A Celtic Identity, pre-20th Century.

As some of you may know by now, I am a Pan-Celt. This means that I support the idea that the Celtic nations should firstly have "FRREEEEDOOOMMM" from the oppressive Sasenachs ;), and secondly that I believe that the Celtic nations should have some sort of united politicial organisation, whether that be a forum for discussing issues of mutual importance, or a full-blown federation. Disagree if you will (Tyr, I'm talking to you), they're my beliefs and I'll stick to them.

Anyway, I've recently disvovered that the first of the Pan-Celt organisations began to emerge in the early 1800s in the form of of societies and congresses. Most of these organisations collapsed due to lack of intrest or understanding. Hardly surprising, the Irish were trying to find a way to assassinate the king, the Scots were busy building ships or being sent of to fight in India, and the Welsh and Cornish could hardly rememer when they were anything other than English.

However, what if at some point during the Enlightenment, some scholar begins harking back to the days of the noble Celt who fought valiantly to the death against unbrideled oppression? Could such an identity, possibly combined with the ideals of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality get up off the ground? Could it get past the stage of men in powdered wigs and big shirts wrting books about it, and turn to armed action?

Even if none of this can work, atleast I'ved been able to vent some of my left-wing nationalism :D.

*EDIT*
Apologies if you think my views are "anti-English". Truth be told, I like the English, however the Celt thing is just an idea I've fallen in love with and can't really explain why.
 
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You'd need an early POD, since if im not mistaken, the lowland scots share much more in common with the English then they do with the Celts. Not long after the Scottish conquest of Lothian, the Scottish kingdom adopted a more English character. Also, you need a way to ensure that the English never have the power to dominate most of the Celtic lands in Britain. Prehaps by keeping England split into different states.

However, such an early POD might result in a vastly different enlightenment, or maybe even no enlightenment at all.
 
This is tricky. The Celts never really had much at all to do with each other until recently. I mean, in the Middle Ages ethnic identities like "Celtic" or "Germanic" mean very little at all, and even national identities were secondary. And in any case the Welsh and the Irish/Scots were two totally different branches of Celts, the Britons and the Gaels. Long before the conquest of Wales the Anglo-Normans had an easy time finding Welsh volunteers to go and conquer the hell out of Ireland together. Hell, the Welsh were key also in the defeat of the Scots and the Welsh time and time again. There simply wasn't any history for some Pan-Celtic uprising.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Glyndwr's revolt at least shortly revived a pan-brythonic thing: one of his main naval supporters turned out to be the duke of Brittany, who basically gave any ship with its bases in the duchy free reign to go pirate the english. In that short while, the kingdom of Scotland also supported Owain in an anti-english spirit of sorts (plus in 1402, the welsh have only lost their independence a century ago). At this point in time, there's even the advantage that welsh-breton are still spoken in a lot of "english" counties by a large minority-to-majority of the people, even if they've been kicked out of the big cities post-conquest (the marches (who remained in the welsh rather than english legal circuit until the early modern period), Devon).

You probably need Lothian to survive (as Gododdin) before it becomes Scottish, this would make Scotland a weird Brit-Gael-Norse melting pot either; but seriously, Glyndwr's revolt could at the very least have been the basis of an anti-english alliance which by who was behind it would have been predominantly celtic princes backed by the french; later conflicts between France and the duke of Brittany might not have been averted, though.
 

Thande

Donor
Irish-Scottish is possible, but not Irish-Welsh-Scottish IMO. That really is more a case of 'ganging up on the majority' than any real shared culture.
 
Everybody has immediately - and rightly - started talking about much earlier PoDs that the Enlightenment, but I feel compelled to point out that that isn't "pan-Celtic" as such, since nationalism in that sense doesn't exist yet. It was merely smaller states trying to resist the biggest state.

Now, if both Ireland and Scotland were independant states come the rise of *nationalism, I could see some sort of sentimental connection. But it's going to be more like pan-Slavism than German or Italian movements. And hey Scotland and Ireland already share much of the same folk-music repertoire! :D

As some of you may know by now, I am a Pan-Celt. This means that I support the idea that the Celtic nations should firstly have "FRREEEEDOOOMMM" from the oppressive Sasenachs ;), and secondly that I believe that the Celtic nations should have some sort of united politicial organisation, whether that be a forum for discussing issues of mutual importance, or a full-blown federation. Disagree if you will (Tyr, I'm talking to you), they're my beliefs and I'll stick to them.

I disagree without denying the existence of us Celtic peoples! ;) I'm a Scotsman myself, but I'm also a British subject, and I feel that "Celtic nationalists" - Irish, Scots, and most commonly, American or Australian - like to reflect the history of Ireland's struggle onto a country where Protestantism has been a foundation-stone of popular national identity for centuries (nothing inherent un-Celtic about that, except that in ireland, the same is true of Catholicism), where the capital has spoken a Germanic language pretty much since it became the capital, and where the last time a Sassenach opressed anyone was in the Middle Ages.

