Studies in Welsh History – serie

More than 700,000 British servicemen died in the First World War and 35,000 of these are listed in the Welsh Book of Remembrance. The loss of life on such an immense scale meant that bereavement became a shared experience throughout Britain, as the British public attempted to come to terms with such widespread grief. The war memorials found in almost every town and village bear witness to the need felt in the post-war years to commemorate the dead. These memorials have already been studied as repositories of political ideas and as works of art and public sculpture, but little work has been done on the social history of commemoration. This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the social and political significance of remembrance in Wales. It places the commemoration process within the wider context of Welsh history in the decade following the Great War, and studies the impact of that war upon local communities and the ways in which those communities chose to remember the fallen.

"A Forgotten Army" reconstructs the experiences of Welsh women who undertook essential munitions work during World War II. The events of wartime are placed against the background of the wider Welsh social, economic and cultural context.

A volume of essays offering a refreshing insight into the reaction of the Welsh people to war, focusing on a series of conflicts dating from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries; including tables of information, maps and black-and-white illustrations.

The economic depression of the interwar period marks a fundamental turning-point in Welsh history, and in particular the history of south Wales, when decades of breakneck industrialisation, urbanisation and in-migration came to an end and were followed by a period scarred by unemployment, poverty and emigration. This study examines the human costs of unemployment and poverty through a study of the health of the population of south Wales. It contributes to the 'healthy or hungry thirties' debate about the effects of unemployment and poverty on health in interwar Britain through an examination of south Wales, the region of Britain that experienced the highest levels of levels of unemployment and the greatest degrees of poverty. It examines patterns of health and mortality in different types of community in south Wales and undertakes a systematic and rigorous examination of the statistical data. Chapters on the working-class domestic economy, housing, environment, diet and medical services ascertain the consequences of unemployment and poverty on the everyday lives of working-class families.

This book uses, principally but not only, a case study of the Denbighshire town of Ruthin to discuss both the significance of Englishness versus Welshness and of gender distinctions in the network of small Anglo-Welsh urban centres which emerged in north Wales following the English conquest of 1282. It carefully constructs an image of the way in which townspeople's everyday lives were influenced by their ethnic background, gender, wealth and social status. In this manner it explores and explains the motivations of English and welsh townspeople to work together in the mutual pursuit of prosperity and social stability.

This book explores the ways in which the distinctive Welsh county of Cardigan and its inhabitants (known as Cardis) have been represented during the late modern era. The image of both Cardiganshire and the Cardi changed considerably during this period, and this representational history examines the reasons why these shifts took place. In doing so, the study uncovers an array of opinions about the county. Each of these viewpoints are analysed, placed in context and set against one another. The picture which emerges is of a place and a people onto which commentators projected their hopes and fears.

The booming coal industry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the main reason behind the creation of modern south Wales and its miners were central to shaping the economics, politics and society of south Wales during the twentieth century. This book explores the history of these miners between 1964 and 1985, covering the concerted run-down of the coal industry under the Wilson government, the growth of miners' resistance, and the eventual defeat of the epic strike of 1984-5. Their interactions with the wider trade union movement and society during these years meant the miners were amongst the most important strategically-located sections of the British workforce during this time. The South Wales Miners is the first full-length academic study of the miners and their union in the later twentieth century, in a tumultuous period of crisis and struggle.

Much of the social and industrial history written during the last quarter of the twentieth century presented Welsh working-class culture in terms of a thirst for knowledge that was secular, economic and political. The emphasis was squarely placed on the influence of the union lodge and the workingmen's institute, and priority was given to the importance of sport and the public house in the life of the working class. Relatively little attention was given to religion and its continuing influence on industrial communities, despite the fact that the 1904 - 5 revival brought many thousands into contact with the chapel. Inspired in part by the challenge of socialist and labour agitation and in part by theological considerations, Nonconformists moved away from specifically political involvement and developed their own responses to the social questions of the day. This new edition will appeal to a fresh generation of scholars and readers interested in Wales's Nonconformist history, presenting an exploration of Welsh social thinking, politics and religion.

On a Saturday morning in November 1865, between 1,200 and 1,500 men gathered above the small town of Bethesda, to launch a society which they called the United Society of Welsh Quarrymen. Although there had been earlier revolts of quarrymen, this was the first recorded attempt to organise a trade union. The society failed almost as soon as it was started but an idea had been planted and despite the most strenuous efforts of its opponents, it was not to be uprooted. This book is about the struggle of quarrymen to organise and ‘combine’ in the slate quarries and mines of North Wales, and particularly in the giant Penrhyn quarries. It was often a battle for survival, fought in very distinctive communities, and the struggle witnessed some of the most bitter and dramatic disputes in the history of the British working class.

