Internal colonialism
Subtitle: the Celtic fringe in British national development
By: Michael Hecter ; with a new introduction and appendix by the author.
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New Brunswick, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 390
Subjects: Celts -- Great Britain -- Politics and government.; Celts -- Great Britain -- Social conditions.; Civilization, Celtic.; Ethnicity -- Scotland.; Ethnicity -- Ireland.; Ethnicity -- Wales.; Great Britain -- Ethnic relations.
Description: Recent years have seen a resurgence of separatist sentiments among national minorities in many industrial societies, including the United Kingdom. In 1997, the Scottish and Welsh both set up their own parliamentary bodies, while the tragic events in Northern Ireland are a daily reminder of the Irish problem. These phenomena call into question widely accepted social theories which assume that ethnic attachments in a society will wane as industrialization proceeds.

This book presents the social basis of ethnic identity, and examines changes in the strength of ethnic solidarity in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition to its value as a case study, the work also has important comparative implications, for it suggests that internal colonialism of the kind experienced in the British Isles has its analogues in the histories of other industrial societies.

The study concludes that ethnic solidarity will inevitably emerge among groups which are relegated to inferior positions in a cultural division of labor. This is an important contribution to the understanding of socioeconomic development and ethnicity.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.