A number of historians of Wales have questioned the notion of a single, cohesive Welsh identity.
For example, in 1921, Alfred Zimmern, the inaugural professor of international relations at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, argued that there was "not one Wales, but three": archetypal 'Welsh Wales', industrial or 'American Wales', and upper-class 'English Wales'. Each represented different parts of the country and different traditions.[1] In 1985, political analyst Dennis Balsom proposed a similar 'Three Wales model'. Balsom's regions were the Welsh-speaking heartland of the north and west, Y Fro Gymraeg; a consciously Welsh but not Welsh-speaking 'Welsh Wales' in the South Wales Valleys and a more ambivalent 'British Wales' making up the remainder, largely in the east and along the south coast.[2] The division reflects, broadly, the areas where Plaid Cymru, Labour, and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats respectively enjoyed the most political support.[citation needed]
Topography has traditionally limited the integration between North and South Wales, with the two halves virtually functioning as separate economic and social units in the preindustrial era, with successive British Government transport policy doing little to rectify it.[3] Today, the main road and rail links run east-west, although there was once a north-south rail link that pressure groups are attempting to reinstate.[4] By the interwar years, industry in South Wales was increasingly linked to Avonside and the English Midlands, and that in north Wales to Merseyside.[5]
Liverpool was often called "the capital of north Wales" in the late 19th and early 20th century. With 20,000 Welsh-born people living on either side of the Mersey in 1901, the city had an array of Welsh chapels and cultural institutions; hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1884, 1900 and 1929 and gave rise to several leading figures in Welsh life in the 20th century.[6] The Liverpool Daily Post became, effectively, the daily newspaper for north Wales.[7] The decline of Liverpool after the Second World War and changing patterns of Welsh migration, caused the Welsh presence to diminish. In the 1960s, the flooding of the Tryweryn Valley to provide the city with water soured relations with many people in Wales.[6]
The North Welsh are called, in Welsh, Gogs (from the Welsh gogledd, "north") and south Welsh Hwntws (from tu hwnt roughly meaning 'far away over there' or 'beyond'). There are differences in the Welsh vocabulary between the north and south; for instance, the south Welsh word for now is nawr whereas the north Welsh is rwan.[citation needed]
The more urbanised south, containing cities such as Cardiff, Newport and Swansea, was historically home to the coal and steel industries. It contrasts with the mostly rural north, where agriculture and slate quarrying were the main industries. Although the M4 corridor brings wealth into South Wales, particularly Cardiff, there is no pronounced economic divide between north and south unlike in England; there is, for example, a high level of poverty in the postindustrial South Wales Valleys.[citation needed]
1 2 John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur I. Lynch (2008). The Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. p.469. ISBN978-0-7083-1953-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
Aberdare is a town in the Cynon Valley area of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales, at the confluence of the Rivers Dare (Dâr) and Cynon. Aberdare has a population of 39,550. Aberdare is 4 miles (6 km) south-west of Merthyr Tydfil, 20 miles (32 km) north-west of Cardiff and 22 miles (35 km) east-north-east of Swansea. During the 19th century it became a thriving industrial settlement, which was also notable for the vitality of its cultural life and as an important publishing centre.
The history of Wales begins with the arrival of human beings in the region thousands of years ago. Neanderthals lived in what is now Wales at least 230,000 years ago, while Homo sapiens arrived by about 31,000 BC. However, continuous habitation by modern humans dates from the period after the end of the last ice age around 9000 BC, and Wales has many remains from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age. During the Iron Age the region, like all of Britain south of the Firth of Forth, was dominated by the Celtic Britons and the Brittonic language. The Romans, who began their conquest of Britain in AD 43, first campaigned in what is now northeast Wales in 48 against the Deceangli, and gained total control of the region with their defeat of the Ordovices in 79. The Romans departed from Britain in the 5th century, opening the door for the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Thereafter, the Brittonic language and culture began to splinter, and several distinct groups formed. The Welsh people were the largest of these groups, and are generally discussed independently of the other surviving Brittonic-speaking peoples after the 11th century.
Glamorgan, or sometimes Glamorganshire, is one of the thirteen historic counties of Wales and a former administrative county of Wales. Originally an early medieval petty kingdom of varying boundaries known as Glywysing, then taken over by the Normans as a lordship, the area that became known as Glamorgan was both a rural, pastoral area, and a conflict point between the Norman lords and the Welsh princes. It was defined by a large concentration of castles.
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456 and has a total area of 20,779 km2 (8,023 sq mi). Wales has over 1,680 miles (2,700 km) of coastline and is largely mountainous with its higher peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon, its highest summit. The country lies within the north temperate zone and has a changeable, maritime climate. The capital and largest city is Cardiff.
The current capital of Wales is Cardiff. Historically, Wales did not have a definite capital. In 1955, the Minister for Welsh Affairs informally proclaimed Cardiff to be the capital of Wales. Since 1964, Cardiff has been home to government offices for Wales, and since 1999 it has been the seat of the Senedd.
South Wales is a loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. It has a population of around 2.2 million, almost three-quarters of the whole of Wales, including 400,000 in Cardiff, 250,000 in Swansea and 150,000 in Newport. Generally considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, south Wales extends westwards to include Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. In the western extent, from Swansea westwards, local people would probably recognise that they lived in both south Wales and west Wales. The Brecon Beacons National Park covers about a third of south Wales, containing Pen y Fan, the highest British mountain south of Cadair Idris in Snowdonia.
Welsh nationalism emphasises and celebrates the distinctiveness of Welsh language, culture, and history, and calls for more self-determination for Wales, which might include more devolved powers for the Senedd, or full independence from the United Kingdom.
