4. Wickham, Inheritance of Rome (14 Apr 2019)

Fri, 21 Apr 2023 by kurto

Assesses socioeconomic trends in formerly imperial Roman lands over 400 – 1000 AD, describing the collapse as tectonic but not catastrophic: culture especially displayed continuity and evolution if simplification.

The era’s most important event was the Empire’s breakup at the hands of the Vandals in 439, severing Rome’s food supply (i.e., grain and oil), followed toward century’s end by Gaul’s defection to the barbarian powers. These restricted trade, simplified wealth to land ownership, and restricted government (fisc, justice, administration). By 650 every successor kingdom had its own traditions. Islam’s rise further severed Rome from the Byzantine world (which for a time retained control of the Nile valley), completing the end of the Mediterranean regime and prompting two centuries of ferment. Taxation, shifting from commerce toward land, closed off the possibility of successors to Rome, prompting elites to favor military pursuits over luxury.
Roman culture emphasized great cities, which decayed. Medieval Christianity, by contrast, was not subsumed in Roman values: its structures changed the least, its critique of society and government persisted. Secular education gave way to religious inspiration.

Wickham organizes around the Roman West, the rising Islamic sphere, and Byzantium, and emphasizes archaeology, for example the dispersion of clay pots indicating trade, as free of ‘assumed narrative’ found in manuscripts and such traditional evidence.

In the European Common Era, the period 500-800 marks the greatest local autonomy, the least centralization. Population was sparse but not disorderly. There was little inter-regional trade, Francia being more active than its contemporaries (along the Rhine and the Meuse to the North Sea) and Britain less so: wealth maps accordingly. Most housing reverted to wood (until 1200); elites moved into towers as visually claim to leadership and status, the visual (and the miraculous) being more powerful than written word. Gaul and Germany formed under Merovingian customs over the 6th to 8th centuries, though not too far prior to Charles Martel’s ascendance. Visigothic Spain and Lombard Italy elaborated differently, the Spanish retaining greater cohesion until the Islamic conquest and the Italians fracturing entirely. Only the Franks sought empire, only the Spanish Visigoths retained imperial government. All militarized, all lost sophisticated taxation. Court-centered aristocracies persisted, of Roman stock but post-Roman custom. (English and Irish social structures congealed more easily under Anglo-Saxon or Gaelic patterns, the exception being Catholic influence). Though also disrupted, the Church retained its institutional shape – almost one-third of land in France and Italy was church-owned. To varying degrees, bishops (who tended to be aristocrats) held local sway. Literacy declined less than once supposed – government was still based on written instruction – but society’s elites militarized and much land was needed to feed and clothe armies. Europe’s early medieval ages have been seen as Germanic but though societies indeed localized, Wickham holds post-Roman sociocultural practices didn’t change much after 750 and the greater change was militarization. Reduced distribution of wealth (land) determined what the peasantry could and could no longer do. Under the Merovingians, for example, court was most important; some peasants were free, some were serfs, checking broader class solidarity; women were less present publicly than in Rome.

The Byzantine empire separated from Rome over 609-642, being unable to hold back Islamic (Persian) attacks and so losing the productive wealth of Egypt; Constantinople depopulated from 500,000 to ~ 50,000 residents, a much faster decline than Rome two centuries earlier. Byzantines survived by turning to the state.

Development in the Islamic lands is generally presented as contrasting with the West and Byzantium, rather than in terms of theology. From 630, Arabs sought to remain separate from the lands they conquered; to be on the military payroll was a badge of honor. Consequently Persian and Roman society did not blend. Beginning with late 8th-century Umayyads, administration shifted to viziers and the center of Islamic government commenced a continuous line of caliphs running to the early 16th century. In the 9th century, Baghdad became the cultural center of Islam, led by a community of scholars premised on ulama. (But: the 9th century also saw the Sunni-Shia split.). There were four main schools of law ranging from legal reasoning (interpretation) of caliphal legislation to hadith (premised on Mohammed’s statements). By 900 the latter prevailed – the ‘closing of the gate’ – no new laws promulgated by the caliph or anyone else was considered fixed. Land did not equate to power in medieval Islam, only position within the state, which brought tax wealth. Paradoxically, the succeeding Abbasid empire fell because the state grew too large.

