villa landscape collapsed there would not have been a huge RB population left - probably much smaller than that existing prior to the Roman invasion.
Added to this we know there were a whole series of devestating plagues across the Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries and these may well have contributed to a population collapse as well.
It is not difficult to become the dominant genetic heritage when a sigbificant portion of the preceding genetic population is already gone by the time you arrive.
Again, hypothesis but with a lot of supporting evidence.
One slightly odd bit of evidence which doesn't fit though is that we apparently speak Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) language but using what is thought to be a Brythonic grammar system. Also the West Heslerton example I mentioned earlier doesn't necessarily fit this empty landscape hypothesis.
Have you ever been to Sutton Hoo? The tombs themselves are disappointing tumps - all the finds are in Bloomsbury - but the wonderful landscape around it, with its primitive early English place names - leaves the visitor in no doubt. These people were a people. Distinct and unique with their own culture and language. No question
It’s like the cradle of Englishness, that corner of Suffolk
Near to Sutton hoo you will find “Saxmundham”, “Eyke”, “Swilland”, “Ufford” - you can almost hear the vowels and consonants in a guttural Germanic tinged voice. You can sense Englishness struggling to be born, and with it the mighty English language. Birthed here by a little wooded river, now bestriding the world
Yes, went there in February, the museum itself is relatively small but certainly you could a great view of where the tombs were dug up from from vantage points around them
Woodbridge is a really lovely little town, as well
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Oh, sure - sorry. I did mistake that completely! Yes; I completely agree with this perspective. The only nuance is in what you mean by "large scale".
Large enough to become the dominant cultural influence - certainly. What surprises me is that it seems that it was large enough to become the dominant genetic heritage, very rapidly.
It depends on what they were assimilating into. One of the theories which seems to be backed up by both archaeology and genetics is that the Germanic migrants were coming into a largely empty landscape. The late RB economy of southern Britain was dominated by the villa landscape with much of the non essential population having been removed or killed. Once that villa landscape collapsed there would not have been a huge RB population left - probably much smaller than that existing prior to the Roman invasion.
Added to this we know there were a whole series of devestating plagues across the Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries and these may well have contributed to a population collapse as well.
It is not difficult to become the dominant genetic heritage when a sigbificant portion of the preceding genetic population is already gone by the time you arrive.
Again, hypothesis but with a lot of supporting evidence.
One slightly odd bit of evidence which doesn't fit though is that we apparently speak Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) language but using what is thought to be a Brythonic grammar system. Also the West Heslerton example I mentioned earlier doesn't necessarily fit this empty landscape hypothesis.
Have you ever been to Sutton Hoo? The tombs themselves are disappointing tumps - all the finds are in Bloomsbury - but the wonderful landscape around it, with its primitive early English place names - leaves the visitor in no doubt. These people were a people. Distinct and unique with their own culture and language. No question
It’s like the cradle of Englishness, that corner of Suffolk
Near to Sutton hoo you will find “Saxmundham”, “Eyke”, “Swilland”, “Ufford” - you can almost hear the vowels and consonants in a guttural Germanic tinged voice. You can sense Englishness struggling to be born, and with it the mighty English language. Birthed here by a little wooded river, now bestriding the world
“Saxmundham”, “Eyke”, “Swilland”, “Ufford”
Leon, have you just discovered your next four PB identities?
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
Come to think of it, what about the Romans - due to their habit of granting citizenship quite freely, they were definitely a diverse bunch from quite early on.
Mr. Tyndall, I once had a shockingly civil disagreement on Twitter with a lady who held you view (peaceful migration rather than conquest). People don't just give up land, historically. And look everywhere else there was 'large scale Germanic migration'. Spain became Visigothic. Italy became Ostrogothic. Carthage became Vandal. Gaul became Frankish.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
You weigh up your own cost and benefits mate!
Lockdowns worked for me and I can prove it by the fact that I am still walking and talking.
My cost benefit analysis for late lockdowns in September 20 and December 20 can be counted in the fatality statistics for Autumn 2020 and Winter 2020/21.
We've been over before the links between lockdown and fatality statistics. I think they're weak. But put that aside: the point is that no effort was ever made to assess the costs of lockdown. This is pretty unique in the history of big government decisions. That is pretty much what the civil service is for. (So I'm not sure why you're suggesting I do my own cost benefit analysis.) We argue over HS2, for example, but considerable attempts are made to quantity the costs of it.
Costs of lockdown include trillions of pounds of debt - that much we know - money which could then be spent to save lives - but also the life chances of a generation. We know full well the negative impact of long periods of absence from school on life chances. There will be more life years lost just through that than lockdown could ever save. And countless other costs too, not least those on quality of life: I only get 80-odd years on this planet, and rankle somewhat at having to spend one and a bit of one of the best of them unable to do much.
And having said all that, of course there are degrees of lockdown, and of course I'm not suggesting that nothing should have been done - just that far less should have been done. Far more should have been allowed to open (with schools top of the list), and reopenings should have happened much earlier (I'm thinking in particular of the dodgy data upon which Hancock insisted on a final four weeks of closures in June 2021). There was an almost religious attachment to lockdowns: if only we can sacrifice enough, hurt ourselves enough, God will favour us and the great plague will go away. They were a very blunt, very harmful tool.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
And also, as I have said already, the point of holding the Inquiry is to answer these questions, so can everybody please wait until the evidence is laid out and the Inquiry reports?
No. We all* know for a fact that the enquiry is rigged. Boris Johnson rightly called it out as rigged when praising the senior judge
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
We didn't know much more by June 2020 than we did in March. And when they started to let us out of our padded cells to mingle, we had catastrofuck policies like Eat Out to Help Out which then drove another surge of deaths and hospitals teetering on the verge of collapse.
Even if we had had the spectacle of Bunter first injected with Covid on live TV and then his funeral, with no real restrictions, people would have self-restricted themselves. When people are falling seriously ill and dead in such vast numbers, you're not likely to fancy going out for a nice meal or to the football. No matter how hard right wing zealots demand that the plebs do so.
No-one HAS to go out. But I might have quite fancied my kids going to school though. Just that one aspect of lockdown alone has been catastrophic for a generation.
Sure - a terrible impact. Then again, schools were a horrible spreading ground for the pox (and still are - both of my kids schools have closed / restricted opening recently due to notCovid tearing a hole through their staff). "Leave schools open" is fine, but a stack of them would have closed anyway, and an uncontrolled close where even less learning would have been done.
It's the difference between wanting something to happen (in this case, have schools open) and wanting it enough to do the things that might make it happen (air filtering, low underlying levels of infection).
The scandal wasn't lockdown or not, it was repeatedly finding ourselves in a position where there wasn't much choice. And the wishful thinking, that restrictions could be avoided by sufficient love of freedom and will, doesn't look like it helped there.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
I generally agree but I think Englishness as a concept began forming - embryonically - 200 years earlier. Mid 8th century?
There were a lot of petty kingdoms but they also felt a kinship. And they had the “other” of the celts in wales, northwest Scotland and Cornwall - and then the Vikings - against which to distinguish themselves
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
Come to think of it, what about the Romans - due to their habit of granting citizenship quite freely, they were definitely a diverse bunch from quite early on.
Quite unlike anyone else in the ancient world, who guarded citizenship jealously (suicidally so, in the case of Sparta). The Romans prioritised getting fresh stock, and directing aggression outwards, from very early on.
Mr. Tyndall, I once had a shockingly civil disagreement on Twitter with a lady who held you view (peaceful migration rather than conquest). People don't just give up land, historically. And look everywhere else there was 'large scale Germanic migration'. Spain became Visigothic. Italy became Ostrogothic. Carthage became Vandal. Gaul became Frankish.