The Heart of Wales line is a railway line running from Craven Arms in Shropshire to Llanelli in southwest Wales. It serves a number of rural centres, including the nineteenth-century spa towns Llandrindod Wells, Llangammarch Wells and Llanwrtyd Wells. At Builth Road, two miles (3.3 km) from the town of Builth Wells, the line crosses the former route of the earlier Mid Wales Railway, which closed in the 1960s.
The South Wales Valleys are a group of industrialised peri-urban valleys in South Wales. Most of the valleys run north–south, roughly parallel to each other. Commonly referred to as "The Valleys", they stretch from Carmarthenshire in the west to Monmouthshire in the east; to the edge of the pastoral country of the Vale of Glamorgan and the coastal plain near the cities of Swansea, Cardiff, and Newport.
The Cymru Fydd movement was founded in 1886 by some of the London Welsh. Some of its main leaders included David Lloyd George, J. E. Lloyd, O. M. Edwards, T. E. Ellis, Beriah Gwynfe Evans and Alfred Thomas. Initially it was a purely London-based society, later expanding to cities in England with a large Welsh population.
The monetary policies which create the economy of Wales are, on the whole, created by the United Kingdom Government and as such, Wales is not allowed to borrow money, issue bonds, exercise quantitative easing etc. In 2017, the area of lowest income in Northern Europe was West Wales and the Valleys. This featured alongside nine other regions of similar income lying in England and mainland Europe.
Thomas Edward Ellis, often known as T. E. Ellis or Tom Ellis, was a Welsh politician who was the leader of Cymru Fydd, a movement aimed at gaining home rule for Wales. Ellis was, for a time, the most prominent of a generation of Liberal politicians who emerged in Wales after 1886, who placed greater emphasis than the previous generation to a Welsh dimension to their politics. His early death in 1899 aged 40 added to the aura that surrounded his name.
William Brace was a Welsh trade unionist and Liberal and Labour politician.
William Llewelyn Williams known as Llewelyn Williams, was a Welsh journalist, lawyer and radical Liberal Party politician.
William Abraham, universally known by his bardic name, Mabon, was a Welsh trade unionist and Liberal/Labour politician, and a member of parliament (MP) from 1885 to 1920. Although an MP for 35 years, it was as a trade unionist that Abraham is most well known. Initially a pioneer of trade unionism, who fought to enshrine the principle of workers' representation against the opposition of the coal-owners, he was regarded in later life as a moderate voice believing that disputes should be solved through conciliation rather than industrial action. This drew him into conflict with younger and more militant leaders from the 1890s onwards. Although the defeat of the miners in the Welsh coal strike of 1898 was a clear defeat for Mabon's strategy, his prestige was sufficient to ensure that he became the first president of the South Wales Miners' Federation which was established in the wake of the dispute. Abraham was noted for his powerful speaking voice, and was a renowned orator in English and Welsh.
The history of Cardiff—a City and County Borough and the capital of Wales—spans at least 6,000 years. The area around Cardiff has been inhabited by modern humans since the Neolithic Period. Four Neolithic burial chambers stand within a radius of 10 mi (16 km) of Cardiff City Centre, with the St Lythans burial chamber the nearest, at about 4 mi (6.4 km) to the west. Bronze Age tumuli are at the summit of Garth Hill, within the county's northern boundary, and four Iron Age hillfort and enclosure sites have been identified within the City and County of Cardiff boundary, including Caerau Hillfort, an enclosed area of 5.1 ha. Until the Roman conquest of Britain, Cardiff was part of the territory of an Iron Age Celtic British tribe called the Silures, which included the areas that would become known as Brecknockshire, Monmouthshire and Glamorgan. The Roman fort established by the River Taff, which gave its name to the city—Caerdydd, earlier Caerdyf, from caer (fort) and Taf—was built over an extensive settlement that had been established by the Silures in the 50s AD.
Welsh art refers to the traditions in the visual arts associated with Wales and its people. Most art found in, or connected with, Wales is essentially a regional variant of the forms and styles of the rest of the British Isles, a very different situation from that of Welsh literature. The term Art in Wales is often used in the absence of a clear sense of what "Welsh art" is, and to include the very large body of work, especially in landscape art, produced by non-Welsh artists in Wales since the later 18th century.
The modern history of Wales starts in the 19th century when South Wales became heavily industrialised with ironworks; this, along with the spread of coal mining to the Cynon and Rhondda valleys from the 1840s, led to an increase in population. The social effects of industrialisation resulted in armed uprisings against the mainly English owners. Socialism developed in South Wales in the latter part of the century, accompanied by the increasing politicisation of religious Nonconformism. The first Labour Party MP, Keir Hardie, was elected as a junior member for the Welsh constituency of Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare in 1900.
David Watts Morgan,, who later in life hyphenated his name to Watts-Morgan, was a Welsh trade unionist, a Labour politician, and a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1918 to 1933.
Nonconformity was a major religious movement in Wales from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The Welsh Methodist revival of the 18th century was one of the most significant religious and social movements in the modern history of Wales. The revival began within the Church of England in Wales, partly as a reaction to the neglect generally felt in Wales at the hands of absentee bishops and clergy. For two generations from the 1730s onwards the main Methodist leaders such as Howell Harris, Daniel Rowland and William Williams Pantycelyn remained within the Church of England, but the Welsh revival differed from the Methodist revival in England in that its theology was Calvinist rather than Arminian. Methodists in Wales gradually built up their own networks, structures, and meeting houses, which led, at the instigation of Thomas Charles, to the secession of 1811 and the formal establishment of the Calvinistic Methodist Presbyterian Church of Wales in 1823.
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