While electorally weak, the Communist Party of Great Britain and its Welsh Committee was a constant feature of twentieth century Welsh politics, in particular through its influence in the trade union movement. Based on original archival research, the present volume offers the first in-depth study of the Communist Party's attitude to devolution in Wales, to Welsh nationhood and Welsh identity, as well as examining the party's relationship with the Labour Party, Plaid Cymru and the labour and nationalist movements in relation to these issues. Placing the party's engagement of these issues within the context of the rapid changes in twentieth century Welsh society, debates on devolution and identity on the British left, the role of nationalism within the communist movement, and the interplay of international and domestic factors, the volume provides new insight into the development of ideas by the political left on devolution and identity in Wales during the twentieth century.It also offers a broad outline of the party's policy in relation to Wales during the twentieth century, and an assessment of the role played by leading figures in the Welsh party in developing its policy on Wales and devolution.

While electorally weak, the Communist Party of Great Britain and its Welsh Committee was a constant feature of twentieth century Welsh politics, in particular through its influence in the trade union movement. Based on original archival research, the present volume offers the first in-depth study of the Communist Party’s attitude to devolution in Wales, to Welsh nationhood and Welsh identity, as well as examining the party’s relationship with the Labour Party, Plaid Cymru and the labour and nationalist movements in relation to these issues. Placing the party’s engagement of these issues within the context of the rapid changes in twentieth century Welsh society, debates on devolution and identity on the British left, the role of nationalism within the communist movement, and the interplay of international and domestic factors, the volume provides new insight into the development of ideas by the political left on devolution and identity in Wales during the twentieth century. It also offers a broad outline of the party’s policy in relation to Wales during the twentieth century, and an assessment of the role played by leading figures in the Welsh party in developing its policy on Wales and devolution.

This study is the first thorough analysis of the extent of the opposition to the Great War in Wales, and is the most extensive study of the anti-war movement in any part of Britain. It is, therefore, a significant contribution to our understanding of people’s responses to the conflict, and the difficulty of mobilising the population for total war. The anti-war movement in Wales and beyond developed quickly from the initial shock of the declaration of war, to the civil disobedience of anti-war activists and the industrial discontent excited by the Russian Revolution and experienced in areas such as the south Wales coalfield in 1917. The differing responses to the war within Wales are explored in this book, which charts how the pacifist tradition of nineteenth-century Welsh Nonconformity was quickly overturned. The two main elements of the anti-war movement are analysed in depth: the pacifist religious opposition, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Nonconformist dissidents who were particularly influential in north and west Wales; and the political opposition concentrated in the Independent Labour Party and among the radical left within the South Wales Miners’ Federation.

An organized women’s suffrage movement operated continuously in Britain for more than sixty years, from the mid 1860s until the achievement of equal voting rights with men in 1928. In the decade prior to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, both militant suffragettes and law-abiding suffragists ensured that the issue came to the forefront of British politics. This book presents a comprehensive investigation of the movement in Wales, which participated in the agitation throughout the whole of the period. Grounded in primary research of extensive archival material, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Wales assesses the impact of all the various campaigning organizations, highlighting the role of the many hugely committed but unsung individuals on whom local impact was dependent, and accounting for the stances adopted by various politicians as well as parliamentary developments. The book covers the dramatic and sensational actions of the suffragettes in Wales (including several of the most widely publicized clashes between demonstrators and authority outside London), and the more mundane work undertaken by the vast majority of campaigners across the decades – with due consideration of the arguments and organized resistance of the opponents of women’s suffrage. This is a study that focuses on the survival of the campaign in the face of wartime difficulties, detailing the much-neglected last decade of the campaign, between the granting of partial enfranchisement in 1918 and the triumph of equal franchise in 1928.

Wales is often considered to be one of the most anti-Conservative parts of Britain, with the party unable to connect with voters. The Conservative Party in Wales, 1945–1997 offers a more nuanced perspective as the first book-length study of Wales’s second political party in the decades after the Second World War. From the places where Conservatism was often successful, the book questions why it failed to find any purchase in other parts of Wales, discussing how the party communicated its policies, who its candidates were, and how the party deliberately crafted specific policies ‘for the nation’ – from introducing the first Minister for Welsh Affairs to making Welsh a compulsory subject in schools. Adopting an holistic approach to the party, the book scrutinises activists and prominent Tories at the grassroots, asking what they reveal about understudied aspects of Welsh history, particularly the lives of the Anglicised and socially conservative middle class.