People don't just give up land - but remember medeival Europe was far emptier than it is now; there was a lot of empty land, particularly in the wake of plagues etc.
That said, my view is still that migration only accounts for a minority of the nominally Anglo-Saxon population of, ooh, let's say 800AD or so.
Mr. Tyndall, I once had a shockingly civil disagreement on Twitter with a lady who held you view (peaceful migration rather than conquest). People don't just give up land, historically. And look everywhere else there was 'large scale Germanic migration'. Spain became Visigothic. Italy became Ostrogothic. Carthage became Vandal. Gaul became Frankish.
Carthage apart, I don't think there's much sign of the displacement of the existing aristocracies, however.
Mr. Tyndall, I once had a shockingly civil disagreement on Twitter with a lady who held you view (peaceful migration rather than conquest). People don't just give up land, historically. And look everywhere else there was 'large scale Germanic migration'. Spain became Visigothic. Italy became Ostrogothic. Carthage became Vandal. Gaul became Frankish.
As I said, it works if the people are no longer there to hold the land - by and large. And the evidence for peaceful assimilatio is everywhere. Combined Germanic and RB cemeteries, continuous occupation of sites like West Heserleton (and many others) with no sign of disruption or destruction and with populations adopting the habits of the incomers whilst remaining 'British' by birth. In 2018 we excavated a cremation urn on my own dig which is one of the earliest ever excavated in Lincolnshire. It was apparently made by an RB potter but used Germanic decoration and contained Germanic grave goods.
There is masses of evidence for a relatively peaceful migration and almost none for a forced invasion.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
It is fascinating that the client journalists of the right-wing lockdown naysayers are putting a value on lives saved. I suspect if one of those lives saved from lockdowns was theirs or their loved ones, they might have an alternative view on the relative success of Government action.
Or were shape-shifting lizards immune from the effects of COVID?
NICE put values on lives saved all the time.
If you object to it, you can do it the other way if you like: how much money does it take to prolong a life by a year? If you quantify the financial impacts of lockdown by how much we could have spent on the NHS, you can take money out of the equation entirely: how many life years could we have had in future if we hadn't locked down?
The argument 'you can't put a price on saving a life' is nonsense.
Cost effectiveness analyses of the type considered by NICE typically* only look at direct NHS costs versus additional quality adjusted life-years, so lockdowns are win-win in both reducing NHS costs and adding QALYs
But, any analysis of this cannot be simple. It's not direct costs of lockdown versus QALYs saved. On the cost side, add mental health issues cause by lockdown, maybe knock-on economic effects from failed businesses. On the benefits side, add QALYs not just from deaths, but from avoided long-Covid (and who knows what other long term health issues may re related to Covid) and also benefits from avoiding a health service meltdown.
The analysis needs to be far wider than what NICE generally look for, in this case. Which probably means it's better to look at broad societal outcomes, comparing states in the US and comparable countries (not Sweden versus UK!) with different policies for years from now.
*a fundamental limitation, to be sure, but normally not that big an issue - many costs in healthcare are NHS costs and if e.g. a drug is cost effective on the QALY versus NHS costs basis then it's very likely even more cost effective if you take into account societal cost/benefit of that person being able to return to work, not need a carer etc etc. Lockdown and other NPIs are unusual in having many costs outwith NHS. Increasingly studies are attempting to report some wider societal costs/benefits
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
It's complete nonsense as applied to the modern world.
We are talking historians studying the 8th century
If I recall correctly you were originally talking about an Anglo Saxon identity in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Yes which is also correct as I pointed out earlier as those nations also have English Anglo Saxon heritage and the US English and German Anglo Saxon heritage
There's definitely no such thing as 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' in any universe.
There is, most of them voted for Boris and Trump (Trump has German ancestry)! Indeed Trump was originally Drumpf from the German Palatinate
Yes I was wrong - WASP is sometimes used in the US to include other 'white protestant' background people. The Telegraph should get upset about this as it is clearly a perversion of the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'!
Your link about Trump doesn't seem to mention 'anglo-saxon' at all, so not sure what the relevance is? I'm pretty sure his German ancestors would never have thought of themselves as 'Anglo-Saxon'. Also not sure which people of 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' voted for Johnson, the term doesn't seem to have any meaning in the British context.
Johnson won a majority of white English voters in 2019, Labour won most non white voters and Labour also won Celtic Wales whlle the SNP won Celtic Scotland. Albeit Johnson did win Celtic Cornwall
If you think Scotland is Celtic, you have a big surprise coming when you read some histories of Scotland. It's a hell of a mixture/patchwork.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
I generally agree but I think Englishness as a concept began forming - embryonically - 200 years earlier. Mid 8th century?
There were a lot of petty kingdoms but they also felt a kinship. And they had the “other” of the celts in wales, northwest Scotland and Cornwall - and then the Vikings - against which to distinguish themselves
They shared a lot, culturally, yes, from an early stage.
The development of Wessex is something I'd love to know more about. It ultimately, became England, yet its first four kings had Roman/British names. Was the House of Wessex actually a native Roman/British dynasty, that gradually adopted English culture?
Indeed we have a precise date “when England began”
In 793 came the first recorded Viking raid, where 'on the Ides of June the harrying of the heathen destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter' (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
It's complete nonsense as applied to the modern world.
We are talking historians studying the 8th century
If I recall correctly you were originally talking about an Anglo Saxon identity in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Yes which is also correct as I pointed out earlier as those nations also have English Anglo Saxon heritage and the US English and German Anglo Saxon heritage
There's definitely no such thing as 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' in any universe.
There is, most of them voted for Boris and Trump (Trump has German ancestry)! Indeed Trump was originally Drumpf from the German Palatinate
Yes I was wrong - WASP is sometimes used in the US to include other 'white protestant' background people. The Telegraph should get upset about this as it is clearly a perversion of the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'!
Your link about Trump doesn't seem to mention 'anglo-saxon' at all, so not sure what the relevance is? I'm pretty sure his German ancestors would never have thought of themselves as 'Anglo-Saxon'. Also not sure which people of 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' voted for Johnson, the term doesn't seem to have any meaning in the British context.
Johnson won a majority of white English voters in 2019, Labour won most non white voters and Labour also won Celtic Wales whlle the SNP won Celtic Scotland. Albeit Johnson did win Celtic Cornwall
If you think Scotland is Celtic, you have a big surprise coming when you read some histories of Scotland. It's a hell of a mixture/patchwork.
Lowland Scotland is - I believe - genetically indistinguishable from northern England. It’s English. The big difference is with the Highlands and Islands, or so I understand. But then you have the Norse as well. As you say: complex
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
I generally agree but I think Englishness as a concept began forming - embryonically - 200 years earlier. Mid 8th century?
There were a lot of petty kingdoms but they also felt a kinship. And they had the “other” of the celts in wales, northwest Scotland and Cornwall - and then the Vikings - against which to distinguish themselves
They shared a lot, culturally, yes, from an early stage.
The development of Wessex is something I'd love to know more about. It ultimately, became England, yet its first four kings had Roman/British names. Was the House of Wessex actually a native Roman/British dynasty, that gradually adopted English culture?
It’s a beautifully romantic idea
And I speak as a direct descendant of Maud Ingelric, a Saxon princess, daughter of the Anglo-Saxon keeper of the Grail, alleged concubine of William the Conqueror and buried in her own monastery at Hatfield Peverel
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
You weigh up your own cost and benefits mate!
Lockdowns worked for me and I can prove it by the fact that I am still walking and talking.
My cost benefit analysis for late lockdowns in September 20 and December 20 can be counted in the fatality statistics for Autumn 2020 and Winter 2020/21.
