Talk:Historiography of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain

Merge proposal

• Proposal: that we merge this new article to Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. Reason: the two articles have no clear difference in what they need to cover, and discussion so far indicates that one aim of the new creation was to give more emphasis on a specific POV. In practice the new article does not appear to add any extra topics that are not being handled in other articles. To the extent that the large range of older articles have some focus problems I believe we need to confront that on those articles first, and no new article should be created unless someone can explain what it will be covering that no other article covers. Creating more poorly focussed articles will in contrast only make things worse.

Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:26, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Oppose - The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain article needs to be fixed, made much less complex, remove the bias and trimmed to make it less of an extended hobbyists' essay and more like a useful and digestible introduction to the topic. The heart of the issue with the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain article is that it's now more about the debate than it is about the event. We need to have one article focusing on the events and another article focusing on the debates. JASpencer (talk) 13:50, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

FWIW I agree that the proposed destination article needs trimming. But focussing is the opposite of creating lots of overlapping articles, or at least that's been a problem for our many Anglo Saxon articles. I also don't agree that you've demonstrated the existence of a debate about this period which, unusually, needs to be handled separately from our reporting of differing scholarly opinions about the historical period. For this period there are only uncertain "events", all subject to debate. There is no clean division between "events" and "debates" for this topic. In practice also the article you have made is not an article about a specific scholarly debate, but simply runs vaguely over the same topics and scholarly ideas as other articles already do. I think much of the material used to make this article was in fact just copy pasted? I also notice there is already an article for a debate you have mentioned, Migrationism and diffusionism, but I think any attempt to portray scholarly discussion about the Anglo Saxon settlements purely in terms of that debate can only, at best, lead to an article which covers all the same topics as the Settlements article also needs to. If not, then please explain in concrete what this new article will cover that wouldn't be at home in the older article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:08, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

The article for Migrationism and diffusionism is an article about the wider debate, of which the Anglo-Saxon debate is just a very prominent part.

The copy pasting is a start to the process.

JASpencer (talk) 17:53, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

The problem is that it is difficult to see/imagine what else can be added which is not either copy pasting, or else material that should equally be in another article. I think you need to let other editors understand this better. At the very least we all need to be able to coordinate and all understand the limits of the article we are working on the SAME WAY. (That has IMHO been a difficult issue in the Anglo Saxon article, partly because there are so many articles with so much overlap. It makes editing difficult and therefore discourages editing.) But more generally I think that you should explain your proposal better.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:04, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Surely, surely the criticism that its hard to see what could go in this page that wasn't already existing in the Anglo Saxon migration page can be put to bed. The article has expanded far more, particularly in the late medieval and early modern sections in places where the Anglo-Saxon migration page was never going to go. JASpencer (talk) 11:25, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Please explain what you mean. I don't see that at all.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:05, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. Obviously Andrew Lancaster is right that it isn't self-evident that we need a new article, and the points he makes above are reasonable. I also agree that at the moment Anglo-Saxon migration debate reads more like a duplicated fork of Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. But I warmly agree with JASpencer that Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is too big and rambling to be very useful to Wikipedia readers at the moment. But fixing that problem is quite a challenge! (This was why I created Celtic language decline in England, tackling one of the sub-issues of Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the detail it deserves, enabling us to streamline Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain.) The historiography of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is both noteworthy in its own right and amenable to encyclopaedic coverage. Nicholas Higham has good coverage of the historiography up to about 1990, which the new article could draw on, in: Higham, N. J. (1992). Rome, Britain, and the Anglo-Saxons. The Archaeology of change. London: Seaby. ISBN 978-1-85264-022-4.. So, I'm keen on keeping an article on Anglo-Saxon migration debate, but I think it would work much better if it was clearly framed as an article on the historiography of the debate rather than, as it would seem at the moment, duplicating selected material from Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. Chronologically ordered sections ("Medieval views", "Early modern and Enlightenment views", or similar?) would help. How do you guys feel about that? Apologies if I've somewhat misrepresented your efforts here, JASpencer. I've spent a while looking at the original article and what you've done, but don't have the time at the moment to give either of these complex articles the attention they really deserve :-( Alarichall (talk) 21:27, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