Both Muslims and Byzantines were concerned with representation – what is holy, what is idolatrous. Aversion to the visual was a factor in the Roman-Byzantine schism of 843 (the popes long since having identified as Roman). Both Byzantine and Arab commerce were closely tied to the state: private wealth gave access to the state, which led to more complex ways to accumulate and recycle wealth.

The Byzantine city-state, which saw declining trade over the 7-8th centuries, recovered in the 11th-12 centuries notwithstanding the coming Arab conquest. By the 10th century, the second great Mediterranean trade cycle, including in the following century the Italian ports as well as the Crusade-fueled trade, was underway. But intra-regional trade among Europe, Islam, and Byzantium did not recover.

After 800 the West saw the introduction of moral political practice, exemplified by the Carolingians: the church and state working together. Yet by the period’s end, Carolingian public structures had failed, replaced by the rise of aristocratic power, the exclusion of peasantry from the public sphere (somewhat analogous to the collapse of the caliphate), and the eventual rise of European kingdoms. Charlemagne matches Justinian in advancing basic literacy, religion, socially minded legislation, and participation in assemblies. He patronized scholars but the sociopolitical world of 6-8th centuries pertained into the 9th – a time that matched the French Revolution as a hotbed of education invading politics. Carolingian rulers allowed elites to rise according to intellectual ability, for purposes of promoting Christendom (theology), unlike the Byzantines, who favored tax-funded officials and army commanders. Leaders felt it necessary to moralize their decisions; however, Carolingian initiatives reached local societies via public justice not moral reform measures. The Carolingian era was destroyed by the multiplication of successors; these regional hegemons were more important than the overall rise of aristocrats; its decline undermined the pope’s international stature.

Culturally, Carolingians evidenced the dynamic of kings choosing bishops and bishops correcting kings; Byzantines relied on Roman tradition for assurance; the Abbasids looked to the now-defined ulama. As in Byzantium, in Islam education trained one for statecraft. Solidity came from tax (which was absent in the west), but religion of the elite was not seen to be essential to state survival or that the task of the state to provide for communal salvation. Frankish aristocrats after the Carolingians were less likely to be literate; the church upheld ‘international’ culture.

In the Viking era, southern England suffered no permanent regional breakdown before 1066. Only Dublin and Normandy, plus north Scotland and Ireland, survived as Viking political retains. The rest of Danish settlements were soon culturally absorbed. Aristocratic dominance based on property was more pronounced than the continent; yet the king maintained more political control. Arguably the main political creation was the catalytic of unifying England.
Russia exhibited Byzantine influences, but was too far from Islam, and so developed of internal dynamics. Spain’s government stems from the Visigoths not Francia or Al-Andalus. Sociopolitical systems in ‘ouher Europe’, notwithstanding this diversity, stemmed from solidifying aristocratic power as well as borrowing government mechanisms from neighbors, for example specialized royal officials, top-down judiciary, or military service owed the state. In 400, stable systems stopped at the Rhine-Danube border; by 1000 recognizable polities were evident west of the Volga, albeit in weaker forms than during the Roman era.

Institutional politics were most effective where there was a strong tax (e.g., Rome, Islam, Byzantium), and less secure if dependent on land grants to aristocrats since the metropole was likely to run out of land. The decline of public culture, which was the strongest remaining link to Rome), for example in law, often devolved to private rule (e.g., inside private castles). The land tax which underpinned the Roman fisc continued in simplified form, hurting the peasantry (as well as intraregional trade) since it was not distributed. The 10th century was often like the 9th yet saw substantial changes in public assemblies.

