The Invention of Tradition (Canto)

This book is one of the sociological must-reads for nation building and growth of national identity.

The Invention of Tradition is a collection of essays. The majority of the essays in the volume focus on the creation of mythical pasts to fill a space in the social fabric opened by changes in power relationships. Prys Morgan captures the essence of these creations, in his chapter on the hunt for a Welsh past, when he notes that Welsh scholars and patriots, in their efforts to preserve things Welsh in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, "rediscovered the past, historical, linguistic and literary traditions, and where those traditions were inadequate ... created a past which had never existed." (p. 44) The question, of course, is inadequate for what? And the answer is that Welsh culture proved inadequate to stave off English encroachment and so traditions that privileged Welsh culture, and at the same time allowed it to be consumed by the English, were invented. The Welsh gave themselves a grandiose past based on association with the Celtic race. Similarly the Welsh language was discovered to be the tongue of the ancient Gauls and Britans. The Druids were studied and emulated one result of which was the (re) introduction of cremation. Another result, not mentioned by Morgan, was the creation of societies with grand names such as the Ancient Order of Druids and Oddfellows, that were tied to London through their involvement in the insurance business. The London connection was all important. The first Welsh societies were established in London, the Ancient Britons in 1715 and the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in 1751. These societies propagated a view of the Welsh as the primary people of Britain. Another English contribution to the production of Welsh traditions was the tourist trade of the late eighteenth century that was important in establishing Welshness as something unique to be consumed by fashionable society. (p. 69, p. 71, pp. 62-66, p. 58, & pp. 79-80) London also played an important part in the creation of the Highland tradition of Scotland. Hugh Trevor-Roper relates the three stages of the creation and adoption of that tradition. First, the creation of cultural independence from Ireland culminating in the invention of a history that inverted the relationship between the two and claimed "mother-nation" status for Scotland. Second, the creation of the new Highland traditions of kilt and clan tartan. Third, the adoption of these traditions by other Scots of various descent. It was the creation of the Highland Society in London in 1788 that did much to ensure the proliferation of the new tradition. In 1807 the Society published the Ossian, the text created by James Macpherson to establish Scottish antiquity's superiority to Ireland. The Society also secured the repeal of the law forbidding the wearing of Highland dress thereby paving the way for the introduction of the kilt as the Scottish national dress. The kilt as Trevor-Roper points out was invented by a Lancashire Quaker, Thomas Rawlinson, sometime around 1727. Likew

Hugh Trevor-Roper's contribution to this book is priceless. In his chapter "Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland", he details for the reader where the supposedly "ancient" costume of Scotland came from. The kilt was invented by an English Quaker about 1726 to allow his Highland workmen to more easily move while smelting the iron ore he was extracting. The kilt was thus an expression of the Industrial Revolution rather than an ancient freedom of the heather.The "setts" of tartans purporting to show a particular pattern of plaid belonging to a particular Highland clan is an even more recent invention. The concept of a unified group wearing the same tartan began with the English formation of the Highland regiments in the 1740s and later. The Scottish cloth industry recognized a good thing when they saw it and with the help of the Scottish Romantic movement and with promotion by Sir Walter Scott, by the 1820s, Clan/tartan pattern books (which often disagreed with one another) were happily catering to this invented tradition.Invented by mis-guided or plainly fraudulent "antiquarians", the concept of particular tartan patterns being associated with a specific Clan is one of the long-running jokes played by the Scots on the rest of the world. Rather like the game of golf.

The principle argumentative thread running through each of this book's essays is that the traditions Europeans hold dear about their respective cultures date back merely to the turn of the 20th century. Far from legendarily old, things like Scottish tartans and the English monarchical love of pomp and circumstance date back only to the Victorian era. More to the point, many traditions aren't even native to the land which celebrates them. Tartans, the book concludes, are actually northern English ideas, and the "British" love of pageantry comes more from India than from anything deeply rooted in the gardens of the House of Windsor. But so what? What is the importance of discovering the "truth" of a legend? Does it make us less reverential of it? Judging by the continued popularity of Santa Claus, no. Traditions, after all, aren't really about truth. Many traditions are simply lies that have been repeated enough that they become ennobled. The point isn't that they were once lies. The point is the journey they have made from lie to legend. That is what is so intriguing about this book. True, there are other, more political subtexts in these essays-some of the authors clearly don't LIKE that the lies have become cultural "truth"-but all of the essays tell of the trek each of these myths made. Far from the "inconsequence" that another reviewer has mentioned, these essays deepen our understanding of cherished myths and even make them more endearing.

This book, edited by the famous Marxist historian Erich Hobsbawm and the African specialist Terrence Ranger, is a collection of historical essays dealing with the invention of national or imperial traditions. Hobsbawm writes about Europe 1870-1914, Ranger about colonial Africa, Hugh Trevor-Roper about Scotland, Prys Morgan about Wales, David Cannadine about the British monarchy, and Bernard Cohn about imperial India. All are historians except for Cohn, an anthropologist, and all write about the nineteenth century.All seven essays (Hobsbawm wrote two) are well written and clearly show the invention of traditions as a means of 'inculcating certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition'. In his heart Hobsbawm obviously wants to show that these new traditions are lies and that he and the other writers have done us a great service in uncovering them. Yet while many of these traditions were invented, many of their inventors would not lie about their young age (with the exception of the amazing brothers Allen of Scotland), and all of those traditions that resonated among people did draw from older, 'real' traditions. These qualifications, which Hobsbawm partially admits, heavily qualify the strength of his arguments, thus making the book an interesting but somewhat inconsequential collection of essays.