Winner of the 2024 Francis Jones Prize for Welsh History.Early modern Wales was a place of opportunity for the gentry. The Acts of Union with England granted them powers to govern their local communities, the Reformation enabled them to add former monastic lands to their estates, and burgeoning global expansion encouraged them to seek fortunes abroad. Early modern Wales was also a place in transition. The gentry navigated a complex relationship with their English neighbours and found themselves cultivating a new identity as Cambro-Britons. This book is an exciting new study of how one Welsh gentry family, the Salesburys of Rhug and Bachymbyd, negotiated the changing expectations of gentility in early modern Wales. From this in-depth analysis, the book finds that the Welsh gentry were status-conscious and opportunistic, but Welshness remained fundamental to their sense of self. This is further enhanced by considering the early modern Welsh gentry within a wider global context for the first time.This book is freely available on a Creative Commons licence thanks to the kind sponsorship of the libraries participating in the Jisc Open Access Community Framework OpenUP initiative.

The lordship of Denbigh, held by prominent English barons following its creation in 1282, was directly affected by several major events culminating in its incorporation in Denbighshire, newly-formed by the Union legislation of 1536–43.The social policy adopted by the central administration, based at Denbigh castle, featured a colony comprising English settlers who inhabited five English settlement centres surrounded by localities containing displaced Welsh tenants. Members of kindred groupings succeeded in evading traditional restrictions, with detailed information presented in several rentals on the acquisition and disposal of lands by male and female members of both Welsh and settler families. Despite the earlier extensive English settlement, the area has been considered to have contributed immensely to the Welsh literary heritage.

The British economy altered radically between 1934 and 1947. Some of the most dramatic changes were in Wales as its struggling private-sector-led economy was supplanted by one dominated by the state. Initial changes were barely noticeable as pre-war rearmament had little impact on its economy and labour market – yet wartime demands for munitions and raw materials prompted the state to govern an all-encompassing mobilisation that upended its relations with business and eliminated unemployment. New factories employed many thousands of people, agriculture was modernised and metal manufacturing thrived, although coal mining remained mired in crisis. As the war ended, lessons learnt during the conflict helped guide the government as it reconverted the economy to peacetime while retaining a dominant role. This book is the first to fully set out and explore these linkages in Wales between government planning, workplaces and their employees.

This study presents an analysis of the Welsh Liberal Party under the leadership of Emlyn Hooson. It begins with an overview of the period prior to Hooson’s 1962 by-election win in Montgomery, following the death of Clement Davies, and the first section describes Hooson’s leadership of the Liberal Party of Wales, his recognition that the organisation was fundamentally flawed and that it needed to be reorganised. The solution was a root and branch reorganisation and  the formation of a new state party, which would be federated to the British Liberal Party but separate in its functions and leadership. The second section details Hooson’s steering of the party through chapters on the organisation, policy formation and the electoral record. The book comprises the first in-depth description of the Welsh Liberal Party during a tumultuous time in Welsh politics; recognising how current Welsh political historiography has sidelined the Welsh Liberals in favour of Plaid Cymru and Labour, it re-evaluates the Liberals’ position during the period and Hooson’s role.

Between the years 1860 and 1920 around 80,000 Welsh immigrants settled in the United States. This volume focses on Scranton, the epicentre of Welsh America, and examines the wider issues of how these immigrants regarded their nationality, their mother country, their relationship with other cultures and how they became absorbed into the society of their new home.

This text provides a study of the impact of Renaissance and Reformation scholarship on Welsh society and its leading members. It aims to show how broadly disseminated this scholarship was in a part of the Kingdom of England which was often regarded as remote and backward. In the absence of its own civic and court traditions, Wales depended heavily on English educational institutions. The entry into the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and into the Inns of Court in London of over 2500 Welsh students between 1540 and 1640 represented a significant commitment to the acquisition of learning. It also made the Welsh the most distinct and also most accepted of the non-English elements at these places. However, they preserved their separate identity to a marked degree, aided by special patterns of educational endowments. Higher education offered the Welsh student the opportunity to share in a wide experience of Western European intellectual scholarship. It also offered career openings for Welshmen which are examined in some detail. The differences to emerge between north and south Wales are a particular feature of this study, especially in the context of the production of an educated clergy to serve the emergent Reformation Church in Wales. Equally, the manner in which higher learning gave opportunities for careers in England, particularly in the law, are also examined in detail. Finally, the study recounts the impact of higher learning on patterns of public administration in Wales and on the country's cultural life. The relationship of this learning to the intellectual activities of the gentry, clergy and lawyers is described, especially the growth of bookish interests and the assimilation of these groups into a milieu of "high culture".

