Celtic Cultures

[Closet Skeleton]

In my field, they'd be considered 'Celts' because they share a common cultural ancestry and root language.

Your field is a 21st century one, they're Celts now because its the common term today, its anachronistic in EUIV and just promotes silly "I'm going to conquer from Orkney to Anatolia" rubbish.

There's nothing wrong with silly expansion plans, its a game and its about having fun, but the basic mechanics shouldn't be arranged to encourage them over historically logical possibilities.

Europeans and their "culture." Such a fascinating concept this "history" and "culture" thing must be.

You're all either Celtic, Germanic, Latin/Greek, or Slavic. Splitting hairs with all this nationalism stuff.

Except nations are real political bodies and language groups are just coincidences of descent.

This is not to mention the most famous of the rebellions, the Jacobite Uprising in support of the Stuarts after the Glorious Revolution. After the rebellion failed, highland culture was repressed with the banning of tartans and kilts and a number of acts were passed that severely limited the power of the clans. The Highland Clearances were also created which forcibly removed the native highlanders in favor of granting their land to lowlanders to develop.

No, not really. Lowlanders weren't brought in to replace highlanders after the clearances, cattle were. The rich highlanders stayed in power, only the poor were kicked out and it was a local initiative.

Lots of highlanders got kicked out in the Anti-Jacobite reprisals but the narrative that combines that in with the clearances deliberately distorts the picture by throwing out all the details.

Tartan was banned, but it wasn't yet highland culture at that point, it was just coloured fabric. Tartan 'culture' originates from after the ban was lifted.

Jacobites were pretender rebels, not nationalists. The focus on them also massively distorts things by leaving up the less romantic but equally powerful Hanoverian Protestant supporters in Scotland.

 

[eon47]

As someone from Paradox said before, this is made to avoid culture-converting and exterminating minor cultures by big guys.

I think the real issue is how easy it is to culture convert provinces, as it wasn't nearly so common as EU4 makes it out to be. By messing with a symptom (the elimination of small cultures) instead of the actual problem, Paradox's new changes are just mucking up the system more. If they'd fix that instead, Breton, Scottish, Basque, and all the other small cultures wouldn't have to be arbitrarily lumped in with others for their own protection.

 

[quinntan2222]

No, not really. Lowlanders weren't brought in to replace highlanders after the clearances, cattle were. The rich highlanders stayed in power, only the poor were kicked out and it was a local initiative.

Lots of highlanders got kicked out in the Anti-Jacobite reprisals but the narrative that combines that in with the clearances deliberately distorts the picture by throwing out all the details.

Tartan was banned, but it wasn't yet highland culture at that point, it was just coloured fabric. Tartan 'culture' originates from after the ban was lifted.

Jacobites were pretender rebels, not nationalists. The focus on them also massively distorts things by leaving up the less romantic but equally powerful Hanoverian Protestant supporters in Scotland.

Chiefs hired Lowland, or sometimes English, factors with expertise in more profitable sheep farming. They "encouraged", sometimes forcibly, the population to move off land judged suitable for raising sheep.


Lynch suggests that there was also a "clearance of Highland landlords in the early nineteenth century" - those landlords who had not adapted to changing times and circumstances. As a result control of the land passed to outsiders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

Yes, the Jacobite rebellion was a pretender rebellion but it was sparked due to the differences in religion, which is a part of culture, and due to the sympathetic treatment of James VII to the highland clans and their way of life. Jacobite support in Scotland had its primary support in the highlands while Hanovarian support was in the lowlands. Also, current tartan culture originates from the romanticism of the highlands in Victorian Britain but it is unreasonable to say it wasn't part of the culture of the highlands before as it was still associated with highland culture and ordinary highland dress. If it wasn't, why would the wearing of them be banned?

 

[Aed]

You make some interesting and thoughtful points, most of which I wouldn't wish to dispute. There is just one thing I'd take issue with - and I know it's going to be controversial - the idea of something called 'Celtic' culture. I'm afraid this is largely a 19th century romantic fad - before this nobody really referred to themselves as Celtic and the various so-called 'Celtic' nations are culturally quite distinct from one another.

While this may be true it is also applicable to pretty much all of the cultures at the time, German, Iberian, French and Italian were equally as varied and lacking in sense of unity. If you are going to have cultures represented at all in the game you will have to make some generalisations, and Celtic is a good enough descriptor for Irish, Highland Scots, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. In terms of game mechanics though really only Irish and Highland Scots makes much sense, although the latter is borderline, both Welsh, Cornish and Breton were very intertwined with Britain and France respectively.

 

[stevieji]

Europeans and their "culture." Such a fascinating concept this "history" and "culture" thing must be.

