Celtic nationalism, identity, and ethnicity in Wales and Ireland, 1870-1925
Date
2014
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
In this dissertation I examine how Irish and Welsh cultural and political nationalists created movements in their respective countries that were based in part upon an idealized notion of similar developments across the Irish Sea. I also explore the extent to which nationalists in both countries embraced the idea that Ireland and Wales should have a special relationship based on their shared Celtic heritage. In chapter one, I demonstrate that efforts to revive the Irish language in the late nineteenth century were heavily influenced by the idea that the Welsh language had once been revived. I show that members of the Gaelic League adopted Welsh tactics to promote Irish, but believed Ireland was superior to Wales in terms of nationality. In chapter two I argue that the development of a distinct Welsh political consciousness was influenced by Irish political nationalism. Welsh political nationalists, I show, wanted to borrow strategies from the Irish Home Rule party and Irish Land League without being accused of importing Irish violence into the principality. In chapter three I demonstrate that Irish nationalists rejected Pan-Celticism in part because the use of Welsh bardic rituals by the Pan-Celts suggested the movement was of an antiquarian, rather than modern, nature. In chapter four I highlight how Pan-Celticism proved to be more popular in Wales than Ireland, partly because the movement championed the Welsh as role models for other Celtic nations to aspire to. In chapter five, I argue that Irish nationalists became more aggressive in asserting Irish nationalist supremacy over Wales, in response to the taunts of David Lloyd George during the Irish War of Independence. At the same time, the conflict in Ireland marked a transition in Welsh nationalist politics, away from championing Welsh Home Rule on liberal principles, toward demanding self-government based on the need to preserve Welsh culture, modeled on the example of Sinn Féin. I conclude that Ireland and Wales each played an important role in the evolution of nationalism in their respective neighbor's country, but that nationalists in each nation believed they were superior to the other in terms of true Celtic nationality.
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Keywords
Celtic heritage, Identity, Ireland, Nationalism, Wales