We've been over before the links between lockdown and fatality statistics. I think they're weak. But put that aside: the point is that no effort was ever made to assess the costs of lockdown. This is pretty unique in the history of big government decisions. That is pretty much what the civil service is for. (So I'm not sure why you're suggesting I do my own cost benefit analysis.) We argue over HS2, for example, but considerable attempts are made to quantity the costs of it.
Costs of lockdown include trillions of pounds of debt - that much we know - money which could then be spent to save lives - but also the life chances of a generation. We know full well the negative impact of long periods of absence from school on life chances. There will be more life years lost just through that than lockdown could ever save. And countless other costs too, not least those on quality of life: I only get 80-odd years on this planet, and rankle somewhat at having to spend one and a bit of one of the best of them unable to do much.
And having said all that, of course there are degrees of lockdown, and of course I'm not suggesting that nothing should have been done - just that far less should have been done. Far more should have been allowed to open (with schools top of the list), and reopenings should have happened much earlier (I'm thinking in particular of the dodgy data upon which Hancock insisted on a final four weeks of closures in June 2021). There was an almost religious attachment to lockdowns: if only we can sacrifice enough, hurt ourselves enough, God will favour us and the great plague will go away. They were a very blunt, very harmful tool.
I believe as far as the principle of lockdowns is concerned the evidence is clear. As to the expediency of making them work more efficiently you probably have a point, and your cost-benefit analysis of lockdown restrictions can counterpoint lives saved directly with lives and livelihoods lost indirectly. I am loathe to lay any credit at the door of Boris Johnson, but either by accident or by design, he largely got the execution of lockdowns about right, save for locking down a few days later than was advisable and on three occasions. But you are right it was a fine balancing act.
My point was more practical. If one didn't become a statistic, one finds themselves in the luxurious position of questioning the value of restrictions. If one did succumb, perhaps via seance, one could extol the benefits of swifter restrictions.
Mr. Tyndall, I once had a shockingly civil disagreement on Twitter with a lady who held you view (peaceful migration rather than conquest). People don't just give up land, historically. And look everywhere else there was 'large scale Germanic migration'. Spain became Visigothic. Italy became Ostrogothic. Carthage became Vandal. Gaul became Frankish.
You can’t, IMHO, reasonably call the European (inc. British) migration into N. America or Australia ‘peaceful’.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
But HYUFD told us recently about the Anglo-Saxon countries today, about how the US, Denmark etc. are all the same, or something…
Anglo Saxons originally came from Germany and Denmark, they then moved to England displacing the Celts, who retreated largely to Wales and parts of Cornwall and Romano British (with some Normans later added on top at the elite aristocratic end) and the English then formed the bulk of the British colonisers of North America (where even today most Americans have ancestry from Germany or Britain and most Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians outside Quebec British ancestry too).
Utterly wrong. For a start there was no distinction between 'Celts' and Romano-British. By the time of the Germanic migrations they were the same thing. Secondly all the evidence is that there was complete integration between the Germanic migrants and the Romano-British. This is shown time and time again across the country by archaeoleogy. Moreover the Germanic migrants had been in Britain living alongside the Romano-British since at least the end of the 3rd century. Indeed it is likely that it was they who maintained the veneer of Roman civilisation along the Thames valley for more than half a century after the withdrawal of direct Imperial control.
Nor did the Anglo-Saxons 'arrive' in the 8th century. As I said, the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, Jutes and others had been arriving in Britain since the 3rd century and in significant numbers since the early 5th century.
And Offa referred to himself as Rex Anglorum more than 150 years before Aethelstan. Bede refers to 'The English' in the early 8th century.
Fascinating, Richard. Thank you.
So this 'boat people' problem we are experiencing is not a new phenomenon then?
Not at all. And in much the same way, the 'invasions' were a myth in the Early Medieval Period just as much as they are now.
I was always supportive of the "there was no large scale migration" theory. And I still am.
However, my confidence was somewhat shaken by this paper from the Max Planck Institute last Autumn.
The migrations were not a myth. The idea that they were an 'invasion' or a conquest is a myth - in my view.
We know that there were large scale migrations. What is changing is our view of the nature of those migrations.
Even so, look at a site like West Heslerton in Yorkshire. The cemetery there which dates to the migration period contained over 200 burials in the classical 'Anglian' style. And yet when they were tested using Oxygen and Strontium isotope testing of the teeth, only one was found to have grown up outside the British Isles.
Oh, sure - sorry. I did mistake that completely! Yes; I completely agree with this perspective. The only nuance is in what you mean by "large scale".
Large enough to become the dominant cultural influence - certainly. What surprises me is that it seems that it was large enough to become the dominant genetic heritage, very rapidly.
It depends on what they were assimilating into. One of the theories which seems to be backed up by both archaeology and genetics is that the Germanic migrants were coming into a largely empty landscape. The late RB economy of southern Britain was dominated by the villa landscape with much of the non essential population having been removed or killed. Once that villa landscape collapsed there would not have been a huge RB population left - probably much smaller than that existing prior to the Roman invasion.
Added to this we know there were a whole series of devestating plagues across the Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries and these may well have contributed to a population collapse as well.
It is not difficult to become the dominant genetic heritage when a sigbificant portion of the preceding genetic population is already gone by the time you arrive.
Again, hypothesis but with a lot of supporting evidence.
One slightly odd bit of evidence which doesn't fit though is that we apparently speak Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) language but using what is thought to be a Brythonic grammar system. Also the West Heslerton example I mentioned earlier doesn't necessarily fit this empty landscape hypothesis.
Have you ever been to Sutton Hoo? The tombs themselves are disappointing tumps - all the finds are in Bloomsbury - but the wonderful landscape around it, with its primitive early English place names - leaves the visitor in no doubt. These people were a people. Distinct and unique with their own culture and language. No question
It’s like the cradle of Englishness, that corner of Suffolk
Near to Sutton hoo you will find “Saxmundham”, “Eyke”, “Swilland”, “Ufford” - you can almost hear the vowels and consonants in a guttural Germanic tinged voice. You can sense Englishness struggling to be born, and with it the mighty English language. Birthed here by a little wooded river, now bestriding the world
What I always find so utterly incredible about Sutton Hoo is that they were excavating a ghost. There was no ship in the way people usually imagine. That had rotted away centuries before due to the acidic soil. They were excavating shadows in the sand and the remains of nails. It is one of the finest pieces of archaological excavation in history. And having worked on 50 or more excavations over the years I know it is a work of extraordinary ability.
Another ship burial was found nearby in the mid-1800s, at Snape. As it was found so early, it was not properly dug and the artefacts were not curated - which is a massive shame. Sutton Hoo had the advantages of being found later, and having an interested landowner and a competent (if mostly amateur) archaeologist.
Mr. Tyndall, with a largely piecemeal invasion and domestic political situation, battles would be small scale and evidence easily missed.
It wasn't until a century or two after the invasion that power started to coalesce into units large enough to be considered kingdoms.
Mr. F, in Frankia, didn't the senior Romans get diverted into the clergy, while political and military roles were held by the Merovingians?
Sadly this is the Victorian view of the period, based upon a belief in the accuracy of the few remaining works written centuries later. Modern archaeology and scientific advances have shown it to be a largely false picture.
Interesting to see that the BBC is marking the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive with a live news feed ... about today's developments on the Phillip Schofield front!
Yes, BBC rolling news reporting live from Television Centre the important news that Holly Willoughby has arrived for work.
She has been so brave. I mean, what she has had to go through! The shock of realising that a colleague didn't feel the need to share intimate details of his private life, the cad. It must be terrible for the poor thing. Give her a Nobel Prize.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
What do we call them? Early English? What fricking difference is there between that and Anglo-Saxon in effect?
