Britons in Anglo-Saxon England

Pubns Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies

by Nicholas J. Higham (Contributor)

The number of native Britons, and their role, in Anglo-Saxon England has been hotly debated for generations; the English were seen as Germanic in the nineteenth century, but the twentieth saw a reinvention of the German past'. Today, the scholarly community is as deeply divided as ever on the issue: place-name specialists have consistently preferred minimalist interpretations, privileging migration from Germany, while other disciplinary groups have been less united in their views, with many archaeologists and historians viewing the British presence, potentially at least, as numerically significant or even dominant. The papers collected here seek to shed new light on this complex issue, by bringing together contributions from different disciplinary specialists and exploring the interfaces between various categories of knowledge about the past. They assemble both a substantial body of evidence concerning the presence of Britons and offer a variety of approaches to the central issues of the scale of that presence and its significance across the seven centuries of Anglo-Saxon England.

NICK HIGHAM is Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History at the University of Manchester. Contributors: RICHARD COATES, MARTIN GRIMMER, HEINRICH HARKE, NICK HIGHAM, CATHERINE HILLS, LLOYD LAING, C. P. LEWIS, GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER, O. J. PADEL, DUNCAN PROBERT, PETER SCHRIJVER, DAVID THORNTON, HILDEGARD L. C. TRISTRAM, DAMIAN TYLER, HOWARD WILLIAMS, ALEX WOOLF

Genres: History

266 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Librarian note: There are other authors with the same name.

Dr. Nicholas John Higham, aka N.J. Higham, is Professor in Early Medieval and Landscape History in the History Subject Area in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester. His research interests focus on two interrelated areas: the History and Archaeology of the Early Middle Ages in Britain, and the Landscape and Settlement History of North West and North England in the Middle Ages. He has supervised many successful research students in both areas and is always interested in enquiries concerning future research.

Reviews

[Peter Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Britons in Anglo-Saxon England (Ed N Higham), 2007, 244 pages

This is a series of papers that were presented at a conference in Manchester in 2004. I attended this conference before drifting away from Anglo-Saxon studies, only returning to the fold last Summer. A lot of the papers in this book concern questions related to how Britain became Anglo-Saxon England, but not all do and when you come across the odd one that isn't on this topic, it does feel a bit like an interloper. Some of the essays in this book are fairly theoretical, which is useful if you are into that sort of thing, but they do feel a touch intangible. A lot of the others are quite niche in their nature and whilst worth their weight in gold if you are invested in that particular topic, they offer a lot less to someone with a more general interest. In particular the papers concerning language are very technical and I couldn't even begin to make head nor tail of the ins and outs.

To be brutally honest I can only claim to have actually enjoyed reading three of the papers in here and was relieved when I decided to give the last two up as I'm too old to spend time doing something that I'm not enjoying. This book cost me £50 and it's not one I could totally recommend for even half that price.

The papers include:

Introduction, N Higham 15 pages

This introduces the topic, showing how the historiography has developed over the last few generations. Widespread Germanic migration was popular with the Victorians and became the orthodoxy and then following some international unpleasantness, this was questioned with newer explanations that fitted the evidence more closely emerging. Albeit, these still left unanswered questions, which this conference was addressing.

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, C Hill 11 pgs

This is quite rambling and I found it hard to get to grips with. Hill talks about how a couple of programmes made at the same time had widely differing interpretations of Anglo-Saxon England, mentions Prittlewell and a few other bits and bobs, but never really seemed to come to the point.


Forgetting the Britons in Victorian Anglo-Saxon archaeology, H Williams 15 pgs

This paper, which concentrates on reports from 1840-70, demonstrates that these Victorian chaps found what they expected to find – remains and artefacts that they enthusiastically classified as Anglo-Saxon. At no point did they suggest that Britons were potential transmission routes of Roman artefacts to Anglo-Saxons.


Romano-British metalworking and the Anglo-Saxons, L Laing 15 pgs

This one looks at the influence of Romano-British metalworking on the Anglo-Saxons. It demonstrates a certain level of exchange, mostly from the Romano-British to the Anglo-Saxons during the earlier periods.


Invisible Britons, Gallo-Romans and Russians, perspectives on culture change, H Harke 11 pgs

Here a comparison is offered between the Romano-Britons and the fall of the Soviet Empire. It's an interesting theoretical model, with something to be said for it. However, I found it a bit neither here nor there.


Historical narrative as cultural politics: Rome, 'British-ness' and 'English-ness', N Higham 12 pgs

This looks at Romanitas and the claims to be the heir of Rome. This was hard to get into.


British wives and slaves? Possible Romano-British techniques in 'women's work' G Owen-Crocker 11 pgs

This paper examines looms, loom weights, spinning and fabric types. Of invaluable to interest to many, even if not to me.


Early Mercia and the Britons, D Tyler, 11 pgs

This is a superb paper. Tyler looks into the scarce evidence that we have from early Mercia and forms a convincing argument for a large part of Mercian territory being populated by Britons. He divides Mercia into three zones: outer where Mercia had influence (such as Wales), inner, where Mercia had client rulers (Hwicce, Magonsaete, Wreoconsaete) and core where Penda, etc, ruled directly. Through disparate textual references, place-name evidence and archaeology, Tyler shows that this inner zone was probably mostly made up of Britons.


Britons in Early Wessex: the evidence of the law code of Ine, M Grimmer13 pgs

This is another five star essay that makes much from slender resources. Grimmer looks into what we can learn about Britons in Wessex through the laws of Ine. He gives a plausible context for the laws and this context is essential for understanding the relationship between Britons and Saxons.


Apartheid and Economics in Anglo-Saxon England, A Woolf, 15 pgs

The main conclusion from this is that in Wessex, the discriminatory laws of Ine would, over time, have resulted in the British identifying population being marginalised into insignificance. This one paragraph was in the midst of a lot of pages that I felt didn't add much to the point.

Welsh territories and Welsh identities in Late Anglo-Saxon England, C Lewis 14 pgs

This paper examines the status of the Welsh in territories along the border. Lewis shows that these territories, the saetes and in particular the Mersete Hundred contained numerous Welsh people in 1086, albeit under English lords and living in settlements with English place-names. There's quite a lot to this essay.


Some Welshmen in Domesday Book and Beyond, aspects of Anglo-Welsh relations in the 11th century, D Thornton 21 pgs

This is a very thorough essay that goes into the presence of Welshmen in England to some depth. If this is of interest to you, then this is worth its weight in gold.


What Britons spoke around 400 AD, P Schrijver 7 pgs

I'm no expert on language development, although I'm as capable as anyone of following the conclusions. However, it's the methodology and so on that I get bogged down with. Phrases such as final nasals in monosyllables or even the word morphosyntax are beyond me.


Invisible Britons, the view from linguistics, R Coates 20 pgs

This is more or less a response to the paper presented by Schrijver and consisted of a polite raspberry blown in his direction.


Why don't the English speak Welsh? H Tristram, 23 pgs

And this one disagreed with the paper by Coates. More Morphosyntax and periphrastic aspect and other such gubbins much in evidence.


Place-names and the Saxon conquest of Devon and Cornwall, O Padel 16 pgs

Didn't read.


Mapping Early Medieval language change in South-West England, D Probert 14 pgs

Didn't read.