AS Conquest

David L. White dlwhite at texas.net
Sun Dec 3 23:07:45 UTC 2000


> That is it in itself is suprising, we must ask this question, Was Latin or a
> dialect of it spoken by the common people (not just the elite) in Britain
> around 5th century, like in Gaul, where a similar although might be smaller
> mirgation of Germanic speakers arrived around fall of Roman Empire. I think
> Latin was an language of elite only in Britain, would things be different if
> a Brito-Romance language was spoken by the common people instead of Celtic
> languages.

        Yes, in my view.  England would probably now be Romance territory.
But it is quite clear that, outside of the London area which was especially
hard hit by Anglo-Saxons, Latin/Romance was not established among the common
people.  This is shown among other things by the fact that the quality of
British Latin in this period is unusually good, indicating that it was
insulated from "vulgarizing" developments on the Continent, where Latin
really was established.  British Latin was a language learned in schools.

> Means Britian's population in that era could have dropped from around 2.5
> million people (most likely estimate) to about 1 million and possibly a
> very low Celtic speaking population if we want the Anglo-Saxons to be about
> 30-50% the population order to compeltely wipe out the Celtic language and
> replace it with West Germanic. We must ask the question how could a large
> population decline that far? what were the causes of it?

        It probably couldn't.  If there was a cause, it was probably the
plague of Justinian, which strangely enough seems to have somehow missed the
Anglo-Saxons (strongly indicating minimal contact across the frontier).  But
this is too late (around 550) to have had any effect on weakening the
Britons before the fisrt phase of the Conquest.  It was only after the
plague of Justinian had done its work that the AS conquest resumed.  Prior
to that, most observers would probably have guessed that the island was
likely to be partitioned indefinitely between the two sides, like Cyprus or
Hispaniola.

> I know I hate asking this sort of question, however I must ask it
> Did the Anglo-Saxon arrivals slaughter and do genocide on Celtic peoples
> of Britanna before settleing in new areas.

        Almost certainly not.  Enslavment (or enserfment) is much more
profitable than extermination/expulsion, and is the general practice of
conquerors.  People do not risk their lives so that they can spend the rest
of them looking at the back siide of an ox.

                                                            Dr. David L. White



More information about the Indo-european mailing list