This is piffling Woke nonsense disguised as serious history
They've banned 'Chr*stm*s' too!!!! Apparently illegal to use the word any more!!!!!!!! Political Correctness gone mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank God Leon is there to provide us with some serious history, risking imprisonment to do so, the brave man!
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
What do we call them? Early English? What fricking difference is there between that and Anglo-Saxon in effect?
This is piffling Woke nonsense disguised as serious history
They've banned 'Chr*stm*s' too!!!! Apparently illegal to use the word any more!!!!!!!! Political Correctness gone mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank God Leon is there to provide us with some serious history, risking imprisonment to do so, the brave man!
Anyway, fuck you guys. I’m flying to CINCINNATI later today. Doesn’t get more glamorous than that
Here is a list of 17 things for tourists to do in Cincinnati. Number 2 is visit a cemetery. I'm sure it is a very nice cemetery, as cemeteries go, but I shall wait for your report before rushing to Heathrow. https://travel.usnews.com/Cincinnati_OH/Things_To_Do/
In the PR they sent me point 2 on the attractiveness of Cincy is that it has the “largest contiguous collection of 19th century Italianate housing in the USA”
When you have to use the word “contiguous” in your PR you have a problem
On the morning of day 2 we are visiting the “American Sign Museum”. The afternoon of day 2 is free as they apparently run out of ideas at that point. Day 2
If you're in Ohio, sack it off and go to Cedar Point for the world-leading roller coasters.
EDIT: just looked; it's bloody miles away. Don't bother.
Also, I can strongly recommend Marc Morris' great book The Anglo-Saxons.
As that link makes clear this is just leftwing American cultural Marxists with zero understanding of English history engaging in wokeism. To deny Anglo Saxons were a distinct group from northern Germany and Denmark who came to England in about the 8th century as a distinct group from the Romano British and Celts is not only historical ignorance on an epic scale but deliberate lies to suit a Marxist agenda
Not sure about it being a marxist agenda (though a bunch being actual marxists in a humanities department would hardly be a surprise), but it is certainly a exceedingly weird agenda.
Indeed we have a precise date “when England began”
In 793 came the first recorded Viking raid, where 'on the Ides of June the harrying of the heathen destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter' (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).
There it is. 15th June 793. Around lunchtime
Since the Chronicle - or at least the early version of it - started to be written about a century later, and the chroniclers had less idea of historical accuracy than HYUFD (and their own political slants), there are no 'precise' dates for the period.
Indeed we have a precise date “when England began”
In 793 came the first recorded Viking raid, where 'on the Ides of June the harrying of the heathen destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter' (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).
There it is. 15th June 793. Around lunchtime
Since the Chronicle - or at least the early version of it - started to be written about a century later, and the chroniclers had less idea of historical accuracy than HYUFD (and their own political slants), there are no 'precise' dates for the period.
I thought my final comment "around lunchtime" might have alerted whatever vestigial sense of humour you possess, but alas, no
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
I think that's right.
And, actually, these really were invasions (even if the numbers were not huge, relative to the pre-existing population). Attempts to rewrite the Vikings as peaceful traders and farmers are a form of revisionism too far. A trader and farmer could be a warrior and pirate, according to circumstance.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
You weigh up your own cost and benefits mate!
Lockdowns worked for me and I can prove it by the fact that I am still walking and talking.
My cost benefit analysis for late lockdowns in September 20 and December 20 can be counted in the fatality statistics for Autumn 2020 and Winter 2020/21.
You know they were late? Have you included missed cancer diagnosis in the numbers?
This is the point about pre-judging the outcome of the Inquiry. You have concluded that the lockdowns were late and cost lives. Well done - you've saved the Inquiry the bother of that topic...
That's largely a US problem, I think, given their addiction to vehicular behemoths, and lax regulation of old buildings which make us look positively competent.
Indeed we have a precise date “when England began”
In 793 came the first recorded Viking raid, where 'on the Ides of June the harrying of the heathen destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter' (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).
There it is. 15th June 793. Around lunchtime
Since the Chronicle - or at least the early version of it - started to be written about a century later, and the chroniclers had less idea of historical accuracy than HYUFD (and their own political slants), there are no 'precise' dates for the period.
I thought my final comment "around lunchtime" might have alerted whatever vestigial sense of humour you possess, but alas, no
You need to work harder on your gags.
Incidentally, if you're starved for TV drama after the end of Succession, and not averse to horror, check out The Guest on Netflix. Heavily influenced by The Exorcist (with an admixture of Korean shamanism), but sustains the concept rather well in series length.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
I do think that Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries would have been an awful place to live, like the world of Mad Max, But, I think it was more a case of a complete breakdown of centralised authority, with local warlords, fighting among themselves, rather than a generalised invasion which ethnically cleansed the Roman/British population Westwards.
It does seem to support the maxim that whilst many terrible things have happened in strong states (to the extent they existed in such a period), the collapse of most directing authority is far worse, on an individual basis.
Neatly summed up in the joke retort to the scariest words not being 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help', but 'There is no government and I'm here to kill you'.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
The importance of the 19th century in setting standards for English history matters here - an era when Britain was panicking about the prospect of naval invasion by everyone from Napoleon to the Kaiser. To me the idea that the average peasant in the 8th century was seeing themselves as "English" is a stretch.
Anyway, fuck you guys. I’m flying to CINCINNATI later today. Doesn’t get more glamorous than that
Here is a list of 17 things for tourists to do in Cincinnati. Number 2 is visit a cemetery. I'm sure it is a very nice cemetery, as cemeteries go, but I shall wait for your report before rushing to Heathrow. https://travel.usnews.com/Cincinnati_OH/Things_To_Do/
In the PR they sent me point 2 on the attractiveness of Cincy is that it has the “largest contiguous collection of 19th century Italianate housing in the USA”
When you have to use the word “contiguous” in your PR you have a problem
On the morning of day 2 we are visiting the “American Sign Museum”. The afternoon of day 2 is free as they apparently run out of ideas at that point. Day 2
If you're in Ohio, sack it off and go to Cedar Point for the world-leading roller coasters.
EDIT: just looked; it's bloody miles away. Don't bother.
The entire press trip (apart from the sign museum) seems to be dedicated to getting the journalists drunk - starting with champagne in the Concorde Lounge then continuing in various beer halls, bourbon distilleries, barbecues, etc
I think they realise they have a problem - "selling Cincinnati" - so they have resorted to the time-honoured solution of "Getting British Journalists Hammered With Free Booze", and to be fair it will likely work
Betting implications, on the fringes. Rishi might do better lobbying for Boris to be made head of Nato to get him out of Parliament.
He's a good booster, and solid on Ukraine and similar issues, but I'd think NATO would want a stern looking and sounding person to be Secretary-General.
I base this on nothing, but I assume they'd want a non native english speaker, possibly a woman to boot, so Wallace may struggle.
You really think Reddit is a source of top historians?
Anglo Saxons certainly were an accepted group, from the Saxon coast in Germany and Anglia in southern Denmark
That first reddit post seems rather disjointed to me. Perhaps a better question may be:
Did the Angles and Saxons see *themselves* as a distinct ethnic group / groups?