You're all either Celtic, Germanic, Latin/Greek, or Slavic. Splitting hairs with all this nationalism stuff.

You have a point - despite the number of people disagreeing with you - it could certainly be simplified, but not to the extent you're suggesting. 'Latin/Greek', for example, really won't do - you can't just mash together two completely separate peoples and cultures and expect to get away with it. I could certainly get behind the idea that that most of Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux and England are 'Germanic' cultures - distasteful as this idea would certainly be to many members of the sub-cultures within that region. We, in western Europe, don't generally have any problem with the idea of an homogeneous Slavic culture, but we're very particular about our own sub-groupings.

It's really not about Nationalism, though - that's a completely separate issue to 'culturalism', for want of a better expression.

 

[YuriiH]

If factual accuracy were the goal, Basque would be in entirely their own group - a holdover from pre-historic times, predating even the arrival of agriculture in Europe!

As they were in EU4 pre-1.8 (if I recall it correctly)

 

[Sparhafoc]

Well, as it's your field (some form of linguistics, presumably), I'd be inclined to respect your opinion, but I was under the impression that Welsh and Gaelic are quite distinct, or at least only share an extremely ancient common ancestor.

Really, there's no need to respect my opinion! I don't hold onto them very tightly!

I'm just relaying the historical evidence (my field is anthropology, btw, but I am more focused on biological evolution not social/historical/linguistic), and the evidence would suggest that the common ancestry is not really *that* ancient, being waves of colonization some time between 1000 and 500 BCE.

My point is that any connection of the kind you're promoting pre-dates the time-frame of the game by 1000 years - and I'm questioning the relevance of these residual linguistic links.

Oh I agree its primary relevance is long before the game start, but the cultural / language families don't change solely due to the passage of time, and I think the categories are appropriate, if a little abstracted in parts.

My principal objection is to this very messy and unscientific term 'Celtic'.

Categorization is a mess in any field where stuff changes over time. We engage in platonic nonsense essentializing observations into discrete categories with labels, and pushing things into neat little boxes that aren't very representative of reality. And that's in science too! If you think about biological evolution, for example, we rely on classification to distinctualize between different of animals and their ancestors, but in reality there's a continual gradient between the ancestor and the present. The same troubles happen in linguistic history - the classifications are a product of our minds trying to set about ordering disparate phenomena. Given all that, i still think that the term 'Celtic' is as good as any if one doesn't politicize it.

I tend to think people should say 'Gaelic' if that's what they mean, but that wouldn't include Welsh or Breton, would it? I just think it's a 19th century fiction, designed to artificially unify the 'un-English' parts of the British Isles.

There might be a quite distinctly Victorian mentality to it, but that's also due to these sciences being developed during that time, and no doubt dominant English values pervade those classifications, but there is sufficient genetic and material cultural evidence to corroborate their common ancestry, and I think from there it's all equally smelling roses no matter what label we stick on it.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Europeans and their "culture." Such a fascinating concept this "history" and "culture" thing must be.

You're all either Celtic, Germanic, Latin/Greek, or Slavic. Splitting hairs with all this nationalism stuff.

Tis a merry fiction!

 

[Sparhafoc]

It's really not about Nationalism, though - that's a completely separate issue to 'culturalism', for want of a better expression.

As unpopular as it will no doubt be, I think it is very much concerned with nationalism and the manufacturing of national identities loaded with 18th century romanticism. Go back to the earliest periods of EUIV history, and the people living in those 'nations' wouldn't have considered themselves as being their national adjective.


http://www.amazon.com/Imagined-Communities-Reflections-Nationalism-Revised/dp/1844670864

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7124.html

Both classics in their field, but highly unpopular in the public domain.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Your field is a 21st century one, they're Celts now because its the common term today, its anachronistic in EUIV and just promotes silly "I'm going to conquer from Orkney to Anatolia" rubbish.

A rose by any other name. You can select another label, promote it widely and have it ubiquitously recognised as pertaining to that cultural group, and I'd happily join you in using that word. Until then, the term 'Celt' is perfectly reasonable and has nothing whatosever to do with modernity, and everything to do with their common cultural and linguistic ancestry.

 

[neondt]

Categorization is a mess in any field where stuff changes over time. We engage in platonic nonsense essentializing observations into discrete categories with labels, and pushing things into neat little boxes that aren't very representative of reality. And that's in science too! If you think about biological evolution, for example, we rely on classification to distinctualize between different of animals and their ancestors, but in reality there's a continual gradient between the ancestor and the present. The same troubles happen in linguistic history - the classifications are a product of our minds trying to set about ordering disparate phenomena. Given all that, i still think that the term 'Celtic' is as good as any if one doesn't politicize it.

