ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book accounts for the bitter sea which separates England from the Celtic fringe by discussing the types of conditions which promote national development in culturally heterogeneous societies. The critical process in national development has been termed ethnic change. England has been referred to as the national core; and each of the Celtic lands has been termed a peripheral region. From the theoretical literature, it was possible to select two quite different sets of expectations about the relationship between core and peripheral regions, particularly as it was affected by industrialization. The diffusion model of social change of national development, predicts that ethnic change in the periphery will occur as a long-term consequence of structural differentiation. The internal colonial model of national development suggests that peripheral ethnic identity will persist following differentiation, given the institutionalization of a cultural division of labor.