The decline of the peasantry, ‘encaged’ in castles, figures prominently in Wickham’s writing. During the Carolingian and succeeding eras, aristocrats consolidated land ownership though peasants did not. But inheritance became normal only post 1000 (in Francia, post 900), which cramped monarchies. Private castles were a 10th century development, tying aristocrats to regional more than political interests, and leading to division among those who fight, those who work – the so-called feudal revolution. Feudal seignory is not a Carolingian structure writ small but a structural change; but not all aristocrats left court to rule local regions. Peasants in the 9-10th centuries were slowly excluded from the public sphere. Carolingian political economy promoted the demesne, ‘encaging’ the lower classes on the estate: they were dependent on the lords for land to farm and live. By the time they re-emerged after 1000, the Middle Ages were effectively over: villages were spheres of public power, estates of private rule.

The key major trends (shifts) of the era from 400-1000 by chronology are:
1. The breakup of the Roman Empire, which was more economic and fiscal than culture, aided by the rise of Islam severing Rome from the Byzantine world and fueling two centuries of crisis. In this time, governmental changes in the Islamic regions were more dramatic even then Carolingian lands.
2. The introduction of moralistic political practices exemplified by the Carolingian project – the church and state working together.
3. The end of the Carolingian empire’s public structures circa 1000, most obviously demonstrated by the rise of aristocratic power and the exclusion of peasantry from the public sphere. A somewhat analogous trend is evident in the breakup of the Caliphate. In northern Europe, modern kingdoms emerged.
4. Wealth was accumulated via land ownership, and land could be effectively taxed. The peasants suffered, regional exchange increased.
5. Institutionalized politics were most effective if there was strong tax revenue, and less so if the government was dependent on land grants to aristocrats.
6. The development of public culture with the strongest links to Rome was law; the decline to private rule on the estates (in French castles) illustrates the point.

Of note: French historiography has predominated the later Medieval ages, but the Frankish experience was not typical of Europe.

3. Kamen, Spain 1492-1763 (26 Feb 2012)

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 by kurto

Surveys Spain’s imperial era from the consolidation of Castilian power to the end of Anglo-French warfare. Not military conquest but adventurers, cooperative provincial elites, and Latin American coin fueled the global structure. Italy (Spanish Lombardy, based in Milan) provided crucial banking, armaments, and manpower. Spanish never became lingua franca; despite the civilizing mission of Catholicism, Castile’s elites remained intellectually and culturally insulated; and Europe did not look up to the peninsula. Power crested in 1635 and turned to France, which ‘took over’ in 1702 upon a Bourbon succeeding a Habsburg on the Spanish throne (prompting the War of Spanish Succession). Little interested in narrative politics and more attracted to sociocultural phenomena, the learned book grows dull in sections that dwell on Filipino and Ibero-American anthropology.

5. Brand, American Colossus (8 May 2012)

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 by kurto

Surveys postbellum political economy, concluding capitalism outstripped democracy to the benefit of a few and disadvantage of many. Federal power was used to spur the development of railroads, settlement of the West (including Indian pacification), the growth of cities over agriculture, foreign trade (via tariff), and a national currency. The almost inevitable result was a series of financial crises (especially 1873 and 1895), the latter requiring the intervention of JP Morgan. Other titans such as Rockefeller and Carnegie lacked the influence on government (or fail to illustrate the thesis); incidents such as the Homestead riot or the Molly Maguires also are case in theme. Erudite and readable, the book nonetheless feels a bit freighted with ideology: it is not clear ‘capitalism’ triumphed at the expense of a still-burgeoning democracy. Indeed, by the first decade of the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt embodied the rise of progressivism; the economy failed again in 1907 and then 1929; and what a murderous time was the century of communism and progressivism.

11. Thiel, Zero to One (15 Oct 2014)

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 by kurto

A highly stylized theory of entrepreneurialism which contends startups aiming to solve clear, ‘big’ problems are most likely to transform the future. The author posits the ideology of competition is a false objective for businesses, which should instead seek to become monopolies. In Silicon Valley, this usually requires proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and distinct branding. Along the way, the founder of Paypal-turned-financier outlines some practical advice (e.g., equity for employees) and also libertarian political thought: faith in indefinite progress leads to pursuit of rent, whereas faith in definite progress leads to inventions that transform the future – careers in law or finance versus going to the moon. The jumping off point, the question of singularity (i.e., exponential advance), is worth further pursuit. Interesting but lacking in the economic grounding that appears early in the book, and may grow dated.