While I'm here: for the same reasons, I think it would be fantastic if we could produce separate articles on settlement in different regions rather than trying to include them in any detail in either Anglo-Saxon migration debate or Anglo-Saxon migration debate. Creating articles like Anglo-Saxon settlement in south-east Britain, Anglo-Saxon settlement in south-west Britain, Anglo-Saxon settlement in the Midlands, Anglo-Saxon settlement between the Humber and the Forth would all definitely meet notability criteria and could allow Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain to be more concise. (NB in all these titles I've studiously avoided anachronistic references to 'England' or post-Roman kingdom names.) It'd be quite a lot of work to create these as anything more than stubs though and I can't volunteer to do that work myself at the moment :-/ Alarichall (talk) 21:27, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

PS. what I really wish is that we could run an (online? hybrid?) day-long symposium where we brought together Wikipedians who are keen on this article and some of the (other?) leading specialists in the field, and hammer out the best consensus we can on how to present this. I've often fantasised about this but never found the time! If people were interested enough, though, maybe we could get a wishlist of participants together and try? Alarichall (talk) 21:32, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

@Alarichall: If I understand correctly you are still thinking about an idea we discussed some time back about a "historiography" article, or article about the history of ideas. I went off the idea, but am not strongly opposed to this in theory. More importantly I don't think it can be connected to the theory or practice of this new article, and I am not confident that the history of debates would really be notable enough for a good separate article. What sources would we use apart from Higham? Wouldn't it end up being an article about changing conceptions of what English means, and other such difficult topics? It would in any case be a completely new project for someone to work on. It would NOT resolve the issues that have arisen here. Two other side points:

• I want to push a point of principle to avoid the situation becoming worse than it was. Can we please agree to discuss the complaints/proposals etc about the older article on the talk page of the older article? Anyone who goes to that talk page will see that most of us have been raising concerns, and playing around with ideas for a long time. We don't all agree with each other, but we have all be listening too each other so if that's made us slow then that's not necessarily a bad thing. To put my proposal a different way I am arguing that IF the best argument for this new article here is something like "problems with the old article" then that's clear enough reason to clean up this situation and try to take this series of events as a trigger to try to finish some of the older discussions and make some decisions about how to shorten that article, and whether that really requires any new articles.
• Coming to your second post, while reviewing all this I notice there is a possible ambiguity in topic and title of the old article. I have always worked on the basis that the article is about the immigration and settling itself, and not for example about what happened in subsequent generations concerning settlement technologies or settlement patterns. Those seem best handled elsewhere and to remind once more we have dozens of articles about different aspects of the Anglo Saxons already. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:46, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for that @Alarichall, is there a guidance on writing articles on historiography? It would be interesting. I think that this is a particularly interesting area for that as the historical understanding on the subject seems to have shifted.

22:18, 23 February 2025 (UTC) JASpencer (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

This is very confusing!! Are you saying you will be making yet another article to reflect the ideas of Alarichall or are you saying that Alarichall's ideas are now the basis of this new article you've created? What did you think the justification for this article (not to mention the other new ones) was for when you made it? I still can't see a clear rationale which explains what is going to be covered in all these articles that is not covered in articles that already exist. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:21, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• Clarification request. @Alarichall and JASpencer: can you both give short clear answers to this question: You both voted Oppose, but am I correct in saying that both of your votes depend on the idea that this new article needs to be re-named and significantly changed in terms of what it will cover? That is certainly the most obvious way to read things. (If so then I think we should put this merge/delete discussion on hold until your proposals are more clear, but things should not have been done this way. If "no" then your positions are very unclear.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:50, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  Although it should be developed I think that the current structure (not the original structure that was proposed to be merged) can be worked on. It does need work though.

  I do think that it would benefit from a name change to "historiography of" rather than "debate about" to reflect the development of thought rather than a two sided argument.

  JASpencer (talk) 15:56, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

I was hoping to get more clarity! Historiography just means history writing, so we still don't know what the article is meant to be about and how it is meant to different from the existing article. From the work so far it seems LESS focussed upon history writing than the other article. You refer to the structure, so for the record I do NOT like it. I think both this article so far, and the old article are too much based on the idea of simply listing types of evidence rather than actually saying anything meaningful about them. In your section on written sources, which is highly problematic, there is no actual information about events. I find this very confusing and indeed annoying for both readers and editors. For readers this style is rambling and never gets to a point. For editors this style is difficult to work on, because it is difficult to understand the intentions. This leads to the articles being added to, but never being trimmed and polished. I think we have to avoid this style.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:23, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

The fundamental problem is that for the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, there is no actual information about events! The written sources are so wildly fragmentary and, where their reliability can be tested, unreliable, that the subject is inherently resistant to an article that "gets to a point". Archaeogenetic evidence is starting to revolutionise what we know, but it's very early days.

