Were the 'Celts' displaced or absorbed by the invaders? In western and northern Britain, around the western seas, the end of Roman power saw the reassertion of ancient patterns, ie continuity of linguistic and cultural trends reaching back to before the Iron Age. Yet in the long term, the continuous development of a shifting mosaic of societies gradually tended (as elsewhere in Europe) towards larger states. Thus, for example, the far north-western, Irish-ruled kingdom of Dalriada merged in the ninth century with the Pictish kingdom to form Scotland.
'It was once believed that the Romano-British were slaughtered or driven west by hordes of invading Anglo-Saxons, part of the great westward movement of 'barbarians' overwhelming the western empire.'
The western-most parts of the old province, where Roman ways had not displaced traditional culture, also partook of these trends, creating small kingdoms which would develop, under pressure from the Saxons, into the Welsh and Cornish regions.
The fate of the rest of the Roman province was very different: after imperial power collapsed c.410 AD Romanised civilisation swiftly vanished. By the sixth century, most of Britannia was taken over by 'Germanic' kingdoms. There was apparently complete discontinuity between Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England; it was once believed that the Romano-British were slaughtered or driven west by hordes of invading Anglo-Saxons, part of the great westward movement of 'barbarians' overwhelming the western empire. However, there was no such simple displacement of 'Celts' by 'Germans'.
Britain has always absorbed invaders and been home to multiple peoples How many settlers actually crossed the North Sea to Britain is disputed, although it is clear that they eventually mixed with substantial surviving indigenous populations which, in many areas, apparently formed the majority.
As with the adoption of 'Celtic' cultural traits in the Iron Age, and then Greco-Roman civilisation, so the development of Anglo-Saxon England marks the adoption of a new politically ascendant culture; that of the 'Germanic barbarians'.
'Contrary to the traditional idea that Britain originally possessed a 'Celtic' uniformity which first Roman, then Saxon and other invaders disrupted, in reality Britain has always been home to multiple peoples...'
Perhaps the switch was more profound than the preceding cases, since the proportion of incomers was probably higher than in Iron Age or Roman times, and, crucially, Romano-British power structures and culture seem to have undergone catastrophic collapse - through isolation from Rome and the support of the imperial armies - some time before there was a substantial presence of 'Anglo-Saxons'.
In contrast to Gaul, where the Franks merged with an intact Gallo-Roman society to create Latin-based French culture, the new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain, although melded from indigenous and immigrant populations, represented no such cultural continuity; they drew their cultural inspiration, and their dominant language, almost entirely from across the North Sea. Mixed natives and immigrants became the English.
Contrary to the traditional idea that Britain originally possessed a 'Celtic' uniformity, which first Roman, then Saxon and other invaders disrupted, in reality Britain has always been home to multiple peoples. While its population has shown strong biological continuity over millennia, the identities the islanders have chosen to adopt have undergone some remarkable changes. Many of these have been due to contacts and conflicts across the seas, not least as the result of episodic, but often very modest, arrivals of newcomers.