5. Blainey, A Shorter History of Australia (10 Feb 2015)

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 by kurto

Geography and economics have been more important to Australian history than politics. The ‘tyranny of distance’ shows itself in Aboriginal culture, Western settlement and economic development, foreign relations, and so on. They have often been interrelated, as in the development of export products (notably wool and mining) or the influence of drought. Owing to scarcity of labor, working conditions and labor law have been advanced, leading to egalitarianism (equality of outcomes) and also devotion to sport (as outside leisure). Black-white relations, obviously one-sided and sometimes fraught, are not more significant than the latter 20th-century influx of Asian peoples, which supplemented steadily decreasing European migration. Crisply written.

23. Hill, Reformation to Industrial Revolution (18 Nov 2022)

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 by kurto

Politics shaped England’s socioeconomic development over 1530-1780, as the island nation alone in Europe progressed from monarchy-and-aristocracy toward the proto-bourgeois, from agricultural toward commercial and early industrial.
In the Tudor era, the Commons gained influence; in the Reformation, absolutism was undermined by conscience and education of the gentry. London’s economic power acted to unify England (if not the soon-to-be United Kingdom). Domestic policy aimed at controlling the peasantry via justices of the peace. Foreign policy, which began in medieval thrall to Rome and Spain, grew to be independent (though the country remained a 2d-line power).
1640’s destruction of the Stuart bureaucracy was the most decisive event in British history. The dynasty’s unsustainable economics – spending more than it received – led to the Civil War (see also 18th-century France). But predictable causes do not guarantee predictable outcomes: nonconforming religion (e.g., Lollards) as well as the new urban culture evinced popular opposition. When the conflict came, richer peasants aligned not with the lumpen but the gentry, which had learned to lead in the schools.
During the Interregnum and Restoration, the abolition of northern and Welsh councils unified the legal system and the economic dominance of London gathered pace, acting to radiate Puritanism. But the Restoration’s key feature was anti-democratic. Aristocrats and bishops returned; nonconformists were excluded by the Clarendon Code; enclosure accelerated, promoting agricultural productivity. In this respect, Jacobitism was an outcome not a cause: unimproving, gentry and freeholders were liquidated; the ‘new men’ were ascendant before 1745. The Navigation Acts of 1651 and 1660 marked the transition to national monopoly (i.e., to colonial mercantilism from chartered companies) and the Dutch wars. Then joint stock companies deployed capital where previously it had been in limited supply. (Ireland, after African slaves, was the principal victim of this trend.) The Restoration did not halt labor migration but favored employers. Excise and land taxes acted to shift resources from peasants to landowners and the City. Following the Toleration Act, Quakers and others saw to it that favorable legislation was enforced across England, again promoting more uniform administration and tempering the influence of JPs. Intellectually, the Newtonian revolution as well as dispersion of ‘natural hierarchy’ undermined views of social organization: men no longer were united to each other.
After the Glorious Revolution and over the 18th century the colonies supplanted Europe as England’s biggest market; 1763’s Peace of Paris converted these markets from suppliers to buyers, until the American revolution and Irish revolt shook the system. Thus there were five periods of export trade: old draperies to 1600; new draperies to 1650; colonial monopoly – entrepot – re-export to 1700; manufactures to the colonies to 1780; and afterward the industrial revolution, enabled by modernized banks and credit, facilitated worldwide export. Bacon’s aspirations for society advanced by scientific approaches advanced dissent. Freeborn men thought to enter the factor was to surrender their birthright; laborers now sought protection for Elizabethan regulations (e.g., prices, standards, apprenticeships, etc.). By 1780, rural distress was evident, though grand landowners had regained ground.
Heavily focused on structural analysis, there is no discussion of even the Whig Ascendancy or George III’s new system. Event are Whiggishly inevitable. The neo-Marxist approach also surrenders credibility in such observations as Soviet collectivization costs ‘thousands’ of lives.