I'm not saying this to revel in uncertainty: working out how to make a good encyclopaedia article on this is really hard, which is one reason why I keep shying away from trying to edit on this topic.

I take your point that the term historiography is ambiguous: it can mean (in the Oxford English Dictionary's words) "the writing of history; written history" (which is how you understand it) or "the study of history-writing, esp. as an academic discipline" (which is how @JASpencer is using it). Personally I don't think that readers would be confused on this: "Historiography of Anglo-Saxon migrations" would clearly be an article about how different historians have understood the Anglo-Saxon migrations over time, as distinct from an article on current consensus about what happened. But if "debate about..." seems clearer to you then fair enough.

Overall, I'm inclined to see how this new page develops and whether it can help us find a more manageable way to map out this topic. If later to seems smarter to merge it with Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, then fair enough. Alarichall (talk) 22:27, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

First of all, for the record, neither editor has been able to give a clear answer. Secondly, we have a lot of articles on Wikipedia which cover uncertain periods better than our Anglo Saxon articles and they don't handle it like this. A lot of them use a simple neutral chronological structure, and I would prefer that. By dividing the article into evidence types we create a longer article, which is impossible to read. But in any case, YES the problem is that this is a period where history writing is the writing about events. And that is WHY the approach of experimenting with two articles like this seems to be last thing we need. So far this article is LESS about historiography than the other article. The general impression is that this is a collection of stuff which is either copied from other articles or would be controversial if inserted into an older article. IF this article ever becomes an article about older history writing (which seems a controversial idea, because this isn't really a notable separate topic), then it (and its title) will continue to overlap the other article enormously, and create confusion for readers and editors. While there is no consensus or even any clear proposal, I still think this new article, which is apparently a sort of draft or experiment, should in effect be merged away (or perhaps moved to draft space), and community efforts and discussions should be focussed upon one article, as per our usual community norms.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:35, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

An answer you don't like doesn't mean it's unclear.

09:16, 26 February 2025 (UTC) JASpencer (talk) 09:16, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, but this reply seems deliberately misleading and argumentative. Your answer says it should be developed [...] can be worked on [...] does need work though. Alarichall says that they want to wait to see how this new page develops and whether it can help us find a more manageable way to map out this topic. How can these be read as any type of clear yes/no answer to the question of this article's justification (and your Oppose votes) is dependent on the idea that it is going to change significantly? But anyway, if we call these answers a kind of "yes", then at least that gives us something more concrete to discuss. My best understanding at the moment is that this is a draft which should be moved to draft space.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:02, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

How are you going to get consensus for a move to draftspace? Just in case there's any doubt I certainly would object to that and I would like to hear a good reason why this should be moved to draft space before I withdraw that objection.

JASpencer (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Deletion or merge would also be acceptable. The argument is clear and obvious. Either this is a POV fork, or it is a draft. The topic of this article is indistinguishable from the topic of another article, and that's hardly been unclear in the above discussions. To the extent this article has any argument for continued existence this depends upon it becoming different in the future in a way which you can't yet explain. How clear could the problem be?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:47, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I am not being argumentative and I'd like to ask you to Assume Good Faith (also see your comments on POV forking), I am just pointing out that there is no consensus for that move - which there needs to be. This article is coming on quite well at the moment, it is a clearly notable topic and it is different from the Anglo Saxon settlement article.

I'd also like to ask you to please be civil. I've been editing here for more than 20 years and it's been a long while since I've seen such a consistently hostile editing environment.

