A migration atlas · AD 1 to today

From Angeln to the Anglosphere

How the Angles, Saxons and Jutes crossed the North Sea to Britain, and how the language, faith, law and institutions of their descendants later travelled the world, carried by settlers, missionaries, traders and, in the end, by people of every origin.

Click an arrow or a point to read about it
Coastlines: Natural Earth. Areas approximate.

About the name

The people of early England called themselves Englisc and their country Englaland. “Anglo-Saxon” began as a continental term for the Saxons of Britain, as opposed to those who stayed in Germany, and Alfred the Great used it in some of his titles. Historians now often prefer “early medieval English”.

In many languages, and in politics, “Anglo-Saxon” has come to mean the English-speaking world as a whole. In the 19th century the word was also used to claim racial superiority. This map follows the people themselves until 1066, and after that the language and institutions they founded, which are now shared by people of every ancestry.

Reading the map

  • Solid arrows show people moving. Width gives a rough order of magnitude, from hundreds (thinnest) to millions (thickest).
  • Dashed teal arrows show ideas, faith, laws and techniques, often carried by only a handful of people. They are drawn as direct arcs, while people follow their sea routes.
  • Grey arrows and areas show other peoples whose movements shaped the story: Britons, Vikings, Normans, enslaved Africans, Indigenous nations driven from their land, and later immigrants.
  • Shaded areas are approximate. They show where Anglo-Saxon and later English speech or settlement was established, not exact borders.
  • The time axis is stretched where events crowd together, so each period gets similar space. Use the arrow keys on the timeline to step through years.

Sources

  • Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731); the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Gildas, On the Ruin of Britain; Procopius, Wars VIII.20; Tacitus, Germania 40.
  • J. Gretzinger et al., “The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool”, Nature 610 (2022).
  • H. Härke, “Anglo-Saxon immigration and ethnogenesis”, Medieval Archaeology 55 (2011).
  • J. Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World (2009).
  • M. Harper and S. Constantine, Migration and Empire (2010); M. Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles (2011).
  • Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (slavevoyages.org); D. Crystal, English as a Global Language (2003).
  • Censuses: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021; Office for National Statistics 2021.
  • Map data: Natural Earth coastlines, lakes and rivers; world-atlas country shapes.