Anyway, I've recently disvovered that the first of the Pan-Celt organisations began to emerge in the early 1800s in the form of of societies and congresses. Most of these organisations collapsed due to lack of intrest or understanding. Hardly surprising, the Irish were trying to find a way to assassinate the king, the Scots were busy building ships or being sent of to fight in India, and the Welsh and Cornish could hardly rememer when they were anything other than English.

To say, even when Cornish existed in a real sense (and by the early 1800s it no longer did), that Cornish people aren't English is to say that Gaelic-speakers (always a minority in the country since long, long ago) are not Scots. National identities aren't necessarily linguistic and before the 19th century they actually seldom were.

Anyway, such an effort would be absolutely futile at the time in Scotland, not only because of the comfortable economic position our over-educated middle-class enjoyed in a British world economy, but because ordinary people were loyal to the kirk and wouldn't for a moment cavort with anti-monarchical "papary". If you read the correspondance of Scottish newspapers in the 19th C (mostly after the Famine, but before as well) you can see a lot of quite outrageous anti-Irish racism, in fact.

However, what if at some point during the Enlightenment, some scholar begins harking back to the days of the noble Celt who fought valiantly to the death against unbrideled oppression?

Enlightenment intellectuals looked forward to the future and to liberties based on Reason (Scotland had more than its fair share, of course) and had more of a Classicism fetish than later Romantics, although there were, as always, exceptions. The United Irishmen had a French-style enlightenment ideology, but Scotland's crop of scholars (even those with a very strong identity, like Burns) were part of the whole British Radical movement.

Could such an identity, possibly combined with the ideals of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality get up off the ground? Could it get past the stage of men in powdered wigs and big shirts wrting books about it, and turn to armed action?

It did, in Ireland, when combined with the pressures and injustices of the agrarian Catholic existence; but how rural Ulster Presbyterians responded to the UI is a pretty good indicator of how far an analogous movement would get in Scotland, viz, nowhere, I'm afraid.

Scotland had a period of Burns-inspired Romantic Nationalist obsession with our own past, and there were elements of Celtic tradition in that: shortbread-tin-lid Scotland was invented by Sir Walt, a prolific producer of Romantic historical novels - and loyal British subject who was one of George IV's best PR men. And indeed, there was even something of a Celt-craze in Victorian Britain generally, given that the Triumphant Bourgeois felt less in the shadow of Rome than previous generations. Witness Tennyson's verses on Boudica, or the borrowings from what Calgacus ostensibly said in the rhetoric of that last great Victorian, Winston Churchill.

But none of this could enamour anybody - least of all us dour Prebyterian types - of a "dirty disloyal Papist" nationalist movement.
 
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Right thank you IBC, you worked out the era I was aiming for. Personally I thought that a Celtic Identity couldn't take root in the Middle Ages for the reasons everyone has stated, there practically were no national identities at the the time. Such a movement (if even possible), would have to be in the 18th or later.

In regards to your comments on Celtic-nationalism. It's essentially an extension of Irish nationalism to include the areas we share some linguistic/cultural/genetic ties with. It gives our dislike of the English some justification if the rest of Celtic nations hate them to. Though as you say, the rest of Eiranns oppressed bretheran didn't take quite as shit as she did.

Anyway points taken on why it wouldn't happen.
 
It's essentially an extension of Irish nationalism to include the areas we share some linguistic/cultural/genetic ties with.

And therein lies the rub. Linguistically, 18th C Scotland has a Gaelic-speaking peasantry, a Scots-speaking peasantry, and an intelligenstia that new Scots but usually wrote in English. 18th C Ireland had an Irish-speaking peasantry, an English-speaking peasantry (and a Scots-speaking peasantry, come to think fo it), and an intelligentsia that basically spoke English.

So there was a linguistic connection in that the intellectual life of both countries was carried on mainly in English, which isn't much foundation for a common identity - except insofar as Scottish and even Irish Radicals felt themselves part of a broader movement against the rule of landowners, church, and crown, of course. Feargus O'Connor, anyone?

As for culture, well, as I say, there is a certain overlap, but nothing you could build a common identity on. As I said, the real foundation of popular culture at the time was in the churches, which happened to be bitterly opposed in the two nations.

The "genetic" connection was never of much interest to anyone except American racial pseudo-scientists. Truth be told, an Englishman from a village in the old Marches is quite possible more "Celtic" than my Scottish self, when we're talking genetics.

Though as you say, the rest of Eiranns oppressed bretheran didn't take quite as shit as she did.

As a matter of fact, we didn't take any shit at all. The mass of the Irish people lived in conditions of agrarian poverty and subsistence agriculture, weighed down by the tax burden imposed by a largely apathetic or hostile class of absentee landlords and by the tithes of two churches, one of which they didn't attend.

Scotland had an increasingly industrial economy where more and more people lived in the big cities, the mass of the population following an established church, and the landlords quite pleasant.

As for an 18th century Scotsman was concerned, all the ways in which he reacted with scoiety generally - the kirk, the schoolhouse, the court, and so on - were not foreign impositions of an alien aristocracy, as in Ireland, but as Scots as the man himself. Scottish identity was strong (in fact, there were petitions against the use of England to mean Great Britain), but anti-English agitation was confined to poets and the occasional kirk minister pissed at the Union parliament's ban on witch-burning.
 
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