Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century, and the direct ancestors of the majority of the modern British people. They comprise people from Germanic tribes who migrated to the island from continental Europe, their descendants, and indigenous British groups who adopted many aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and language; the cultural foundations laid by the Anglo-Saxons are the foundation of the modern English legal system and of many aspects of English society; the modern English language owes over half its words – including the most common words of everyday speech – to the language of the Anglo-Saxons. Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about 450 and 1066, after their initial settlement and up until the Norman conquest.
The early Anglo-Saxon period includes the creation of an English nation, with many of the aspects that survive today, including regional government of shires and hundreds. During this period, Christianity was established and there was a flowering of literature and language. Charters and law were also established. The term "Anglo-Saxon" is popularly used for the language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. In scholarly use, it is more commonly called Old English.
Anglo-Saxons
Throughout the history of the Anglo-Saxons studies producing a dispassionate narrative of the people has been difficult. In the early Middle Ages the views of Geoffrey of Monmouth produced a personally inspired history that wasn't challenged for five hundred years. In the Reformation, churchmen looking for signs of an English church reinterpreted Anglo-Saxon Christianity. In the 19th century the term "Anglo-Saxon" was broadly used in philology, and is sometimes so used at present. In Victorian Britain, some writers such as Robert Knox,
James Anthony Froude, Charles Kingsley and Edward A. Freeman used the term "Anglo-Saxon" to justify racism and imperialism, claiming that the "Anglo-Saxon" ancestry of the English made them racially superior to the colonised peoples. Similar racist ideas were advocated in the 19th-century United States by Samuel George Morton and George Fitzhugh. These views have influenced how versions of early English history are embedded in the sub-conscious of people "re-emerging in school textbooks and television programmes and still very congenial to some strands of political thinking."