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.