Breton nationalism
The political aspirations of Breton nationalists include the desire to obtain the right to self-rule, whether within France or independently of it, and to acquire more power in the European Union, United Nations and other international institutions.
Cultural nationalists seek to reinvigorate Breton music, traditions, and symbols and forging strength links with other Celtic nations.
The academic Michel Nicolas describes this political tendency of the Breton movement as "a doctrine putting forward the nation, in the state and non-state framework".
[3] By the end of the 1900s, the journal Ar Bobl of Frañsez Jaffrennou began to spread ideas close to this ideology,[4] but 1911 is a key date for this current.
Seeking to apply the principle of subsidiarity, that is claiming a decentralization with a redistribution of powers, would be equivalent, according to the nationalists, to legitimizing a French domination.
They oppose as much to monarchists (in particular by maintaining controversy with the members of the French Action), than to the Republicans by targeting "black hussars of the republic", accused of pursuing a policy of linguistic repression.
One of its founders, Loeiz-Napoleon Ar Rouz, will play a role later to make the link between Breton nationalist currents and Irish.
The Breton Regionalist Group is the first party created (September 1918) taking up this ideology, mixing elders of the Breton Nationalist Party as Kamil Ar Merser 'Erm, and newcomers like Olier Mordrel, Frañsez Debauvais, Yann Bricler, and Morvan Marchal;[13] it is endowed as soon as January 1919 of a newspaper, Breiz Atao, to spread their ideas.
[18] Antagonism increased in 1920 when the BRF declared the creation of a large western region encompassing Poitou, Anjou, Maine, Cotentin and Brittany,[19] provoking a unanimous rejection from other regionalist groups and nationalists.
[21] The Alsatian affair in 1926, during which the Cartel des Gauches tried to return to the Concordat in Alsace-Moselle, caused autonomist agitation in this region, and the Breton nationalists were inspired by this example to form a political party.
