Europe · Antiquity and the Roman world
Angles
drawn on the map AD 387–479
The Angles were a Germanic people, not a state. They took their name from Angeln, a district in modern Schleswig (the Angeln peninsula between the Baltic and the base of Jutland).
- Shown on the map
- AD 387–479
- Peak area
- 1k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
The Angles were a Germanic people, not a state. They took their name from Angeln, a district in modern Schleswig (the Angeln peninsula between the Baltic and the base of Jutland). In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed c. 731), the Northumbrian monk Bede identified the Germanic settlers of Britain as coming from three peoples — the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes — and specifically stated that the Angles came from Angeln, a land said to have lain deserted afterward.
Decline and legacy
According to the traditional narrative (the adventus Saxonum), the Angles migrated to Britain during the 5th and 6th centuries in the aftermath of Roman withdrawal (c. 410). They settled predominantly in the east, north, and midlands, founding the kingdoms of East Anglia (North Folk and South Folk), Mercia, Deira, and Bernicia (the latter two forming Northumbria). Their name gave rise to Englaland ("land of the Angles"), i.e. England, and to the term "English." Modern scholarship debates the scale of the migration — whether a large folk-movement or a smaller elite takeover accompanied by cultural assimilation of the native Britons — a live question in the archaeology and, more recently, ancient-DNA studies of post-Roman Britain.
Common questions
- What were the Angles?
- The Angles were a Germanic people, not a state. They took their name from Angeln, a district in modern Schleswig (the Angeln peninsula between the Baltic and the base of Jutland).
- When are the Angles shown on the map?
- The border data draws the Angles AD 387–479. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large were the Angles?
- At their greatest extent drawn on this map, the Angles covered about 1,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives them across the years they are drawn, not necessarily their greatest extent in history.
- How did the Angles end?
- According to the traditional narrative (the adventus Saxonum), the Angles migrated to Britain during the 5th and 6th centuries in the aftermath of Roman withdrawal (c. 410). They settled predominantly in the east, north, and midlands, founding the kingdoms of East Anglia (North Folk and South Folk), Mercia, Deira, and Bernicia (the latter two forming Northumbria).
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each territory and its key figures as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, and academic and primary sources — Jordanes, Procopius, Gregory of Tours, Bede, Ammianus and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, read through the secondary literature. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Angles en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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