Compared to the Romano British and Celts and later the Normans, absolutely
Not sure we’re any more likely to get the nuanced discussion this debate requires on pb.com any more than on Reddit or in the Telegraph (though it is nice to see the latter featuring a story which isn’t on trans, though who knows: ‘what is an Anglo-Saxon woman?’ may be the next brainwave)
The idea that people in dark ages Europe (especially at the fringes of Rome and beyond) considered themselves as belonging to ethnic groups in the way we define them today really is debatable. That it remained a defined and coherent identity till more or less the present day, is quite a stretch, especially given the pot-pourri of genetic and cultural admixture over the centuries since. ‘English’ is a much more helpful term than ‘Anglo-Saxon’. I am unquestionably the former, but it would be a huge stretch to define me as the latter.
England didn't emerge as anything approaching a nation until Athelstan in the 10th century.
The Anglo Saxons arrived in the 8th century, so for historians Anglo Saxon and the Anglo Saxon Kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex and Kent, Essex, Sussex and East Anglia remain very useful terms for describing that period
I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My point is really that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is a useless term applied in a modern context. I agree that it’s reasonably sensible to use it it in the context of 8th century history etc.
It's complete nonsense as applied to the modern world.
We are talking historians studying the 8th century
If I recall correctly you were originally talking about an Anglo Saxon identity in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Yes which is also correct as I pointed out earlier as those nations also have English Anglo Saxon heritage and the US English and German Anglo Saxon heritage
There's definitely no such thing as 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' in any universe.
There is, most of them voted for Boris and Trump (Trump has German ancestry)! Indeed Trump was originally Drumpf from the German Palatinate
Yes I was wrong - WASP is sometimes used in the US to include other 'white protestant' background people. The Telegraph should get upset about this as it is clearly a perversion of the use of the term 'Anglo-Saxon'!
Your link about Trump doesn't seem to mention 'anglo-saxon' at all, so not sure what the relevance is? I'm pretty sure his German ancestors would never have thought of themselves as 'Anglo-Saxon'. Also not sure which people of 'German Anglo Saxon heritage' voted for Johnson, the term doesn't seem to have any meaning in the British context.
Johnson won a majority of white English voters in 2019, Labour won most non white voters and Labour also won Celtic Wales whlle the SNP won Celtic Scotland. Albeit Johnson did win Celtic Cornwall
If you think Scotland is Celtic, you have a big surprise coming when you read some histories of Scotland. It's a hell of a mixture/patchwork.
Lowland Scotland is - I believe - genetically indistinguishable from northern England. It’s English. The big difference is with the Highlands and Islands, or so I understand. But then you have the Norse as well. As you say: complex
It's not really accurate to say that Lowland Scotland is English. Parts of SE Scotland were once part of the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, and the Gaelic word for a lowlander, Sassanach, means Saxon. But at this time England didn't exist and it would be more accurate to say that these people were (largely) Saxons. They spoke a language (Scots) that was distinct from English, both developing from Middle English. But by the time that "English" meant something, as a word to describe a distinct group of people and their language and culture, these people could not be described as English.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
You weigh up your own cost and benefits mate!
Lockdowns worked for me and I can prove it by the fact that I am still walking and talking.
My cost benefit analysis for late lockdowns in September 20 and December 20 can be counted in the fatality statistics for Autumn 2020 and Winter 2020/21.
You know they were late? Have you included missed cancer diagnosis in the numbers?
This is the point about pre-judging the outcome of the Inquiry. You have concluded that the lockdowns were late and cost lives. Well done - you've saved the Inquiry the bother of that topic...
Yes, I do. And I have come to my conclusion using evidence already in the public domain and I arrived there before 2026.
I have posted later agreeing that in your wider analysis you can't ignore indirect deaths against those direct deaths that were prevented. I repeat my point I made in the same post that execution of restrictions, certainly with hindsight, could have been done differently. Hindsight however is doing much of the heavy work.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
I think that's right.
And, actually, these really were invasions (even if the numbers were not huge, relative to the pre-existing population). Attempts to rewrite the Vikings as peaceful traders and farmers are a form of revisionism too far. A trader and farmer could be a warrior and pirate, according to circumstance.
I think it was in one of Cornwell's Last Kingdom novel afterwords where he talked about that revisionism, albeit he is not a historian. He talked about the definitive proof we have of establishment of fortified towns/burhs and just how expensive and difficult that would have been, and you just don't do that unless you are facing serious and existential military threat.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
I think that's right.
And, actually, these really were invasions (even if the numbers were not huge, relative to the pre-existing population). Attempts to rewrite the Vikings as peaceful traders and farmers are a form of revisionism too far. A trader and farmer could be a warrior and pirate, according to circumstance.
"From the Fury of the Northmen, Good Lord Protect Us"
Yes, the Vikings did not come in peace. And they came in sufficient numbers, in the end, to settle down and inhabit large tracts of northern/eastern England, Scotland and Ireland; as we see - again - from place-names
And of course the Normans were Vikings, once removed
Anyway, fuck you guys. I’m flying to CINCINNATI later today. Doesn’t get more glamorous than that
Here is a list of 17 things for tourists to do in Cincinnati. Number 2 is visit a cemetery. I'm sure it is a very nice cemetery, as cemeteries go, but I shall wait for your report before rushing to Heathrow. https://travel.usnews.com/Cincinnati_OH/Things_To_Do/
In the PR they sent me point 2 on the attractiveness of Cincy is that it has the “largest contiguous collection of 19th century Italianate housing in the USA”
When you have to use the word “contiguous” in your PR you have a problem
On the morning of day 2 we are visiting the “American Sign Museum”. The afternoon of day 2 is free as they apparently run out of ideas at that point. Day 2
If you're in Ohio, sack it off and go to Cedar Point for the world-leading roller coasters.
EDIT: just looked; it's bloody miles away. Don't bother.
The entire press trip (apart from the sign museum) seems to be dedicated to getting the journalists drunk - starting with champagne in the Concorde Lounge then continuing in various beer halls, bourbon distilleries, barbecues, etc
I think they realise they have a problem - "selling Cincinnati" - so they have resorted to the time-honoured solution of "Getting British Journalists Hammered With Free Booze", and to be fair it will likely work
Indeed we have a precise date “when England began”
In 793 came the first recorded Viking raid, where 'on the Ides of June the harrying of the heathen destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter' (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).
There it is. 15th June 793. Around lunchtime
Since the Chronicle - or at least the early version of it - started to be written about a century later, and the chroniclers had less idea of historical accuracy than HYUFD (and their own political slants), there are no 'precise' dates for the period.
I thought my final comment "around lunchtime" might have alerted whatever vestigial sense of humour you possess, but alas, no
You need to work harder on your gags.
Incidentally, if you're starved for TV drama after the end of Succession, and not averse to horror, check out The Guest on Netflix. Heavily influenced by The Exorcist (with an admixture of Korean shamanism), but sustains the concept rather well in series length.
Thankyou. I do need a drama series for the quiet evenings of my intended US roadtrip. That might do nicely!
Indeed we have a precise date “when England began”
In 793 came the first recorded Viking raid, where 'on the Ides of June the harrying of the heathen destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter' (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).
There it is. 15th June 793. Around lunchtime
Since the Chronicle - or at least the early version of it - started to be written about a century later, and the chroniclers had less idea of historical accuracy than HYUFD (and their own political slants), there are no 'precise' dates for the period.
Chroniclers will have been inclined to be overly precise since it sounds better than 'sometime in X'. But in historical analysis terms it's probably pretty close to being precise in that we can presumably boil it down to the right couple of years or so!
I disagree with Leon though, no way was it around lunchtime - probably first thing, it's a good start to the day, a bit of raiding.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
What do we call them? Early English? What fricking difference is there between that and Anglo-Saxon in effect?
This is piffling Woke nonsense disguised as serious history
They've banned 'Chr*stm*s' too!!!! Apparently illegal to use the word any more!!!!!!!! Political Correctness gone mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank God Leon is there to provide us with some serious history, risking imprisonment to do so, the brave man!