This volume charts the withdrawal of a traditional ruling elite and the arrival of a sense of self-awareness among the tenants, labourers and craftsmen of 18th-century Wales. The crisis of community is examined through the experience of the people of Montgomeryshire, a county that lies at the heart of Wales. The traditional, hierarchical community and the agrarian-craft economy which supported it may have appeared stable enough around 1700. However, the sharp increase in the population and a greater dependency on the returns of day labour pauperized a growing sector of Welsh society. For the tenant farmers, the symptoms of a slumping and scraping land hunger were well in evidence by the 1770s and intensified as the returns from farming failed to keep pace with demands for rents, rates and tithes. An increasing detachment and aggressively exploitative attitude on the part of the landowning elite sharpened the popular sense of crisis. Industry, particularly the woollen industry, provided a material escape, while Nonconformist and Methodist meetings provided spiritual comfort, and for many, the rioting, political agitation and emigration that increasingly characterized Wales from the 1790s were also legitimate responses to the new order in Welsh society.

A thorough examination of the role of Tudor government and its personnel in an essentially Welsh context, and an analysis of the impact of the Acts of Union on the mechanics of local government in Caernarfonshire. This is important because it adds another dimension to historians' knowledge and understanding of the manner in which local gentry, in collaboration with regional institutions, sought to maintain peace and security in the generations after the Acts of Union. The theme is particularly interesting in view of current researches into the character and principal features of community life in early modern England and Wales and because the Carnarfonshire Quarter Sessions records are the only sources of their kind that have survived for the Welsh counties in that period. They reflect the activities of the justices of the peace and other county officers in one county which formed part of the Old Principality of North Wales. The gentry were required to maintain law and order as servants of the central Tudor administration and were supervised, on the varying degrees of efficiency, by the Council in the Marshes based on Ludlow. It was a period which saw significant social, economic, religious, and cultural changes, some of them attributed to the Tudor Settlement of Wales (1536-43) when the office of magistrate was itnroduced into Wales. The volume is based on an examination of this country's social structure, with particular reference to leading members of the emerging county families who were responsible for administering law and order, the changing personnel of the magistracy, the framework and conduct of administration in Quarter Sessions (the pivot of county government), legal and administration duties. In the last chapter there is a discussion of concepts of the "ordered society" as interpreted in contemporary sources - including Welsh strict-metre verse - which emphasized the "role" of the "Governor" in its early modern context in Welsh society.

The 1870 Education Act provided that every child in England and Wales was to be provided with an opportunity to receive elementary education. This book considers the way in which Welsh society viewed the 1870 Education Act and how local political and religious leaders oversaw its implementation.

In this work, Paul O'Leary examines the causes of emigration and seeks to understand the experience of Irish immigrants in Wales. Initially, there was little evidence of Celtic solidarity and the Irish often met with violent hostility from the Welsh. Nevertheless, by the late 19th century the tortuous process of integration was well under way and appeared to be relatively trouble free in comparison with the Irish experience in many other parts of Britain. The author considers key aspects of immigrant life in depth: pre-famine immigration; the role of the Irish in the labour force; criminality and drink; the establishment of community institutions ranging from Catholic churches and schools to pubs and bookshops, from friendly societies to political organizations; the mobilization of support for Irish nationalist organizations; and Irish participation in the labour movement. In each case the author links the distinctive experiences of the Irish to developments in Welsh society.

Early industrial Merthyr is synonymous with the darker side of the British urban experience. This work considers the efforts of dedicated civic "boosters" to civilize the town's public spaces and its inhabitants and shows how this vision of Merthyr depended on the taming of popular culture.

More than 700,000 British servicemen died in the First World War and 35,000 of these are listed in the Welsh Book of Remembrance. The loss of life on such an immense scale meant that bereavement became a shared experience throughout Britain, as the British public attempted to come to terms with such widespread grief. The war memorials found in almost every town and village bear witness to the need felt in the post-war years to commemorate the dead. These memorials have already been studied as repositories of political ideas and as works of art and public sculpture, but little work has been done on the social history of commemoration. This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the social and political significance of remembrance in Wales. It places the commemoration process within the wider context of Welsh history in the decade following the Great War, and studies the impact of that war upon local communities and the ways in which those communities chose to remember the fallen.