19. Turner, The Frontier in American History (6 Dec 2016)

Thu, 12 May 2022 by kurto

The American frontier was settled by rough-hewn individuals and families migrating in search of the best free land to homestead, wanting to get away from coastal or regional elites. Settlement typically created a new type of American, as descendants of Puritan New England, Germans from Pennsylvania, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from the Piedmont South merged together into communities which were helpful to one another, but ultimately individualists who did not much trust government. Jacksonian democracy, with its eponymous hero, was its first political expression. Settlement of the old Northwest and Midwest of the country — roughly, Big 10 country — was the most significant phase as the region first tipped the balance between north and south toward the free soil, then produced the greatest generals and politicians (including Lincoln) of the age, and finally yielded the great resources for America’s industrial rise. Interestingly, the far Great Lakes and upper plains states (eg, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas) were often heavily peopled by immigrants — Germans and Scandinavians. Free land served as a natural outlet for low-wage earner of the cities. By the time the frontier closed in 1890, the migrants had switched to favoring government intervention to protect individuals from the economic power of consolidating industrialists. Another important outlet was the Midwest’s rise of the state university, to cultivate the talents of the new citizen.

14. Plumb, England in the 18th Century (4 Aug 2017)

Sun, 08 May 2022 by kurto

An opinionated survey of the 18th century which ever seems to anticipate the coming of the 20th. Plumb divides the years 1714-1815 into three eras, those of Walpole, Chatham, and Pitt the younger, while elucidating the incipience of the Industrial Revolution from 1750. At the start of the era, for all the excitement of the closing of the revolutionary era, the country was decidedly premodern. Improved social organization emerged through local administrative reform. So too politics were personal rather than based in the party: Walpole sought to marginalize Tories but was too engaged in courtly intrigue to be a master statesman; his usage of patronage enabled the Duke of Newcastle to establish the Whig ascendancy at the expense of the Hanovers; the landed gentry became the opposition. Chatham, taking power in 1756, surmounted the French but shortly England lost the American colonies as England under George III failed to recognize they had come of age. But she gained immense wealth and power from India. The now-familiar enclosures of the English countryside were taking shape, while towns began turning from administrative centers into early industrial hubs centered around the mill or mine (instead of the feudal castle). Social organization improved with still more local administration, and in combination with improved medicine and public health, helped the poor live longer and so create a rising commercial elite — who bumped up against the squirearchy. Burke’s campaign for economic reform (of the monarchy) trumped association reform (of parliament), which had to wait until 1832. Also in the second half of the century, Bohemian romantics abjured aristocracy and classicism, and embraced the French Revolution, as did Fox, whose break with Burke split the party for a generation. Most of the nation rallied behind Pitt (supported by George and the City of London) against the French threat, initially by sea power alone, and then to the standard of Wellington. The English emerged justifiably proud but also arrogant.