JASpencer (talk) 16:58, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

You made an accusation against me, and I can't possibly believe that you believed your accusation to be justified, for the reasons explained above (ie your own words). Such actions, or indeed such as creating split off articles when your new article is proposed for deletion, are not normally considered exemplary on Wikipedia, and I think my reactions have been quite gentle. Let's get back to the question. That the article is a POV fork is simply a fact we've established, based on your own descriptions. You write it is a clearly notable topic and it is different from the Anglo Saxon settlement article but what is that difference? So far you've mentioned differences in length, structure and POV, but none of these represent a difference in topic. Concerning consensus, there is currently no consensus for anything yet, because there has not been enough time or indeed transparency to allow the normal editors to respond. But before I started the actual merge proposal several editors raised similar concerns to myself. In your own words, as mentioned above, you are still developing your ideas on this right?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:18, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

See my 'live and let live' suggestion below! Alarichall (talk) 22:36, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I think it is a rather rude and thoughtless suggestion. This is a talk page designated for discussions about how to make WP articles better. If this is not something you care about then what are you even doing? I would like to use the talk page for its intended purpose. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:07, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

To repeat: what is the difference in topics? (The following are not topics: size, POV, structure, style, boldness, live-and-let-live-ness).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:12, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

And to repeat: summarizing historiography (a word which keeps getting thrown around) is what the other article is already about. As a result of WP rules our history articles are already summaries of what historians have published (historiography).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:32, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

This article tries to lay out the "history of historical thought" about the appearance of the Anglo-Saxons. There are certainly areas that need to be developed, but it has a clear and broadly chronological layout of that thought.

The Anglo-Saxon settlement article certainly has historiography, but it's not an article about historiography, it's an article riddled with historiography. It is littered all over the article in various arguments - old manuscripts, linguistics, archeology and genetics - all have their little arguments. Now this is perfectly understandable - the consensus view has changed radically since the article was started and the old and new school are locked in combat, a bit like the kingdom of Deira bitterly resisting the incoming Angles.

And the Anglo-Saxon settlement article shouldn't be about historiography. It was an undoubted historical event. And currently it's not about the event, it's about a set of arguments about techniques and what they're telling us.

JASpencer (talk) 08:35, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

That's just not clear. Why do you write in metaphors in a discussion like this? An article about uncertain historical events needs to be a summary of historiography about them on WP, like I said. See my questions to you in the Renaming? section you started below. Try to answer me there. Anyway, the other article needs to be improved, but why aren't we all working on one article instead of spreading our efforts over many overlapping ones? How does this POV fork help us do that? My answer: it makes it worse.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:24, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

It's not a POV fork

JASpencer (talk) 21:57, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Why not? Certainly your initial attempts to give a justification for this article emphasized that it would give a different POV. Also in practice the article still looks like a restructured version of the other one, with a different POV. Where can we see evidence to the contrary? How will future editors know which article to work on? (This is a big practical concern already in Anglo Saxon articles.) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:04, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

To be clear, the question was "what is the difference in topics?" There is some progress, because the answer makes it more clear that this article is supposedly now aiming to be a history of historical writing (which is clearly an evolving and new explanation). But this is an answer with big logical and practical challenges, and the article so far does not look like this at all when compared to the older article. See the Renaming? section below. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:50, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

• Time to close the merge debate? It's quite clear the merge debate is not going to get the necessary consensus on this page. Perhaps User:Andrew Lancaster wishes to take this to a deletion vote, but I don't see any value in continuing the conversation on this page. JASpencer (talk) 11:31, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

What? Only 3 people have "voted" and the vote is 1 versus 2. Other editors already pre-registered similar concerns to mine but clearly need more time. Stop trying to create rush, confusion and smoke screens.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:15, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

• Disagree. The two are distinct and valid topics. I don't think "historiography" is a complicated term here: I saw an edit happen in Recent changes and looked for the article, knowing exactly what to expect, and I found it. But also, both these articles are huge, and combining them would create a monster. Drmies (talk) 23:25, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

To be clear, the name of this article and its content has been changing a lot since the proposal was made. "Historiography" was not in the original title. My concerns are certainly less at this point, and it is good to get this feedback from another editor. I am not sure why you would say this article is huge (today), but in effect the article as it was originally made would have been easy to merge, or in effect mainly delete, because it was mainly copy-pasted from other articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:49, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. Under its current name, it does provide a useful place for views and discussions which are too dated for the main article but which should not be deleted as they are useful for people interested in the historiography. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:58, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

  @Andrew Lancaster, unless I'm mistaken you seem to be changing on this as well. Is it too early to remove the merge suggestion? JASpencer (talk) 15:16, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

  (Fully accept that the article has changed very radically) JASpencer (talk) 15:17, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

I think we can consider the discussion finished. I am glad we got some more feedback, and that the topic and title have changed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:19, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

call for comment on 20th century "traditional view"