They can ban Christmas all,they like.
We will always have Winterval.
Have the Woke Trans Gay NATO Illegal Immigrant Alien AIs been channeling Cromwell?!
Funnily enough, I don't remember this being an issue for the Telegraph as SUVs became widespread. But yes, vehicles both fossil-fuelled and electric are indeed becoming too heavy. I'll be OK with my Leaf (1,580 kg) but owners of a new Range Rover (2,505+ kg) will have to find somewhere else to park.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
As well as Ukraine in NATO. Plus Finland and Sweden, for that extra kick-in-the-ballsness.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
I agree with the general point, but roots of their cultural identity go back much longer than you suggest. The 'half Russian, half Polish" bit describes only the ruling elites over the course of the last few centuries.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
I generally agree but I think Englishness as a concept began forming - embryonically - 200 years earlier. Mid 8th century?
There were a lot of petty kingdoms but they also felt a kinship. And they had the “other” of the celts in wales, northwest Scotland and Cornwall - and then the Vikings - against which to distinguish themselves
They shared a lot, culturally, yes, from an early stage.
The development of Wessex is something I'd love to know more about. It ultimately, became England, yet its first four kings had Roman/British names. Was the House of Wessex actually a native Roman/British dynasty, that gradually adopted English culture?
It’s a beautifully romantic idea
And I speak as a direct descendant of Maud Ingelric, a Saxon princess, daughter of the Anglo-Saxon keeper of the Grail, alleged concubine of William the Conqueror and buried in her own monastery at Hatfield Peverel
I’ve been to see her. Granny Maud
Unfortunately the legend of Ingelrica, first recorded by 17th-century antiquaries, has long been dismissed as a fantasy.
Glad to see that the Torygraph is having a pile-on with regards to the Hallett enquiry - Lockdown didn't save enough lives for the cost apparently.
That may be the case. May not. Either way, that's an assessment made with 2023 hindsight, not one that could have been made in 2020.
Perhaps it couldn't have been made in March 2020. But surely by June that year some effort should have been made to weigh costs and benefits against each other.
I can forgive the initial panicked lockdown in response to unknown circumstances. I can't really forgive keeping it there, to a greater or lesser extent, for the next 16 months. Nor the silencing of anyone who called for less lockdown.
You weigh up your own cost and benefits mate!
Lockdowns worked for me and I can prove it by the fact that I am still walking and talking.
My cost benefit analysis for late lockdowns in September 20 and December 20 can be counted in the fatality statistics for Autumn 2020 and Winter 2020/21.
You know they were late? Have you included missed cancer diagnosis in the numbers?
This is the point about pre-judging the outcome of the Inquiry. You have concluded that the lockdowns were late and cost lives. Well done - you've saved the Inquiry the bother of that topic...
Yes, I do. And I have come to my conclusion using evidence already in the public domain and I arrived there before 2026.
I have posted later agreeing that in your wider analysis you can't ignore indirect deaths against those direct deaths that were prevented. I repeat my point I made in the same post that execution of restrictions, certainly with hindsight, could have been done differently. Hindsight however is doing much of the heavy work.
Were they late with the knowledge known at the time? September 2020 - could you guarantee that the vaccines would be going into arms in January 2021? No - you couldn't. If you could have, then locking down until the vaccines arrived in strength would have saved many lives. But we didn't, not until the data came out.
I do think that Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries would have been an awful place to live, like the world of Mad Max, But, I think it was more a case of a complete breakdown of centralised authority, with local warlords, fighting among themselves, rather than a generalised invasion which ethnically cleansed the Roman/British population Westwards.
It does seem to support the maxim that whilst many terrible things have happened in strong states (to the extent they existed in such a period), the collapse of most directing authority is far worse, on an individual basis.
Neatly summed up in the joke retort to the scariest words not being 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help', but 'There is no government and I'm here to kill you'.
Going by the situation in Gaul, Spain, Italy, I doubt if there was any real attempt to bring down the Roman Empire, on the part of the "barbarians". They had settled in the Empire, and served in the army for centuries. By the 5th century, most Roman generals were "barbarians", like Stilicho, Aetius, Gainas, Alaric.
(North Africa is the exception, where the Vandals deliberately set out to carve out the own kingdom, independent of Rome.)
The successor kingdoms emerged as Imperial authority just disintegrated, and could not be established, but it could easily have been otherwise. Had Stilicho or Aetius or Majorian not been murdered, or the expedition to Carthage in 468 succeeded, the outcome would have been very different.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
Come to think of it, what about the Romans - due to their habit of granting citizenship quite freely, they were definitely a diverse bunch from quite early on.
And permitted divorce and emancipation of slaves, they were really the wokists of their time.*
*This statement has been endorsed by the Ron DeSantis for President campaign.
But in all seriousness some parts of the Roman system do stand out as almost odd in that way. Even parts of their foundational myths (some of them) about Rome, seem quite unusual.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
I generally agree but I think Englishness as a concept began forming - embryonically - 200 years earlier. Mid 8th century?
There were a lot of petty kingdoms but they also felt a kinship. And they had the “other” of the celts in wales, northwest Scotland and Cornwall - and then the Vikings - against which to distinguish themselves
They shared a lot, culturally, yes, from an early stage.
The development of Wessex is something I'd love to know more about. It ultimately, became England, yet its first four kings had Roman/British names. Was the House of Wessex actually a native Roman/British dynasty, that gradually adopted English culture?
It’s a beautifully romantic idea
And I speak as a direct descendant of Maud Ingelric, a Saxon princess, daughter of the Anglo-Saxon keeper of the Grail, alleged concubine of William the Conqueror and buried in her own monastery at Hatfield Peverel
I’ve been to see her. Granny Maud
Unfortunately the legend of Ingelrica, first recorded by 17th-century antiquaries, has long been dismissed as a fantasy.
Again, a nuance is missed here. I don't actually believe she was the daughter of the Sacred Saxon Keeper of the Holy Grail (why would the Saxons have it anyway? It is OBVIOUSLY buried somewhere in Cornwall, probably The Roseland)
I do believe she was POSSIBLY a concubine of Will the Bastard. There is no doubt she is the matriarch of the Peverels, from whom I provably descend (absent lies about bastards etc)
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
The importance of the 19th century in setting standards for English history matters here - an era when Britain was panicking about the prospect of naval invasion by everyone from Napoleon to the Kaiser. To me the idea that the average peasant in the 8th century was seeing themselves as "English" is a stretch.
He did say 'began to feel'. The start of a process, which we know took centuries.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
What should worry Sunak is soaring inflation and mortgages. Are these the sunlit uplands that this fool and other deluded fools promised us? The sooner the Tory filth are ejected from power, the better!
You really think Sunak and Reeves are going to magically slash inflation and mortgage rates better than Sunak and Hunt?
Anything would be better than the past 13 years of economic mismanagement and self-harm.
The Tories inherited 8% unemployment, even if they lose they will leave that halved and a massive deficit from the Labour government of 2010
Tories ran the deficit up to 11.5% of GPD, Labour's worst year was 4.51%.
The average Labour deficit through 1997 - 2009 was 0.91% The average Tory deficit through 2010 - 2022 was 3.93%
Labour ran a budget surplus in 4 years out of 13; Tories have run a surplus (just) in 1 year out of 13.
Facts yes, but without context. Pretty sure the UK government ran up deficits in 1939-45 too. Covid was a war that needed paying for.
COVID didn't start until 2020. So what went wrong in all but one of the previous ten years?
Really? Did you forget 2008? And 'there's no money left'?
Time for a change yes, but context for data is important too.