2. Davies, History of Wales (15 Jan 2018)

Tue, 03 May 2022 by kurto

A sociopolitical chronicle of Wales from the Roman era to the early 21st century, emphasizing its loss of nationhood and reasons why the Principality failed to recover it during the age of nationalism in the 1800s and 1900s.
Offa’s Dyke separated Brythonic Welsh from Britons, but there were no significant racial distinctions in the British Isles. The Saxons seized the lands most Romanized, but Celtic culture and language proved durable. Unlike Ireland, Welsh high culture to ~ 800 developed in isolation, and the ‘kingdom’ united through marriage not conquest. Welsh law was based on custom not statute, aspiring to order among the clans (not punishment); inter-marriage weakened the clans. The acceptance from 871 that Alfred had claims on Welsh lands set subordination well in motion. The Norman conquest connected the British Isles to feudal Europe through the Latin church and the 12th-century Renaissance. The Welsh were equals to the Normans, especially after the death of William II in 1100. Llywelyn the Great (d. 1240) won Gwynedd’s primary among the Welsh regions; son Dafydd ap Llellwyn was the first to call himself Prince of Wales; Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was acknowledged by Henry III in 1267’s Treaty of Montgomery. Thus Wales had all the elements of statehood but not independence. Edward I, the most powerful medieval English king, executed Dafydd ap Gruffudd and destroyed this Wales in 1282-83. The country needed time to jell; it fell not inevitably but through a combination of contemporary events. Though English law subsequently replaced the Welsh code, poetry remained; English focus on Wales helped Scotland to persist.
In the 14th century the Welsh Marcher lords were seen as lawless. Owain Glyndwr’s rising of 1399 was a peasant revolt backed by clerics. Penal laws against the Welsh church created a power vacuum filled by the gentry, perpetuating belief in hierarchical society. In the 15th century coastal trade including with Ireland expanded while peasants of the valleys returned to the southern lowlands. With the passage of 1536’s Act of Union (followed by adjustments in 1543), an act of aggrandizement, Wales became an ‘internal colony’ for the next 250 years (to approximately 1770). The Counter Reformation failed; this was the height of the gentry’s reign. Renaissance Wales was a conservative culture, uninterested in humanism, ‘behind’ the continent, lacking centers of wealth (i.e., towns). The upper class began to learn English, especially as its sons sent to English universities, often to study law, since they were no longer welcome in Europe’s Catholic schools. The ‘squirearchy’ supported the Stuart monarchs, conscious of Welsh coasts being open to invasion (ship money) and averse to Puritan theology. The gentry was anglicizing by marriage, whereas Nonconformism was Gaelic. The Welsh Bible saved the language.
In the election of 1713, only 4 of 27 Welsh seats at Westminster were won by Whigs: the party of the Hanover court was opposed by the Welsh country gentry. The population numbered 500,000 in 1770, and was to grow to 1.1 million by 1850, much more quickly than the doubling over the previous 12 centuries. In a striking assertion, the author contends industrialization turned more on new sources of energy and transport – copper for ironworks such as steam engines and railways – than on the factory system. Following centuries of dependence on English trade, the 18th century opened the northwest ports to new markets. In the south, Merthyr Tydfil’s iron was to become the main resource of modern Welsh growth, supplemented by coal, limestone, timber, and water. Industrialization pulled populace to Glamorgan and Monmouth, thereby realigning the country’s hitherto equal distribution. Swansea, Neath, Cardiff, and Newport were all connected to the coalfields by 1800 by canal or railway; Cardiff, the 25th biggest Welsh town in 1801, grew to 4th by 1880. Railways equally served to break down the isolation of rural communities. The Gaelic speakers were typically Methodist; the urbanites were Baptist or Independent. Therefore rural areas favored hierarchical presbytery, while industrial regions were congregational, meaning the latter never achieved a national moral authority. By the end of the 19th century, the erstwhile even distribution of populace had become 2 of 3 Welshmen living in the coal valleys or the coastal cities; but the country’s values remained rural. Many churches were built, promoting Gaelic. But from 1830 the Welsh chanceries were absorbed into English system, making the courts expensive and effectively out of reach of Welsh farmers. The Rebecca Riots, evidencing hatred of toll roads raising the cost of bringing crops to market, were a kind of rural Chartism. Faint-hearted Welsh nationalism in the 19th century reflects succumbing to English Victorian virtue: the Welsh were too concerned with respectability. Simultaneously, Nonconformism and the Welsh language couldn’t find common cause, particularly as British initiatives to expand schooling also anglicized (the so-called Treachery of the Blue Books). In the 1870s English speakers surpassed the Welsh.
