Johnes Wales: England's Colony

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-912681-56-3
Verlag: Parthian Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 230 Seiten

The Conquest, Assimilation, and Re-birth of a NationFROM THE VERY BEGINNINGS OF WALES, ITS PEOPLE HAVE DEFINED THEMSELVES AGAINST THEIR LARGE NEIGHBOUR. That relationship has defined both what it has meant to be Welsh and Wales as a nation. Yet the relationship has not always been a happy one and never one between equals. Wales was England's first colony and its conquest was by military force. It was later formally annexed, ending its separate legal status. Yet most of the Welsh reconciled themselves to their position and embraced the economic and individual opportunities being part of Britain and its Empire offered. Only in the later half of the twentieth century, in response to the decline of the Welsh language and traditional industry, did Welsh nationalism grow.This book tells the fascinating story of an uneasy and unequal relationship between two nations living side-by-side. It examines Wales' story from its creation to the present day, considering key moments such as medieval conquest, industrial exploitation, the Blue Books, and the flooding of Cwm Tryweryn.Wales: England's Colony? challenges us to reconsider Wales' historical relationship with England and its place in the world.

Martin Johnes grew up in Pembrokeshire, lives in Cardiff and works at Swansea University, where he is Professor of Modern History. His research explores questions of identity in sport, politics and popular culture and has included studies of football, archery, popular music, Christmas, disasters, and local government. His other books include Wales since 1939 (2012) and A History of Sport in Wales (2005), and, with Iain McLean, Aberfan: Government and Disasters (2000).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Johnes, Martin

Leseproben

Introduction

Anyone looking up Wales in the 1888 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica would have found the simple entry ‘See England’. In contrast, had they turned to the entry for Scotland they would have found a passage running to seventy-four pages. The phrase ‘For Wales see England’ has become notorious. For some, it sums up how Wales is invisible to the wider world. More commonly, it is seen as an example of English arrogance and a tendency to dismiss the idea of Wales as a separate nation. Both these things have sometimes been true, but the entry also hints unintentionally at a different truth: understanding Wales without looking at England is impossible. From the very beginnings of Wales, its people have defined themselves against their large neighbour. As this book shows, that relationship has not only defined what it has meant to be Welsh, it has also been central to making and defining Wales as a nation.

This might be an uncomfortable idea since it could suggest that somehow Wales is not a nation in its own right. But all nations look to others to define themselves. As historian Linda Colley has put it, ‘Men and women decide who they are by reference to who and what they are not’. The sense of difference from someone or something else creates a common bond amongst what are often disparate people, and their loose sense of unity is turned into something more visceral. In some cases, an unequal relationship makes the sense of difference very powerful and puts it at the heart of an identity. Canada, for example, cannot be understood without reference to its relationship with the USA: so much of its culture and politics is defined by consciously being different to the country to its south. But even for nations not overshadowed by a powerful neighbour, a sense of difference from others is often central. The USA’s belief in its importance and power over other nations illustrates that. So, too, does the UK’s 2016 vote in favour of leaving the EU. Yet, as both these examples illustrate, a nation’s sense of difference can owe more to imagination than reality.

The idea that Wales has been defined by its relationship with England is also uncomfortable because the relationship between the two nations has not always been a happy one and never one between equals. Wales was England’s first colony. Its conquest was by military force and led to a process of colonisation whereby the Welsh were denied what today would be called civil rights. It was accompanied by implantations of foreigners, the abolition of some traditional customs, and the introduction of new taxes. The phrase ‘imperial exploitation’ might be a modern one but it is applicable to medieval Wales. England then formally annexed Wales through what today are known as the Acts of Union. Its separate legal status came to an end and assimilation into England gathered pace. Skip forward a few centuries and an enquiry into Welsh education revealed hostile prejudices towards the Welsh language and the Welsh character, illustrating how political assimilation had not brought cultural equality. Some schools in the nineteenth century physically punished children for speaking Welsh, leading to subsequent accusations that the language was beaten out of children. In the 1950s and 60s, there was an outcry when a rural Welsh-speaking community was destroyed to supply an English city with water. There was anger too at governance from London when Welsh industry went into retreat. In the 1980s, a year-long miners’ strike across the UK was widely interpreted within Wales as a desperate struggle to keep the Welsh coal industry alive in the face of English indifference. Some even maintain that the coal industry typifies how Wales has been robbed of its natural resources to feed the English economy. If this is the sum of Wales’ history, it is little wonder that some want to throw off ‘the English yoke’.