Because this article is being worked on recently, can editors please look at a historiography paragraph or two on another article? This article does not mention Peter Hunter Blair and I am not familiar with him, but he is being given a big role in supposedly establishing the Bede-influenced traditional view, here: History of Anglo-Saxon England#Rapid cultural change (400–600 AD). My instinct is telling me to replace most of the last 2 paragraphs. Is there a chance we are missing something important though? (And if so, does that impact this article here?) Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:09, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

I think the paragraph could be replaced. The mention of Peter Hunter Blair was added here by Wilfridselsey and was using one of Hunter Blair's books as an example of "the traditional view". I agree that the current version can be read as saying Hunter Blair invented the traditional view. TSventon (talk) 11:10, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Peter Hunter Blair was a contemporary of people like Stenton and Whitelock and from the authors preface, it seems that some of those heavyweights of Anglo-Saxon history had reviewed this book. The book was published in 1963. Chapter 8 of the book is called "The Age of Invasion" which sort of sums up the thought at that time. I think that Härke is a better reference these days . He says that we have moved on from the "invasion model", and explains why in the " "Ethnicity and Structures" section of The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective by Hines. Wilfridselsey (talk) 12:29, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. These are perhaps interesting points for this historiography article. Concerning the history article I was referring to I think the individual mainstream historians themselves are probably not so important, except in cases where notable minority positions need to be attributed. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:45, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Bede and the three tribes

We have this, which I think might still need review: Bede also took the view that this was an invasion of three tribes — the [[Angles (tribe)|Angles]], the [[Saxons]] and the [[Jutes]] — at a specific date, 449 AD,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/oms/anglo-saxon-migrations|title=The Anglo-Saxon invasion and the beginnings of the 'English'|website=Our Migration Story}}</ref> yet this information is not presented in his ''History'' in an internally consistent way.{{sfn|Harland|2021|page=19}} I don't know if the spin we are putting on Bede's short explanations is giving the right impression. I don't think his inconsistency is such an important point. My understanding is that he saw those three tribes as being particularly important politically, while actually himself believing that the Anglo-Saxon migrants had a wide range of backgrounds. I think modern scholars tend to think that that they were linked to dynastic stories existent in his time, reflected in the king lists. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:50, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

The inconsistency within Bede may not be important, but the "Angles, Saxons and Jutes" has a very much wider resonance. To me it's probably the most famous phrase about this settlement. The phrase, or more accurately its constant repetition, implies that the geographic spread of the settler's homelands was narrower than the current consensus is, and that Bede's view was for that matter, and perhaps that it was more organised than the war bands.

I'm quite easy about how we deal with it, so this is an observation rather than an objection. JASpencer (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

"Constant repetition" in Bede's text?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:52, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Genetics

As the state of the genetics debate has moved so fast I'm collecting all the genetics on this page. It can of course go somewhere else, but probably not the genetics section on the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain page does need to be focused on the most up to date findings. However perfectly open for suggestions for a different home for a detailed genetics section than a historiography page. Or indeed a dedicated page or even culling a lot of the references or explanations. Paging @Dudley Miles as you are interested in the genetics. JASpencer (talk) 19:13, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

I can't parse the second sentence, which unfortunately seems to be the important one. I think there might be words missing?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:50, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping Andrew. I am very interested in the genetics, but not in the historiography of the subject. As there are several people working on settlement issues, I prefer to leave it to them and concentrate on areas which are not receiving the attention they deserve. Dudley Miles (talk) 14:47, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

JASpencer your second sentence should probably end "that page does need to be focused on the most up to date findings." TSventon (talk) 14:55, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

@JASpencer, Dudley Miles, and TSventon: the question for genetics on this article and the other one is where we draw the line on "out of date" = history of history writing as opposed to state of the art history. Does that make sense?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:41, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

@JASpencer: please be careful with the genetics authors. You are apparently just deleting the "et al"? Please don't do that. These are scientific teams with several authors. I also think Capelli is with double L.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:36, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm putting them into the journal template. Is there an "et al" flag? JASpencer (talk) 17:37, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

JASpencer I think you want |display-authors=etal, which displays all authors in the list followed by et al. It is explained in {{cite journal}}. TSventon (talk) 17:59, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I have fixed Weale et al and Capelli et al. TSventon (talk) 08:32, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Extreme wording in the lead which seems unsourced

