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Celticism: the Gaelic Revival, Race and Irishness

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Celticism: the Gaelic Revival, Race and Irishness Sociology and Anthropology 2(5): 201-205, 2014 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/sa.2014.020505 Celticism: The Gaelic Revival, Race and Irishness Jonathan Culleton Centre for Social and Family Research, Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland *Corresponding Author: [email protected] Copyright © 2014 Horizon Research Publishing All rights reserved. Abstract This paper presents a brief overview of nineteenth century to speak of the ‘English race’, French research conducted on the parallel phenomena of the race’, German race’ etc (Baum, 2008; 42). Certainly, race advance of scientific racism in the second half of the and racism figured increasingly in the struggles of nation nineteenth century, and the development of a ‘modern’ states, national bourgeoisie, and national working classes to nationalism in Ireland, primarily through discourse around navigate the dislocations wrought by capitalist development. ‘Celticism’ and the Gaelic Revival of the period 1880 to In his seminal work Race: a History of an Idea in the West, about 1910. The concept of race, within the specific context Ivan Hannaford posits the second half of the nineteenth of late 19th century and early 20th century Europe will be century as the crucial era in the development of notions of seen to be a critical influence on constructions of Irish race, nation and the state (1996; 233). Banton and Harwood identity in the period. further emphasise the middle of the century as the era which saw the peak of “race’s career as a scientific concept” (1975; Keywords Identities, Irishness, Race, Celticism 30).Those who insisted on the importance of race had by the 1850s achieved two things of great significance. Firstly the scientific world had accepted that comparative morphology (the study of the shapes and structures of the human body) 1. Introduction was a valid procedure to distinguish a variety of anatomical types and to call them races. Secondly, the initiative lay with This paper will present a brief overview of research arguments advancing physical causes as the explanation of conducted on the parallel phenomena of the advance of all human differences. scientific racism in the second half of the nineteenth century, Therefore, between the 1840s and 1920s new theories and the development of a ‘modern’ nationalism in Ireland, about the ‘races of Europe’ flourished. Scientists were primarily through discourse around ‘Celticism’ and the spurred by emerging social and political forces to adapt Gaelic Revival of the period 1880 to about 1910. I will argue existing race ideas in novel ways, and certainly new here that the idea of race, as popularly conceived in the era, nationalism was especially consequential... as John Higham was a crucial element of formulations of Irish identity, and succinctly put it, “under the pressure of a growing national indeed, that Celticism and the Gaelic Revival were consciousness, a number of European naturalists began to influenced by scientific racism, and in particular was subdivide the European white man into biological types... for constructed as an argument against the perceived rather their part, the nationalists slowly absorbed biological lowly place of the Irish in the racial hierarchy of the era. assumptions about the nature of race, until every national While the confluence of these two historical phenomena trait seemed wholly dependent on hereditary transmission” appears almost intuitive when presented with the evidence, (1967; 134). This racialisation was not a calculated effort by thus far it appears that most attempts to discuss race and the united ruling classes to divide and subdue working classes. Irish in the era limit themselves to discussions of the Rather, this paper argues that racialisation was advanced by racialisation of the Irish, as if it were entirely a one- way both ‘native’ elites, and working- class people from process of racial inferiority being imposed, rather than a dominant ethnic groups who mobilised around racial ideas. multi- faceted conversation, with the Gaelic Revival and Even some working people from subordinated groups, such Celticism refuting such inferioritisation, and further, as the Irish, reinforced racialisation processes. For example, asserting the relative superiority of the ‘Gaelic race’. in the late nineteenth century United States, Irish immigrants actively attempted to distanced themselves from ‘Negroes’ 2. The Development of ‘Race Thinking’ to reposition themselves as racially white’ (see Roediger, th 1991;134 and Ignatiev, 1996; 34). in the Second Half of the 19 Century We suggest here that the inter- relationship between It became commonplace in western societies by the mid- Anglo- Saxon and Celtic identities, in the commonly used 202 Celticism: The Gaelic Revival, Race and Irishness terminology of the era, became a key location for imagining blood and spirit, which gave the idea its imaginative potency and rearticulating notions of race, nation and particularly