In the 1880s Liberals sought Disestablishment only in Wales, on the premise of its nationhood. Conservatives were maneuvered into opposition, presaging the end of squirearchy. (By contrast, county government fell abruptly.) Freehold tenure grew rapidly since land, no longer the key to power were sold, and became the majority by 1950. Welsh nationalism, active at century’s end, peaked in 1900. There was no pronounced Republican element in Welsh Home Rule, only hopes for regional parliament: Radicalism was sufficient to win Conservative opposition but not worker allegiance. Emigration to Liverpool accelerated from 1880. The rise of rugby owed to physical labor creating taste for physical recreation. Employers believed organized games promoted organized workforce. Clubs in turn drew on communal tradition.
At 1900, at least one quarter of world energy trade originated in Wales, while the remainder of British coal was primarily for domestic use: Wales was geared to the world market. The coal towns fomented Welsh working class values, Nonconformist and socialist. The latter worked against nationalism because of proletarian solidarity; but the coalfields also promoted Gaelic, and the language was vital to nationalism because Welsh law had disappeared and boundaries were attenuated (in contrast with Scotland). But non-speakers also saw themselves as Welsh, defined by Radical politics, rugby, churchgoing and garrulous sociability. Neither model was relevant to the Marcher borders or northern seaside towns.
The religious revival of 1904-05 presaged the Liberal win of 1906, opposed to the 1902 Education Act, in favor of temperance. Miners were the only group to strike during World War I, going against Lloyd George, proof of its fundamental militancy. Postwar reforms brought socialism early to Wales but Labour nonetheless eclipsed the Liberals in by-elections. Amid the era’s ‘revolutionary spirit’ (e.g., Soviet Russia or Berlin), Welsh unionists opposed the Royal Coal Commission of 1919, which had declined to recommend nationalization. Over 1918-22, one quarter of Welsh land was sold, as land was no longer the sole source of power. Finally the estates were broken up; however the selloff was also an Anglicizing force because the English were the highest bidders, and promoted consolidation of farms, halving the number of them. Conversely, Welsh emigration now centered on London and the southeast, as the Merseyside was slowing down.
The long 20th-century depression began in 1925 with the initial decline of coal employment – the trend terminally accelerating in 1960s – due to the collapse of overseas markets. The improvement of Labour’s prospects at Westminster from 1922 undermined nationalism (though the Liberals polled credibly until 1938). The failure of the General Strike of 1926 persuaded union leaders to abandon syndicalism for Westminster. The Five in Llyn arson trial of 1937 renewed nationalism. Over the first two years of World War II, Wales received 200,000 immigrants, restoring its peak population. After its end, two thirds of factories were sponsored by Labour government; however, renewed iron and related industries served to forge ties with the Midlands. In all, it was the most socialist region of the UK, with 40 percent of the workforce in state bodies and 60 percent controlled by the state. But Atlee and Labour tended to see not Wales but regions for purposes of planning (with a second wave of coming in during 1958-64), while Bevan was keen on solidarity. By 1960 the boom-to-bust mining cycle was complete: workers accepted pit closures without regret. Nearly one quarter of Welsh lived in council houses.
Nationalism was spurred by Welsh awareness of higher living standards in England, while Conservative electoral success helped to promote Plaid Cymru, as did Cardiff’s continuing rise capped by the 1970 completion of the national stadium. The success of the Scottish National Party aided the tabling of the 1978 Wales Act, but Labour, government institutions, and the chattering classes were against and it polled just 25 percent in plebiscite. Kinnock’s 1983 ascension marked the first Labour leader from the coalfield, but Scargill’s 1984 strike received tepid support.
In the 1990s, the Welsh regional budget allocation grew to £7 billion from £1.7 in 1979. At decade’s end, in 1997, with Scottish devolution having succeeded one week earlier and the Gaelic speakers campaigning more effectively, Wales passed its home rule act, the choice now being either Wales or Wales-plus-England. The most important outcome of devolution (to date) has been re-introduction of Conservatism as a political force. The Internet has promoted Gaelic, while in the 21st century state support for a Welsh education system improved; the European Union also has been helpful. Rugby in the professional era rose and fell with the economy, important because the national team is the country’s primary cultural product. Welsh identity is primarily cultural and social, as compared with Scotland’s legal and constitutional presence.

Physis

…

Economic development