While you're not actually wrong, this is all way too abstract to have any relevance to EUIV

 

[Sparhafoc]

While you're not actually wrong, this is all way too abstract to have any relevance to EUIV

hehe absolutely, but a non-abstract explanation that suffices as to why it's like this in the game EUIV is 'it's that way because the devs made it that way', and then we're out of material to shoot the breeze over!

 

[War_lord]

As unpopular as it will no doubt be, I think it is very much concerned with nationalism and the manufacturing of national identities loaded with 18th century romanticism. Go back to the earliest periods of EUIV history, and the people living in those 'nations' wouldn't have considered themselves as being their national adjective.

Nationalism wouldn't have been invented by Empires unless there was already a sense of "differentness" to play off, if anything Nationalism is a destruction of Culture. France, Germany and Italy show that. Nationalism is an 18th century invention, Particularism is not.

 

[Loaf Warden]

My principal objection is to this very messy and unscientific term 'Celtic'. I tend to think people should say 'Gaelic' if that's what they mean, but that wouldn't include Welsh or Breton, would it? I just think it's a 19th century fiction, designed to artificially unify the 'un-English' parts of the British Isles.

It seems to me, having read through the arguments here, that "Celtic" could be split up into two different groups: Gaelic and Brythonic.

Brythonic would contain Welsh and a separate Cornish culture. Gaelic would encompass Irish and Highland (or perhaps "Scottish") while British would contain English and Lowland (or perhaps "Scots"). Breton could also potentially go under Brythonic, given its origins, though in practice putting it in the French group as they now are might work out better.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Nationalism wouldn't have been invented by Empires unless there was already a sense of "differentness" to play off, if anything Nationalism is a destruction of Culture. France, Germany and Italy show that. Nationalism is an 18th century invention, Particularism is not.

I'm not so sure that it was invented, exactly, and certainly not consciously. Rather whatever proto sense of coherence to a wider community existed was useful to rulers and they promoted it.

But I agree absolutely - one of the most fundamental processes in nationalism is the destruction of minority traditions and the assimilation of subgroups into the whole. I'd say that Particularism only exists when there is either an economically dominant group, or already existing large degree of homogeneity from which to draw support. That was the case for the majority of human history, so I think it's natural to regress to it. Nationalism at least makes the in-group bigger, if not exactly more inclusive.

 

[Katsue]

I think culture groups in EU4 should be about the political setup of the times. I don't think that 15th Century Welsh and 15th Century Irish people would have felt they had much in common, beyond Christianity. The Irish had a lot of contact with the Highlands, and Irish and Scots Gallic are mutually comprehensible (as is Manx).

 

[Aed]

It seems to me, having read through the arguments here, that "Celtic" could be split up into two different groups: Gaelic and Brythonic.

Brythonic would contain Welsh and a separate Cornish culture. Gaelic would encompass Irish and Highland (or perhaps "Scottish") while British would contain English and Lowland (or perhaps "Scots"). Breton could also potentially go under Brythonic, given its origins, though in practice putting it in the French group as they now are might work out better.

That would be the logical way to go, although it's been stated that they are moving away from using purely linguistic definitions. In that case English, Welsh, Cornish and Lowland Scots should be in a British culture group, and Breton in the French group. Irish and Highland Scots could make up a Gaelic group in that they were also very similar socially, but then the thing that really set the Scottish Highlanders apart from the Lowlanders in the period's history was that they stayed Catholic, so you could argue that they should be in the British group too.

 

[stevieji]

Really, there's no need to respect my opinion! I don't hold onto them very tightly!

I'm just relaying the historical evidence (my field is anthropology, btw, but I am more focused on biological evolution not social/historical/linguistic), and the evidence would suggest that the common ancestry is not really *that* ancient, being waves of colonization some time between 1000 and 500 BCE.

Oh I agree its primary relevance is long before the game start, but the cultural / language families don't change solely due to the passage of time, and I think the categories are appropriate, if a little abstracted in parts.

Categorization is a mess in any field where stuff changes over time. We engage in platonic nonsense essentializing observations into discrete categories with labels, and pushing things into neat little boxes that aren't very representative of reality. And that's in science too! If you think about biological evolution, for example, we rely on classification to distinctualize between different of animals and their ancestors, but in reality there's a continual gradient between the ancestor and the present. The same troubles happen in linguistic history - the classifications are a product of our minds trying to set about ordering disparate phenomena. Given all that, i still think that the term 'Celtic' is as good as any if one doesn't politicize it.

There might be a quite distinctly Victorian mentality to it, but that's also due to these sciences being developed during that time, and no doubt dominant English values pervade those classifications, but there is sufficient genetic and material cultural evidence to corroborate their common ancestry, and I think from there it's all equally smelling roses no matter what label we stick on it.

