"The Celtic Revolution" by Simon Young

Full Title: The Celtic Revolution: In Search of Two Thousand Years That Changed Our World
Author: Simon Young
Publisher: Gibson Square (United Kingdom?)
Earliest Copyright: 2009
ISBN: 978-1906142-43-8

Critique:
Dr. Young provides the reader with a complex set of narratives that are only loosely connected in the world of Celtic studies.  They are all indeed of interest to the Celtophile, but they are very, very disparate.  In fact my biggest criticism (note, not critique) of the work is the lack of a central thesis.  Given the title, one might expect a book relating the story of Celtic history in some long trajectory from the ancient world to somewhere closer to the present.  Instead, Dr. Young provides at least three different theses treating three very different notions, at least one of which is quite novel and interesting.

His first thesis relates to how the ancient Celts essentially helped build Rome.  He portrays the Celts in a very classical sense: as war mongering barbarians with little to no civilization.  He concentrates on the years of Celtic history chronicled by Classical writers and never delves into the work of linguists or archaeologists except to mention them briefly.  He also states, in his prologue, that in the 1990's archaeologists had come to the notion that the Celts never existed.  Unfortunately, aside from relating the events of what can only be described as an "interesting" dinner party, he doesn't reveal the names of those archaeologists.  I know I would like to have their names so I can read what they have to say (that said, a general critique I have is a noted lack of direct citations - I realize he is writing for a general audience, but from time to time, it wouldn't have killed him to be a better name dropper!).  Of course, I reject that notion outright, but I'd still like to know who these ladies and gentlemen are.  At the end, I remain unsatisfied with his defense of this thesis.  He has elucidated nothing that couldn't be gleaned from very old sources.  His answers are predictable, pat.  And, moreover, for me a little too easy.  Certainly the ancient Celts weren't of the same ilk as the Romans or Greeks, but given their art and what we can logically extrapolate about their customs and social structure (granted, using back building), it seems to me that the elusive truth lie somewhere between the wistful longings of New Agers and the Classical writers.  Dr. Young explored none of those possibilities.  Fair play to him, he is an historian, and I believe he only used sources he felt reliable.  He is not, however, the first to do this, and I wonder why he bothered with the first thesis at all.

His second thesis has also been treated, albeit more elaborately by Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization. Granted, Cahill's book has been lambasted as much as it has been lauded, but I think the basic premise is the same.  Young is of course more conservative in his treatment of the role of Irish monastic society in the preservation of European Christianity.  That said, I did learn some very interesting history in his second section.  On the other hand, what is omnipresent in this work of Simon Young is what can only be called something akin to derision or simple snarkiness.  He doesn't seem to like his subjects.  Rather, he observes them as though he were some Roman dilettante.  He portrays the ancient Celts as unwitting and accidental catalysts in European history; he paints the Irish monks as surly, unruly ne'er-do-wells perched on the edge of Europe in hostile, un-Romanized lands.  He makes the incredible leap in logic that because little remains of Irish influence in today's Catholic Church, that the Continentals view the Celtic lands of the Middle Ages as barbaric and uneducated.

His final thesis is my favorite because it touches on a man close to my heart: King Arthur.  As far as I know, Young is the first person to treat this topic seriously: how King Arthur became so well known throughout Europe.  I would go further than he, however, and say that King Arthur is probably in the top two or three of world-wide literary characters!   I like the general track of his thesis, but in his third endeavor, he becomes downright unkind. On p 215 he dons a new hat, that of culture psychologist, and declares that for the British Celts, my dear Welsh in particular, Arthur became a national psychosis! On p 202 be again declares that the British Celts are viewed as provincial barbarians during the 1100's.

Both these sub-theses are wholly unnecessary and demonstrate what I interpret as the author's own culture prejudice.  If he has proof that Europeans felt the medieval Celts were barbarians, he needs to produce it (in direct contrast to their adoption of British Celtic material for their popular fiction which he explores).  If he understands the  conditions of the medieval-to-modern Welsh, I would expect more sympathy (He does make a nod that this psychosis is one, if not the main, reason Welsh is still spoken today - never mind the millennia of oral literary tradition, never mind that Welsh has one of the oldest literary traditions in the world, never mind the struggle for identity in the belly of the largest empire human kind has known up to now, [add scores of other factors here that have aided in the survival of the Welsh {the Irish, the Cornish...}]...).  What is otherwise a novel and interesting approach to a topic ends up tainted by prejudice and ad hominem.

Yet I have not touched on his main thesis in this section which, much to the chagrin of those of us who teach research papers and argumentation in the United States, is posed in the form of a question, and that late in the third part of his book: Did the Celts Create the Modern Mind?

As a 21st century Welsh speaker and sometimes-rabble-rouser,  I would love to think so.  Of course, he kicks his own thesis in the teeth.  The modern mind is a complex issue on all fronts.  Did the ancient Celts have a stake in modern European thinking?  I think the answer is a complicated and qualified "yes".  After all, the sub-stratum of so much of modern Europe (like France, Spain, southern Germany, much of Britain, and other places) is Celtic.  That said, one could write a Foucault-esque treatise on the topic.  Perhaps some day in the future, were I to win the Megamillions Lottery, I just might.


More generally, his (not original) attack on Geoffrey of Monmouth and his History of the Kings of Britain scandalizes the old Cymro-Breton boy of not using verifiable sources. Since in-text citation is all but absent from Young's work, the irony should be lost on no one!

In conclusion, I think Dr. Young has offered an interesting and at times enlightening look at Celtic history (albeit quirky and disjointed), but he does so through very particularly colored lenses. Without direct, in-text citations, he makes the reader decide what is fact and what is his opinion.  I enjoyed learning some new facts (which I guarded very safely off to one side in a special place), but I despaired of his dilettantry and what I will call a clear anti-Celtic prejudice.  Perhaps I simply do not understand his supposed Cambridge education, but I like to see some empathy on the part of a writer with his subject; Young appears to have very little.

At the end of the day, I would only recommend this book to people who have already read widely on the subject of the Celts.  It is not a primer.  It is a compendium of academic papers or ideas bound together under a beguiling title; both the notion of a revolution and "2,000 years" are questionable.  It is a polemic work which should have appeared with in-text citations.

Overall Grade: C- (some really good historical tid-bits, but too many personal overlays, almost no in-text citation of even the most rudimentary sorts)

About the Author: Dr. Simon Young is not described at all in the text.  From the dust jacket, we learn that he has won awards at Cambridge and received his doctorate at the University of Florence (I see no reason to equate this degree to the American Ph.D., Italian universities defaulted to a doctorate until recently, much as German ones defaulted to "masters" (Magister)). His dust-jacket-bio claims he has written many academic articles, but I have found it difficult to trace his academic steps at all.   I have at least one more book of his in "The Pile".  I will reserve final judgment for now.

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