Events | 2009.11.24
1282 and all that | Hywel Williams
Welsh historians must look beyond England to challenge their tired and introspective consensus
Is the history of Wales really as boring as it seems? A generation ago this was still a Cinderella subject for a coterie of scholars. In Welsh schools A-level history students had to write one essay on their country\'s past – and that was a chore. England and Europe provided the meaty stuff, and that was where we wanted to be. Things seem very different now as the syllabuses proliferate and the books are published. There are more historians of Wales than ever, but the fustiness persists. Their volumes make little impact on the wider culture, either in Wales or Britain.
Historians of England capture the public\'s attention with revisionist theses. Was a compromise peace feasible in 1940, and didn\'t the urban poor get richer during the industrial revolution? Irish historians have had an enjoyable time subverting myths about the potato famine; and some Scottish ones wonder just how horrid the Highland clearances were. Historians of Wales, however, offer little in this revisionist line. The boldness that questions fundamental assumptions holds few attractions for them, and so they are relegated to the margins, where they quietly plod.
Historical writing needs assumptions, otherwise its pages are a mere chronicle rather than an explanation. But those fundamental ideas always need to be revised if the subject is to live and develop. In the case of Wales, the tired old assumptions tend to be mildly nationalist or blandly socialist. The country\'s history, therefore, revolves around a handful of events: the conquest by Edward I\'s army in 1282 ; the acts of union with England in 1536 and 1542 ; and the Labour victory of 1945 .
Two wrong things, and one right thing: the Welsh version of 1066 and All That – and the consensus established is dull and introspective. Wales is looked at from within, and always seems a victim of outside forces. Stuff happens all right, but the causes are always found in the country to its east. Survival against the odds is duly noted and admired with a degree of self-satisfaction. The Welsh – we are told – are still around because they believe in community.
An assumption that a nation is preternaturally friendly is surely a pretty feeble historical thesis. But it\'s certainly helpful in understanding the timidity of Wales\'s historians, absorbed as they are within a comforting but unquestioning national culture. A Labour-Plaid coalition is in the saddle at the Welsh assembly, and that consensus is reflected in the writing of history. Respectful praise for past radicalism can of course continue, and is indeed something of a national tradition. But this is now a quiet time. Best not to dissent.
Wales\'s history can come alive when viewed in an international and comparative dimension. Czech and Hungarian national movements illuminate Wales\'s 19th-century nationalists, as Robert Evans shows. That great medievalist Rees Davis explained how the 13th-century conquest is best seen as part of the renewed vogue of empire in Europe as a whole. And Ieuan Gwynedd Jones \'s pioneering work on the health and wealth of Victorian Wales shows the relationship between capitalism and hygiene.
A wider renaissance in Welsh history is therefore surely possible, but only if more of its practitioners escape the tyranny of political trivia and start interpreting those profound economic and cultural shifts that disregard the national borders. Our recent and contemporary history should not be subjected to an anorak\'s obsession with byelection results, since politics became a minority hobby in the Wales of this period. The pattern of Welsh daily life was now conforming increasingly to global developments in trade and environmental awareness, in the new cult of the body beautiful, and in the fast decaying cult of Christianity.
It\'s not, therefore, much use rushing towards England\'s history to explain what happened in Wales at this time. The chain of causes and consequences was stretching way beyond the established frontiers, not just in Britain\'s case but in the Americas and Asia. Countries both old and new had to cope with the march of neighbouring hegemonies. Central American states needed to accommodate themselves with the US, just as south-east Asian ones are having to do in relation to China.
How to assimilate without losing too much self-respect in the process is the great question for an increasing number of countries in the early 21st century. And it is this perspective that can lend a new interest to the history of Wales – a place with a gift for assimilation and a face-saving skill in denying that this is what has really happened to it.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]7/wales-history-1282-consensus
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