Ok, quite a few points there:

1. Anthropology. I failed Anthropology. In my Anthropology exam I basically spent 2 hours explaining why I felt that Anthropology wasn't a real science and certainly wasn't a suitable subject for a university degree course. I am, however, still a fan of Trobriand cricket. Fortunately my degree (Humanities) was modular and I was able to discard the result of one module.

2. By any standards, the period 1000 to 500 BCE is 'ancient history'. What else would you call the 'pre-classical' period?

3. I broadly agree with your analysis of our necessarily arbitrary systems of classification, but strongly disagree with your conclusion. 'Celtic' is in no way 'as good as any' (more accurate) term. 'Celtic' is definitely the name of a Glasgow football club, but to the best of my knowledge was never adopted by any tribe or nation as a self-descriptor.

4. I think the genetic heritage of the British Isles is another matter entirely. Take, for instance, the so-called 'black Irish' phenotype - which has more in common with other extreme-western peoples, such as Galician, than it does with the stereo-typical ginger 'celt', which is, if anything a minority, even in Ireland.

5. It's an interesting conversation (for me at least), but I'm actually quite happy with the cultural map which was recently previewed.

 

[stevieji]

While you're not actually wrong, this is all way too abstract to have any relevance to EUIV

Yeah! Close this thread down immediately, for being off-topic. God forbid that anyone should discuss anything that doesn't directly reference game mechanics. Begone to the OT Forum, immediately, heretic!

 

[Sparhafoc]

Ok, quite a few points there:

1. Anthropology. I failed Anthropology. In my Anthropology exam I basically spent 2 hours explaining why I felt that Anthropology wasn't a real science and certainly wasn't a suitable subject for a university degree course. I am, however, still a fan of Trobriand cricket. Fortunately my degree (Humanities) was modular and I was able to discard the result of one module.

That's hilarious as I felt exactly the same way about social anthropology by the 2nd year undergrad. Fortunately, biological anthropology doesn't suffer the same wishy-washy nonsense. Social's still fun to learn about different cultural practices, but more something to study independently than in uni.

2. By any standards, the period 1000 to 500 BCE is 'ancient history'. What else would you call the 'pre-classical' period?

I didn't actually say it wasn't 'ancient history', I said it wasn't ancient. My focus is neanderthals and early H. sapiens, so the Iron Age is basically last week in comparison.

3. I broadly agree with your analysis of our necessarily arbitrary systems of classification, but strongly disagree with your conclusion. 'Celtic' is in no way 'as good as any' (more accurate) term. 'Celtic' is definitely the name of a Glasgow football club, but to the best of my knowledge was never adopted by any tribe or nation as a self-descriptor.

I don't see what the relevance is of whether a tribe or proto-nation uses a term to describe itself. Japan doesn't call itself Japan, and Japanese people don't call themselves Japanese, but the terms work perfectly adequately in English to signify that group of people with very little confusion between the users of the word. Likewise with the Celts. It's just a name, and the notion of an 'accurate' term is falling as much afoul of the problem at hand. There is no collective noun for sundry groups of people distributed over time that everyone will accept. It's fudge all the way down!

And I'd also hardly call a Bronze-Iron age people sufficiently knowledgeable arbiters in deciding what their factual heritage is - they might have thought they popped fully formed from the ground, or any of the other sundry creation myths, but one thing's sadly for certain them being human - they would have focused on their differences more than on their similarities.

4. I think the genetic heritage of the British Isles is another matter entirely. Take, for instance, the so-called 'black Irish' phenotype - which has more in common with other extreme-western peoples, such as Galician, than it does with the stereo-typical ginger 'celt', which is, if anything a minority, even in Ireland.

Aye, fudge all the way down. The actual phenomena of the spread, assmiliation, and export of all the little tendrils of experience and method we call culture is extremely complex and impossible to model accurately even with a great number of words, so a single noun is never going to suffice. Any delineation does a disservice to someone somewhere at some time. But the term serves to point to that fudgy category we've made, and a significant portion of that category does have sufficient factual basis and precedent for it to be employable. As long as we all understand what we mean by the term Celt, it doesn't really matter.

5. It's an interesting conversation (for me at least), but I'm actually quite happy with the cultural map which was recently previewed.

I always find it fascinating when it comes to ideas like this, and it's part of the reason why I got interested in anthropology in the first place. For me, i couldn't care less about the cultural labels on the map because I am not really worried about extreme degrees of realism in a game. I'd be much more picky and demanding in an academic setting, but one label's just as ignorable as another for me while my troops are busy smashing their walls down!