Matthew Cragoe – författare

This lively contribution to a major reassessment of nineteenth-century Wales challenges the widely-held Welsh historiography in which the contribution of the landed classes is marginalized in favour of the success of radical liberalism and nonconformity. This account of nineteenth-century Carmarthenshire emphasizes the social and political dominance of the Anglican and landowning nobility and gentry for much of the period. Matthew Cragoe explores the nature and public roles of a governing élite, arguing that their influence was not simply a function of their members' wealth or their control of local government and the administration of the law, but had a vital ideological dimension in the aristocracy's paternalistic ethic, which found powerful and practical expression in the 'moral economy' of the landed estate.His clear and vigorous narrative is unerpinned by detailed analytical chapters on agriculture and rural society, the administration of law and local government, the evolving patterns of electoral politics, and the vicissitudes and advances of the Church. Frequent references to other Welsh counties and to England show how this local study has much wider interest and implications than its immediate setting. Matthew Cragoe argues for a re-evaluation of the social, political, and cultural contributions of the Anglican aristocracy to the making of a Welsh identity in the nineteenth century.

Culture, Politics and National Identity in Wales 1832-86 offers the first comprehensive account of politics in the principality between the first and third reform acts. Based on a wealth of previously unused sources in both English and Welsh, and grounded firmly in recent scholarship on electioneering elsewhere in Britain, Cragoe challenges the existing narrative of political history in the principality. There was more to politics in Victorian Wales, he suggests, than the current focus on nonconformity and radical liberalism after 1860 allows.The book's focus on elections and election culture creates a natural context within which a wider spectrum of political opinion can be sampled. Cragoe examines the differing ideologies of the major political parties - Tory, Liberal and Radical - and then explores how these ideas were carried into the electoral arena through party organisation, campaigning, and propaganda. Later chapters examine some of the ways in which individuals were prevented from recording their true political opinions and the relationship between the unenfranchised and the political process. Throughout, politics is presented as a highly participatory process, one in which ideals and principles played a key role for both candidates and voters alike. It was into this world that the typically 'Welsh' style of radical politics, imbued with the values of militant dissent and armed with new conception of national identity, was born in the 1860s. Weaving that singular political phenomenon back into its contemporary setting and recognising the extent to which its ideas have monopolised modern accounts of Welsh political history, is the purpose of this stimulating and, at times, controversial book.