in the contemporaneous world. As we shall also see however, notions of ‘civilisation’. As noted by George Stocking, ‘the Sharp and Renan’s quite positive analysis of Celts was idea of civilisation, as it emerged in the eighteenth century, hardly the international norm, quite the opposite in fact. was seen as the destined goal of all mankind, and was in fact Indeed, intriguingly Banton and Harwood note that Charles often used to account for apparent racial differences. By the Darwin himself, who made no attempt to classify races nineteenth century more and more men saw civilisation as observing that ‘the naturalist had no right to give names to the peculiar achievement of certain ‘races’ (1982; 35). objects which he cannot define’, appears to have held certain Europeans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth notions about Celts (1975; 36). In the Descent of Man he centuries were very ready to believe stories about the quotes approvingly an author who stated: ‘given a land superiority of the white race (Banton and Harwood, 1975; originally peopled by a thousand Anglo- Saxons and a 39). This was the case particularly for those narratives which thousand Celts- and in a dozen generations five- sixths of the somehow centralised their own national or racial identity. population would be Celts, but five- sixths of the property, of Certainly once the notion that the origins of state and nation the power, of the intellect, would belong to the Saxons who were rooted in the pasts of Franks and Gauls, Anglo- Saxons, remained. In the eternal ‘struggle for existence’ it would be and Celts filtered into European’s thinking, it became hugely the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed- and influential, popular, and widely accepted as being ‘evidently’ prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults’. so. Of particular interest here is how this race thinking was formulated around notions of Anglo- Saxonism and 3. The Irish, ‘Celts’ and Race Celticism. While clearly no one person can be ‘credited’ with inventing Celticism, Hannaford appears as accurate as ever Before considering further the impact of race on in citing Ernest Joseph Renan as having a crucial influence formulations of Irish identity and nationalism, it would seem on those who were to follow him. For Hannaford, heelevated appropriate here to attempt to situate Irishness or the popular the national history of the Celts, who, from his perspective, ‘Celticism’ of the era in terms of race thinking. The first though disposed of by the industrial revolution, were blessed great wave of Irish emigration, set off by the famine in with the fixed disposition, condition, and character of a race Ireland between 1845 and 1849, was one of the first direct remaining pure from all admixture (1996; 235). Interestingly antecedents of the new European and North American here, Renan points to the supposed ‘untouched’ and ‘pure’ conceptions of race. This new racialisation of the Irish was nature of the Celts, something which Gaelic revivalists also exemplified by similar responses in the United States, and later stressed, particularly in opposition to Anglo- Saxon the UK to Irish immigrants in the era. Social commentators suggestions of Celtic racial inferiority. Terence Brown (1996; from the dominant ethnic groups in the receiving countries- i) quotes at length from an enthusiastic- if eccentric - Scot, ‘native’ Scots and ‘Anglo- Saxons’ of England and the William Sharp who in 1895... prefaced a collection of... United States- increasingly described the immigrant Irish as ‘Celtic Tales’ with a stirring open letter to the novelist racially deficient ‘Celts’. The widespread belief in Victorian George Meridith. It includes passages in which can be England, controversially outlined by L.P. Curtis in particular, discovered the ‘Celticism’ idea, as developed from the works that Englishmen and Irishmen were separated by clear- cut of Renan and others: ‘in you the Celtic genius burns a pure ethnic or racial as well as religious and cultural barriers was flame. True, the Cymric blood that is in you moves to a more reinforced continually by political events in both countries lightsome measure than that of the Scottish Gael, and the (1997; 21). Intermittent rebellions and chronic agrarian accidents of temperament and life have combined to make unrest in Ireland, combined with the disorderly behaviour of you a writer for great peoples rather than for a people. But some Irishmen in Britain, seemed to confirm the notion that though England appropriates you as her son, and all the Irish Celts were a sub-race with habits antithetically opposed Anglo- Celtic peoples are inheritors of your genius, we claim to English norms. A rather similar perspective can be your brain. Now, we are a scattered band. The Breton’s eyes detected in U.S. culture in the period, as Jacobson notes; ‘the are slowly turning from the sea… the Manxman has ever racially inflected caricatures of the Irish at mid- century are been the mere yeoman of Celtic chivalry; but even his rude well known, as when Harpur’s depicted the ‘Celt’ and the dialect perishes year by year.
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