My favourite lefties are the ones who criticise Osborne for ‘austerity’ and all criticise him for not cutting the deficit faster.
They use the same argument that US Republicans do. Huge deficits pay for themselves. So, a government can borrow 11% of GDP forever, because the resulting economic growth will cover the cost of servicing the debt.
The words “Ponzi scheme” come to mind.
I am hoping for a return to some form of liberal capitalism in the future, and escaping the Ponzi schemes and leveraged buyout flipping that characterises western economies in the 21st century. It's an engine for disaster.
It feels like we made a mistake somewhere, maybe in setting the balance of corporate debt vs capital raised from shareholders? Somewhere along the way we enabled financial shenanigans at the expense of actually building things that people believe to be worthwhile.
I don’t have a good answer, no magic bullet to hand, but just the feeling that we set up the system wrong somewhere & have incentivised the wrong things.
Perhaps we need mandatory workers’ representatives involved in decision making, as in Germany. Companies need to listen to more stakeholders, and not just their shareholders.
I do think that Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries would have been an awful place to live, like the world of Mad Max, But, I think it was more a case of a complete breakdown of centralised authority, with local warlords, fighting among themselves, rather than a generalised invasion which ethnically cleansed the Roman/British population Westwards.
It does seem to support the maxim that whilst many terrible things have happened in strong states (to the extent they existed in such a period), the collapse of most directing authority is far worse, on an individual basis.
Neatly summed up in the joke retort to the scariest words not being 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help', but 'There is no government and I'm here to kill you'.
Going by the situation in Gaul, Spain, Italy, I doubt if there was any real attempt to bring down the Roman Empire, on the part of the "barbarians". They had settled in the Empire, and served in the army for centuries. By the 5th century, most Roman generals were "barbarians", like Stilicho, Aetius, Gainas, Alaric.
(North Africa is the exception, where the Vandals deliberately set out to carve out the own kingdom, independent of Rome.)
The successor kingdoms emerged as Imperial authority just disintegrated, and could not be established, but it could easily have been otherwise. Had Stilicho or Aetius or Majorian not been murdered, or the expedition to Carthage in 468 succeeded, the outcome would have been very different.
I was thinking more of Britain itself, where we tend to have an over pessimistic view of what the 'dark ages' were like everywhere.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
Crikey, yes. Yet again some guy posting on a discussion site completely outwits the academic establishment by spotting something all the eggheads had missed. There'll be some red faces in our universities today. Thank heaven for the Internet.
I’m actually not disputing the Woke academics here on the term (I’ve always felt “Anglo-Saxon” is slightly clumsy). I’m saying the ARGUMENT is a Woke irrelevance. In the 4th-6th century a bunch of Germanic types with a new culture and language came over to Britain and altered our gene pool and changed all the place names. That indisputably happened (you can call it an invasion or not, that’s not my point)
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
The crux of the issue, when not misrepresented by ignorant commentators, is whether the label refers to a distinct ethnic group. It does not, despite the beliefs of some who would rather it did. The reason why they would rather it did fits into the reason for it being a relevant question. Those who would seek to build their politics on a pillar of racial purity or superiority have a fatal flaw in the foundations of their ideology.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
I think that a group of people that one can call Anglo-Saxons, or English, had become a distinct ethnic group, by the middle of the 10th century, and I see nothing in the Reddit article that conflicts with that.
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
Come to think of it, what about the Romans - due to their habit of granting citizenship quite freely, they were definitely a diverse bunch from quite early on.
And permitted divorce and emancipation of slaves, they were really the wokists of their time.*
*This statement has been endorsed by the Ron DeSantis for President campaign.
But in all seriousness some parts of the Roman system do stand out as almost odd in that way. Even parts of their foundational myths (some of them) about Rome, seem quite unusual.
The Romans were slavers (often, very brutal slavers) - who according to their foundation myths - welcomed escaped slaves as citizens, and who manumitted in large numbers. Like the Mongols, I think they were just extremely pragmatic. If mass slaughter served their purpose, they'd do mass slaughter. If mercy and freedom served their purpose, they'd offer mercy and freedom.
Re the Anglo-Saxons, if we can’t call them “Anglo-Saxons” then what do we call the Germanic invaders who took over the country in the 4th-6th century, displacing Romano-Brits and Celts?
Coz that definitely happened. We can see from place-name evidence. Everywhere
What do we call them? Early English? What fricking difference is there between that and Anglo-Saxon in effect?
This is piffling Woke nonsense disguised as serious history
They've banned 'Chr*stm*s' too!!!! Apparently illegal to use the word any more!!!!!!!! Political Correctness gone mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank God Leon is there to provide us with some serious history, risking imprisonment to do so, the brave man!
They can ban Christmas all,they like.
We will always have Winterval.
Have the Woke Trans Gay NATO Illegal Immigrant Alien AIs been channeling Cromwell?!
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
Hopefully that will include total (or as much as possible) reversal of his territorial gains. Otherwise the poor Ukrainians may have developed a much clearer national identity, and desire for full integration with the western sphere, but be prevented from realistically achieving it due to a festering Russian tumour.
The Viking invasions were probably the moment the English began to feel REALLY English. A people
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
Indeed. I'd say most nations begin this way.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine right now. Before Putin's Special Clusterfuck, the Ukes were a bit nebulous, half Russian, half Polish, half hmmm (Putin actually had a historical point, tho it does not begin to justify his hideous war)
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
Comments
These people need a name. If it can’t be Anglo-Saxon then what will that name be?
As I say, only “early English” is short and pithy enough to work but that will just get the lefties even angrier
Added to this we know there were a whole series of devestating plagues across the Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries and these may well have contributed to a population collapse as well.
It is not difficult to become the dominant genetic heritage when a sigbificant portion of the preceding genetic population is already gone by the time you arrive.
Again, hypothesis but with a lot of supporting evidence.
One slightly odd bit of evidence which doesn't fit though is that we apparently speak Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) language but using what is thought to be a Brythonic grammar system. Also the West Heslerton example I mentioned earlier doesn't necessarily fit this empty landscape hypothesis.
Sounds interesting, where can I read more about this?
https://travel.usnews.com/Cincinnati_OH/Things_To_Do/
Mind you I blame those cowards who fled to the country at the start of the pandemic and demanded the government lock us all up.
Invasion is what the Russians are currently doing in Ukraine - using force to take control of land and driving out or suppressing the natives. The aim of migrants, on the other hand, is generally to live in peace among the natives, although that's not to say their presence may not be resented by the natives. Of course, it is in the interests of those natives who resent the arrival of the migrants to refer to them as invaders in an effort to whip up sentiment against them.
If you decided you would prefer to let the pandemic rip and take your chances, you'd better have hoped your luck held out and you and your loved ones did not become just numbers in the fatality statistics.
I'm surprised you didn't mention state funding. I can't say it excites me but I wonder if there are better alternatives.
But by all means carry on railing about how an 8thC king self identified.
Sadly these people still exist and their reaction is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The second hand value of some tools is quite high, on the other hand. On a house rip out, the builders will store all the tools in big metal lockers they bring in.
The reason they caught the Hatton Garden thieves who dug into the basement was the serial numbers on the concrete boring machine bit they left behind. They are expensive and often stolen. One of the robbers bought the bit on a credit card in his own name….
They have form.
It’s like the cradle of Englishness, that corner of Suffolk
Near to Sutton hoo you will find “Saxmundham”, “Eyke”, “Swilland”, “Ufford” - you can almost hear the vowels and consonants in a guttural Germanic tinged voice. You can sense Englishness struggling to be born, and with it the mighty English language. Birthed here by a little wooded river, now bestriding the world
When you have to use the word “contiguous” in your PR you have a problem
On the morning of day 2 we are visiting the “American Sign Museum”. The afternoon of day 2 is free as they apparently run out of ideas at that point. Day 2
That's very different from saying that these people formed the basis of some kind of pure or superior race.
