The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People Or Modern Invention?

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Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1999 - History - 160 pages
The Celtic peoples of the British Isles hold a fundamental place in our national consciousness. In this book Simon James surveys ancient and modern ideas of the Celts and challenges them in the light of revolutionary new thinking on the Iron Age peoples of Britain. Examining how ethnic and national identities are constructed, he presents an alternative history of the British Isles, proposing that the idea of insular Celtic identity is really a product of the rise of nationalism in the eighteenth century. He considers whether the 'Celticness' of the British Isles is a romantic fantasy, even a politically dangerous falsification of history which has implications in the current debate on devolution and self-government for the Celtic regions.
 

Contents

Preface
7
assumptions limitations and objections
26
How the Celts were created and why
43
Current ideas on ethnicity and the insular Ancient Celts
67
Towards a new ethnic history of the isles
86
are the modern Celts bogus?
136
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