Why the History of ‘the Celtic Fringe’ Remains Unwritten

Abstract

‘The Celtic fringe’ commonly denotes those parts of the British Isles whose population is predominantly of Celtic stock, namely Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Its use presupposes a range of common features and characteristics in the various peoples characterised as Celtic and also implies a relationship in the nature of core and periphery with another region of the British Isles, namely lowland England. The term is, however, essentially an English and metropolitan—and so outsider—construct. It also brings with it considerable ideological baggage arising out of England's historically fraught relations with the Celtic peoples, which reflect a pattern of English colonisation and cultural imperialism in the British upland zone since the eleventh century. Not surprisingly, therefore, many Celts find the term offensive. In terms of the writing of history, moreover, British scholars have tended, until very recently, to study the archipelago's individual nations in isolation from each other rather than to develop comparisons between them in the context of a pattern of state formation. In any case, few historians have the requisite linguistic skills to master the sources and modern literatures in the various Celtic languages. Although recent initiatives—for instance, the advent of the so-called New British history and a range of EU-funded projects which promote collaborative research between the various national traditions—now afford scope for a more thorough analysis of the concept, it remains to be investigated how far the various Celtic peoples may be said to have experienced a collective history.