The same way I'd say that Germans existed at this time. They just weren't the kind of people that 19th Century German nationalists thought they were.
“Saxmundham”, “Eyke”, “Swilland”, “Ufford”
Leon, have you just discovered your next four PB identities?
Costs of lockdown include trillions of pounds of debt - that much we know - money which could then be spent to save lives - but also the life chances of a generation. We know full well the negative impact of long periods of absence from school on life chances. There will be more life years lost just through that than lockdown could ever save. And countless other costs too, not least those on quality of life: I only get 80-odd years on this planet, and rankle somewhat at having to spend one and a bit of one of the best of them unable to do much.
And having said all that, of course there are degrees of lockdown, and of course I'm not suggesting that nothing should have been done - just that far less should have been done. Far more should have been allowed to open (with schools top of the list), and reopenings should have happened much earlier (I'm thinking in particular of the dodgy data upon which Hancock insisted on a final four weeks of closures in June 2021). There was an almost religious attachment to lockdowns: if only we can sacrifice enough, hurt ourselves enough, God will favour us and the great plague will go away. They were a very blunt, very harmful tool.
The scandal wasn't lockdown or not, it was repeatedly finding ourselves in a position where there wasn't much choice. And the wishful thinking, that restrictions could be avoided by sufficient love of freedom and will, doesn't look like it helped there.
There were a lot of petty kingdoms but they also felt a kinship. And they had the “other” of the celts in wales, northwest Scotland and Cornwall - and then the Vikings - against which to distinguish themselves
That said, my view is still that migration only accounts for a minority of the nominally Anglo-Saxon population of, ooh, let's say 800AD or so.
There is masses of evidence for a relatively peaceful migration and almost none for a forced invasion.
But, any analysis of this cannot be simple. It's not direct costs of lockdown versus QALYs saved. On the cost side, add mental health issues cause by lockdown, maybe knock-on economic effects from failed businesses. On the benefits side, add QALYs not just from deaths, but from avoided long-Covid (and who knows what other long term health issues may re related to Covid) and also benefits from avoiding a health service meltdown.
The analysis needs to be far wider than what NICE generally look for, in this case. Which probably means it's better to look at broad societal outcomes, comparing states in the US and comparable countries (not Sweden versus UK!) with different policies for years from now.
*a fundamental limitation, to be sure, but normally not that big an issue - many costs in healthcare are NHS costs and if e.g. a drug is cost effective on the QALY versus NHS costs basis then it's very likely even more cost effective if you take into account societal cost/benefit of that person being able to return to work, not need a carer etc etc. Lockdown and other NPIs are unusual in having many costs outwith NHS. Increasingly studies are attempting to report some wider societal costs/benefits
There’s nothing like being attacked to make you the victims band together, and bond into a team
The development of Wessex is something I'd love to know more about. It ultimately, became England, yet its first four kings had Roman/British names. Was the House of Wessex actually a native Roman/British dynasty, that gradually adopted English culture?
In 793 came the first recorded Viking raid, where 'on the Ides of June the harrying of the heathen destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, bringing ruin and slaughter' (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle).
There it is. 15th June 793. Around lunchtime
It wasn't until a century or two after the invasion that power started to coalesce into units large enough to be considered kingdoms.
Mr. F, in Frankia, didn't the senior Romans get diverted into the clergy, while political and military roles were held by the Merovingians?
And I speak as a direct descendant of Maud Ingelric, a Saxon princess, daughter of the Anglo-Saxon keeper of the Grail, alleged concubine of William the Conqueror and buried in her own monastery at Hatfield Peverel
I’ve been to see her. Granny Maud
My point was more practical. If one didn't become a statistic, one finds themselves in the luxurious position of questioning the value of restrictions. If one did succumb, perhaps via seance, one could extol the benefits of swifter restrictions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snape_Anglo-Saxon_Cemetery
We will always have Winterval.
EDIT: just looked; it's bloody miles away. Don't bother.
A review found that older buildings should either be strengthened or a vehicle weight limit of up to two-and-a-half tonnes imposed
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/05/electric-cars-too-heavy-old-multi-storey-car-parks/ (£££)
And, actually, these really were invasions (even if the numbers were not huge, relative to the pre-existing population). Attempts to rewrite the Vikings as peaceful traders and farmers are a form of revisionism too far. A trader and farmer could be a warrior and pirate, according to circumstance.
Have you included missed cancer diagnosis in the numbers?
This is the point about pre-judging the outcome of the Inquiry. You have concluded that the lockdowns were late and cost lives. Well done - you've saved the Inquiry the bother of that topic...
Rishi Sunak also spent some time on the margins of the G7 meeting in Hiroshima last month lobbying for the Defence Secretary
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/04/rishi-sunak-usa-trip-ben-wallace-nato-general-secretary/ (£££)
Betting implications, on the fringes. Rishi might do better lobbying for Boris to be made head of Nato to get him out of Parliament.
Incidentally, if you're starved for TV drama after the end of Succession, and not averse to horror, check out The Guest on Netflix.
Heavily influenced by The Exorcist (with an admixture of Korean shamanism), but sustains the concept rather well in series length.
Now, the Ukrainians are ABSOLUTELY a nation. They are the people who got attacked by Russia. They will be the people that endured that horrible war (inshallah). "Ukrainian-ness" will be off the dial by the end of all this
Putin will achieve the complete opposite of what he intended
Neatly summed up in the joke retort to the scariest words not being 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help', but 'There is no government and I'm here to kill you'.
I think they realise they have a problem - "selling Cincinnati" - so they have resorted to the time-honoured solution of "Getting British Journalists Hammered With Free Booze", and to be fair it will likely work
I base this on nothing, but I assume they'd want a non native english speaker, possibly a woman to boot, so Wallace may struggle.
I have posted later agreeing that in your wider analysis you can't ignore indirect deaths against those direct deaths that were prevented. I repeat my point I made in the same post that execution of restrictions, certainly with hindsight, could have been done differently. Hindsight however is doing much of the heavy work.
Yes, the Vikings did not come in peace. And they came in sufficient numbers, in the end, to settle down and inhabit large tracts of northern/eastern England, Scotland and Ireland; as we see - again - from place-names
And of course the Normans were Vikings, once removed
I disagree with Leon though, no way was it around lunchtime - probably first thing, it's a good start to the day, a bit of raiding.
The 'half Russian, half Polish" bit describes only the ruling elites over the course of the last few centuries.
(North Africa is the exception, where the Vandals deliberately set out to carve out the own kingdom, independent of Rome.)
The successor kingdoms emerged as Imperial authority just disintegrated, and could not be established, but it could easily have been otherwise. Had Stilicho or Aetius or Majorian not been murdered, or the expedition to Carthage in 468 succeeded, the outcome would have been very different.
Darren Rodwell says council will ‘start to look at tenancy agreements’ if children and families refuse to speak out
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/05/darren-rodwell-labour-barking-dagenham-london-knife-crime-evictions
*This statement has been endorsed by the Ron DeSantis for President campaign.
But in all seriousness some parts of the Roman system do stand out as almost odd in that way. Even parts of their foundational myths (some of them) about Rome, seem quite unusual.
I do believe she was POSSIBLY a concubine of Will the Bastard. There is no doubt she is the matriarch of the Peverels, from whom I provably descend (absent lies about bastards etc)
https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1661301463442702336
I'll give you one guess how, Mr Prigozhin.