Pan-Celticism
These people, along with others in Continental Europe who once spoke now extinct languages from the same Indo-European branch (such as the Gauls, Celtiberians and Galatians), have been retroactively referred to in a collective sense as the Celts, particularly in a wide spread manner since the turn of the 18th century.
From a Scottish Gaelic-speaking family, Buchanan in his Rerum Scoticarum Historia (1582), went over the writings of Tacitus who had discussed the similarity between the language of the Gauls and the ancient Britons.
It wouldn't be until over a century later when these ideas were widely popularised; first by the Breton scholar Paul-Yves Pezron in his Antiquité de la Nation et de la langue celtes autrement appelez Gaulois (1703) and then by the Welsh scholar Edward Lhuyd in his Archaeologia Britannica: An Account of the Languages, Histories and Customs of the Original Inhabitants of Great Britain (1707).
The dawning of early modern Europe affected the Celtic peoples in ways which saw what small amount of independence they had left firmly subordinated to the emerging British Empire and in the case of the Duchy of Brittany, the Kingdom of France.
However, Napoleon Bonaparte was greatly attracted to the romantic image of the Celt, which was partly based on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's glorification of the noble savage and the popularity of James Macpherson's Ossianic tales throughout Europe.
[6] Indeed, in France the phrase "nos ancêtres les Gaulois" (our ancestors the Gauls) was invoked by Romantic nationalists,[6] typically in a republican fashion, to refer to the majority of the people, contrary to the aristocracy (claimed to be of Frankish-Germanic descent).
The most prominent native representatives of the initial stages of this Celtic Revival were James Macpherson, author of the Poems of Ossian (1761) and Iolo Morganwg, founder of the Gorsedd.
Among these participants was Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué, author of the Macpherson-Morganwg influenced Barzaz Breiz, who imported the Gorsedd idea into Brittany.
Indeed, the Breton nationalists would be the most enthusiastic pan-Celticists,[7] acting as a lynch-pin between the different parts; "trapped" within another state (France), this allowed them to draw strength from kindred peoples across the Channel and they also shared a strong attachment to the Catholic faith with the Irish.
[8] Other academic treatments included Ernest Renan's La Poésie des races celtiques (1854) and Matthew Arnold's The Study of Celtic Literature (1867).
The attention given by Arnold was a double-edged sword; he lauded Celtic poetic and musical achievements, but effeminised them and suggested they needed the cement of a sober, orderly Anglo-Saxon rule.
[10]: 78 The first major Pan-Celtic Congress was organised by Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe and Bernard FitzPatrick, 2nd Baron Castletown, under the auspices of their Celtic Association and was held in August 1901 in Dublin.
[11] The main intellectual organ of the Celtic Association was Celtia: A Pan-Celtic Monthly Magazine, edited by Fournier, which ran from January 1901 until 1904 and was briefly revived in 1907 before finally ending for good in May 1908.
[13] Others were less polemical; opinion in the Gaelic League was divided and though they elected not to send an official representative, some members did attend Congress meetings (including Douglas Hyde, Patrick Pearse and Michael Davitt).
[20] John de Courcy Mac Donnell founded a Celtic Union in Belgium in 1908, which organised the fourth Pan-Celtic congress as part of the 1910 Brussels International Exposition.
The presence of James Connolly and the October Revolution in Russia taking place at the same time, also led some to imagine a Celtic socialism or communism; an idea associated with Erskine, as well as the revolutionary John Maclean and William Gillies.
The hope of some Celtic nationalists that a semi-independent Ireland could act as a springboard for Irish Republican Army-esque equivalents for their own nations and the "liberation" of the rest of the Celtosphere would prove a disappointment.
One day the party covered South Dublin city with posters saying "Rhyddid i Gymru" (Freedom for Wales)[23][24][25][26] Rhisiart Tal-e-bot, former President of the European Free Alliance Youth is a member.
[32] In January 2019 the leader of the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru party, Adam Price spoke in favour of cooperation among the Celtic nations of Britain and Ireland following Brexit.
he also suggested that "If they could find a way of working together in their mutual interest, that’s a fair degree of combined influence, particular if the next General Election produces a hung parliament.
[37] This school of thought, initiated by John Collis sought to undermine the basis of Celticism and cast doubts on the legitimacy of the very concept or any usage of the term "Celts".
Throughout the duration of the debate on the historicity of the ancient Celts, John T. Koch stated that it is "the scientific fact of a Celtic family of languages that has weathered unscathed the Celtosceptic controversy.
[41] The Megaws (along with others such as Peter Berresford Ellis)[42] suspected a politically motivated agenda; driven by English nationalist resentment and anxiety at British Imperial decline; in the whole premise of Celtosceptic theorists (such as Chapman, Nick Merriman and J. D. Hill) and that the anti-Celtic position was a reaction to the formation of a Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.
[41] Attempts to identify a distinct Celtic Race were made by the "Harvard Archaeological Mission to Ireland" in the 1930s, led by Earnest Hooton, which drew the conclusions needed by its sponsor-government.
Informal inter-Celtic matches were very likely a feature of industrial southern Wales in the nineteenth century, with Irish immigrant workers said to have enjoyed playing the Welsh game.
During the Troubles, the Provisional IRA adopted a policy of not mounting attacks in Scotland and Wales, as they viewed England alone as the colonial force occupying Ireland.
Drakeford described the forum as "an excellent opportunity to come together as Celtic nations and regions, to build on our cultural and historical links and seek out areas for future collaboration, such as marine energy.
In the late sixth and early seventh century it encompassed roughly what is now Argyll and Bute and Lochaber in Scotland and also County Antrim in Northern Ireland.
Koch observes that modern Pan-Celticism arose in the contest of European romantic pan-nationalism, and like other pan-nationist movements, flourished mainly before the First World War.
[77] He sees twentieth century efforts in this regard as possibly arising out of a post-modern search for identity in the face of increased industrialization, urbanization and technology.