When we sit under a tree and gaze upwards, our eyes are drawn to the gaps where the sunlight shines through and not the mass of leaves closer to us. Much the same is true of gazing at the Welsh national past. The occasions of oppression and injustice stand out, diverting our attention from the much wider and more mundane mass of more harmonious relations. As historian Margaret MacMillan has pointed out, ‘It is all too easy to rummage through the past and find nothing but a list of grievances’. Welsh history is more complicated than a list of things the ‘nasty’ English did and none of the above examples were quite as straightforward as the headlines might suggest. The past is just too messy to reduce to stories of ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’. Even the central story of conquest is not all it might seem because medieval Wales was not a single political unit but a collection of rival kingdoms at war with each other as much as with England. Moreover, some of the Welsh had fought with the English rather than against them. Nor are the heroes of medieval Welsh history all they might first seem to be. Llywelyn Fawr, perhaps the greatest of the independent Welsh princes, and Owain Glyndwr, the leader of Wales’ great rebellion, both also served in English armies. Glyndwr’s revolt may still inspire patriots but it actually inflicted considerable economic misery on his people and nation. Nor are tales of exploitation any simpler. At the height of Wales’ economic boom, much of the wealth generated by coal stayed in Wales and the industry’s scale was only enabled by its position within the British Empire. Wales has been looked down upon and sneered at but the English elite responsible also did the same both to its own workers and cultures throughout the rest of the world.

The exploitation that might seem to be about nation was often really about class. There has never been a deliberate attempt by the English or British state or crown to exterminate the Welsh people or Welsh culture. Modern Wales was kept in the British union not by force but by the votes of the Welsh, the vast majority of whom never showed the slightest inclination to leave. Indeed, wars, religion and Empire created powerful common experiences and emotional bonds between England and Wales. The Welsh used and benefited from the opportunities that being part of the United Kingdom and its Empire afforded them, as much as they sometimes suffered from that same status. They lived and worked amongst the English and were their friends and lovers. The English sometimes laughed at the Welsh but the two also laughed together at other cultures. Medieval Wales was a colony through conquest, but modern Wales was British through choice rather than coercion. Most of the Welsh regarded themselves as partners in Britain, not victims of it.

Yet colonialism is not just about governance. It is also about culture and its legacy can outlast any coercive force which might have created it. Thus the echoes of imperial racism are all around us today, even if European empires are now gone. People may not speak the racist language of their forefathers, but the legacy of those attitudes still exists in continuing inequities and in the very existence of the idea of race, a concept that has no biological reality. In Wales, some maintain that conquest created a mindset of inferiority. The legacy of this is an assumption that Britishness is more important and more powerful, that Wales is too small or too poor to stand alone. It is this, such perspectives maintain, that underpins the Welsh desire to remain in the union. Thus the Britishness to which the Welsh are loyal is a form of false consciousness, something created by the colonialism of hundreds of years before. If this is true, it does not require anyone to have deliberately created or sustained the situation. It is simply a by-product of historical processes. Some call this ‘postcolonialism’. Others are happy to stick to the label ‘colonialism’.

However, to argue that the Welsh are the victims of the historical legacy of colonialism is to imply that they were (and are) unable to see what was (and is) happening. The historian, Russell Davies, has argued that

The tendency amongst some historians to blame all the woes of the Welsh on the wiles of the English has given rise to an interpretation of the Welsh in their history as helpless and hapless, the gormless and guileless victims of a Machiavellian neighbour. Ever since the ‘once upon a time’, ‘long ago’, in hopeless skirmishes near streams in the snow when our princes were betrayed, beaten and beheaded, a cycle of abuser-abused-abuser-abused punctuates this nostalgic history. In the melodrama, the Welsh are always the passive victims, the English pernicious victimisers. … Such views ignore the ability of some Welsh people to fashion a future for themselves.

Blaming England for all the ills, past and present, of Welsh society is to forget how many of the Welsh were willing partners in British industrial, imperialist, cultural and political ventures. To dismiss this as false consciousness is to dismiss the Welsh of the past as stupid, unable to see or understand their own condition. A reluctance to admit to this past owes much to present-day sensibilities. It frees Wales from guilt for the atrocities of the British Empire and from blame for its current economic woes and the fragile state of the Welsh language. In short, it is much easier to blame England for everything that is wrong with Wales.

Denying our own role in our history not only reduces the Welsh of the past to puppets, only able to react to others rather than think for themselves,...