One of the main concerns editors (including obviously me) have expressed about this article is the way it seems to try to justify its existence by describing the history of this topic as a debate between very extreme and simplified positions. I notice this is made very clear by the following WP:V problem:

• 1 I think it is no exaggeration to say that the 2nd paragraph of this article sets the main theme which readers will expect to see more about: From as early as the eighth century until around the 1970s, the traditional view of the settlement was a mass invasion in which "Anglo-Saxon" incomers exterminated or enslaved many of the native "Romano-British" inhabitants of Britain, driving the remainder from eastern Britain into western Britain and Brittany. This view has influenced many of the scholarly and popular perceptions of the process of anglicisation in Britain. It remains the starting point and default position from which other hypotheses are compared in modern reviews of the evidence.
• 2 Surprisingly, this is not discussed or demonstrated in the article body. There is however a footnote in the lead itself, to a single article which I don't think it particular well-know or highly cited? Should WP articles be based on a single relatively unknown article? Here it is in any case: Grimmer, Martin (2007). "Invasion, Settlement or Political Conquest: Changing Representations of the Arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain" (PDF). Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association. 3(1): 169–186. Looking up that article I find:
• 3 The article clearly describes this traditional view as something which developed in the 19th century. Although Bede was used as a source, it seems quite clear that the author does not envision a continuous tradition from the eighth century until around the 1970s. It also allows for the fact that there might be other ways of interpreting the medieval sources.
• 4 While our WP authors have chosen to describe this tradition as a belief that the previous inhabitants were exterminated or enslaved, the article being cited does not mentioned enslavement at all. The way I read it the emphasis is on genocide and/or ethnic cleansing, in the sense of forcing people to move from their homeland.
• 5 The cited article also makes it clear that this was ONE traditional view (which lasted a couple of generations), but that it was not THE only view, even during that period.
• 6 The cited article actually disagrees with our concluding sentence in this passage! It remains the starting point and default position from which other hypotheses are compared in modern reviews of the evidence. This particular sentence looks like WP editorializing. I don't think it is correct. The previous sentence is vaguer but more accurate. We have to please resist turning everything into battles between polarized extremes!

Our article is exaggerating, and missing critical information which would give a very different impression to readers. Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:23, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster, I agree with your concerns. I have numbered your bullet points so I can respond below.

• 1 From as early as the eighth century until around the 1970s, the traditional view of the settlement was a mass invasion in which "Anglo-Saxon" incomers exterminated or enslaved many of the native "Romano-British" inhabitants of Britain, driving the remainder from eastern Britain into western Britain and Brittany. This view has influenced many of the scholarly and popular perceptions of the process of anglicisation in Britain. It remains the starting point and default position from which other hypotheses are compared in modern reviews of the evidence. I think we should follow Grimmer and talk about modern scholarship starting in the nineteenth century, not the eighth. Grimmer calls the nineteenth century view the Germanist view, which I think is clearer than the traditional view.
• 2 The article body sections on the nineteenth century and early twentieth century are referenced to Higham, Nicholas John (1992). Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons. The archaeology of change. London: Seaby. ISBN 978-1-85264-022-4. (Google books snippet view) and also use White, Donald A. (1971). "Changing Views of the Adventus Saxonum in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century English Scholarship". Journal of the History of Ideas. 32 (4): 585–594. doi:10.2307/2708979. ISSN 0022-5037.. Grimmer's argument seems similar, so I don't have a problem with using it.
• 3 The nineteenth century section should explain the Germanist view, so that the lead can summarise it.
• 4 Grimmer does mention slave/slaves/slavery four times, mostly in quotations. Obviously nineteenth century Europeans didn't have twentyfirst century views on genocide and ethnic cleansing.
• 5 My reading of Grimmer, Higham and White is that variants of the Germanist view remained dominant (with some opposition) from 1850 to 1950, so longer than a couple of generations.
• 6 I also disagree with the statement that the traditional view remains the starting point and default position from which other hypotheses are compared in modern reviews of the evidence (citation needed). TSventon (talk) 18:48, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the sanity check. Do you think the text can be tweaked at least to bring it closer to the sources? Also, I really think there should be a better discussion of this apparently important theme in the actual body. As I mentioned, I feel these specific differences do have an importance to the overall vibe of the article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:31, 15 March 2025 (UTC)