This module will engage with the way in which key economic, political and religious events connected Wales with developments in the remainder of the British Isles, in Europe, and in the British Empire. In order to analyse deeply enmeshed domains of society in their interconnectedness and transcend political borders, we shall base our work on the concept of histoire croisée or Verflechtungsgeschichte, i.e. entangled history. Actors and subjects in our world will be Welshmen and -women, as well as Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, a zamindar from Bengal and a Polish prince. We will chart the tracks of Jacobites, Tories and Whigs, Jacobins, radicals and loyalists, antiquaries and translators, diplomats, royals, soldiers and spies in search of their role in connecting Wales with the world.

The ascendancy to the throne by the Hanoverian Protestant George I in 1714, which has shaped the history of Wales and Great Britain to this day, is our starting point. The grand Llangollen Eisteddfod of 1858, arguably a high point of Welsh Victorian culture, and the Crimean War which ended a period of political rapprochement and cultural cooperation between Prussia and Britain, bookend our module.

• Show an understanding and apply the concept of ‘entangled history’;

• Demonstrate a working knowledge of the major historical events and trends which affected Welsh politics, religion and culture in the period under review;

• Analyse Welsh history of the period under review as that of colony of and participant in the British Empire project;

• Understand the intermeshing of economic development and the Empire project with religion, culture and learning in Wales;

• Assess the impact and legacy of some of the actors in the period under review, and in how far their lives may be understood as micro-histories;

• Confidently discuss the historiography of the subject and their own findings on paper and in seminar.

A range of teaching methods will be used in each of the sessions of the course, comprising a combination of lectures and seminar discussion of major issues.

While studying this module, students will communicate ideas and arguments in a variety of forms, including oral presentations, group work, and in written form. They will develop critical reading and writing skills as they engage with historical literature, placing this in a historiographical and methodological framework and coming to their own conclusion as to the validity of evidence and material on topics studied. They will, as a consequence, engage with theoretical arguments and apply this in their own work. During seminars students will analyse primary materials, collaborate with their peers to present ideas and arguments, offer presentations, and engage in plenary class discussions.

How the module will be assessed

Students will be assessed by means of a combination of one 1000 word assessed essay [15%], one 2000 word assessed essay [35%] and one two-hour unseen written examination paper in which the student will answer two questions [50%].

Essay 1 will contribute 15% of the final mark for the module. It is designed to give students the opportunity to critically engage with and analyse a primary source on the topic they are studying. It must be no longer than 1,000 words (excluding appendices, references, and bibliography). Students will be expected to choose a primary source from the weeks studied, place it in its historical and historiographical context, consider its methodological uses and limitations, and to suggest the broader relevance of the source to historians. Students will be assessed on their understanding of the source chosen and their ability to critically engage with and analyse its broader uses and limitations.

Essay 2 will contribute 35% of the final mark for the module. It is designed to give students the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to review evidence, draw appropriate conclusions from it and employ the formal conventions of scholarly presentation. It must be no longer than 2,000 words (excluding appendices, references, and bibliography).

The Examination will take place during the second assessment period [May/June] and will consist of an unseen two hour paper that will contribute the remaining 50% of the final mark for this module. There will be ten questions provided and students must write 2 answers in total.

The opportunity for reassessment in this module

Individual cases will be determined by the Examination Board of the History Board of Studies.  Reassessment will normally take the form of a reassessment of the failed components (e.g. coursework, examination) in the August Resit Examination Period.

Lectures 

1. Entangled. History without Borders

2. Colonised or coloniser? Country or region? Wales 1714–1858

3. The Welsh Protestant nation between London and the Irish Sea

4. Welsh Jacobites: military threat or social club?

5. A Distant Echo? The American Revolution and Wales

6. Welshmen and the English reform movement

7. A different kind of reform: Methodism

8. The illegal faith: Unitarianism and radical politics

9. Echoes of French Revolutionary ideas

10. Economic development, political protest and the Welsh language, 1795–1815

11. The state in Wales: Judge John Hardinge and his work

12. From Pembrokeshire to St Paul’s: Sir Thomas Picton

13. Industrial espionage and European ironmasters in Wales

14. The return of the intelligentsia: post-Napoleonic cultural clubs and societies in Wales

15. Alexandrina Victoria von Kent in Wales

16. Merthyr Tydfil, Lady Charlotte Guest and the Mabinogi

17. Llanover, Prussian diplomacy and European learning

18. Bringing India home: Tracing the Nabobs in Wales

19. Taming the other: The ‘Blue Books’ (1847)

20. The Crimean War in Wales

Seminars

1. George I and St David’s Day. We will read a pamphlet published by the first London-Welsh society in celebration of St David’s Day.

2. Did Methodism create democratic Wales? We will engage with the forms of and reactions to Methodist worship, which rather contradicted their loyalist ‘party line’.

3. The first political cartoon in the Welsh language. We will analyse a cartoon published in 1797 in the context of British radical art and the Welsh political discourse.

4. Welshmen in the Napoleonic Wars. The diary of Jeremiah Jones will be the basis of a discussion on life in the British army (and of Sir Thomas Picton) <http://hdl.handle.net/10107/4631307>

5. Thomas Stephens of Merthyr Tydfil: Historian and social reformer. We’ll analyse Mid-Victorian Wales in a life.

6. ‘The Cyfarthfa Hunt’ and the ‘Francis Crawshay Worker Portraits’ by W. J. Chapman. Pictures in a new Welsh tradition.

7. The age of statistics and Wales. We will analyse a passage from the ‘Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales’. <https://www.llgc.org.uk/en/discover/digital-gallery/printed-material/the-blue-books-of-1847/>

8. European learning, the Empire and Wales. We will explore the connections between Empire, Orientalism and scholarship by analysing a day school on Indo-European languages and ancient history held in Oxford on 27 June 1848.

9. Llangollen 1858 and the Crimean War. We will engage with a forgotten side to this national eisteddfod, which indicates the contributory nature of Welsh cultural nationalism.

10. What was Wales? A more informed assessment.

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Davies, John, ‘Victoria and Victorian Wales’, in Geraint H. Jenkins and J. Beverley Smith (eds), Politics and Society in Wales 1840 –1922 (Cardiff, 1988), pp. 7–28

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—, The Labyrinth of Flames: Work and Social Conflict in Early Industrial Merthyr Tydfil (Cardiff, 1993)

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Howard, Sharon, ‘Riotous Community: Crowds, Politics and Society in Wales, c. 1700–1840’, WHR, 20/4 (2001), 656–86 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

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—, ‘“A Very Horrid Affair”: Sedition and Unitarianism in the Age of Revolutions’, in Davies, R. R. and Geraint H. Jenkins (eds), From Medieval to Modern Wales: Historical Essays in Honour of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths (Cardiff, 2004), pp. 175–96

— (ed.), The Welsh Language and its Social Domains 1801–1911 (Cardiff, 2000)

Jenkins, J. P., ‘Jacobites and Freemasons in Eighteenth-century Wales’, WHR, 9/4 (1979), 391–406 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

Jenkins, Nigel, Gwalia in Khasia (Llanydsul, 1995)

John, Angela V., ‘The Lives of Lady Charlotte Guest‘, in Bernhard Maier and Stefan Zimmer (eds), 150 Jahre ‘Mabinogion’ Deutsch-Walisische Kulturbeziehungen (Tübingen, 2001), pp. 157–66

—, ‘Guest (Schreiber), Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Berti (1812–1895)’, in DoWB <http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-GUES-ELI-1812.html>

Jones, Aled, ‘Gardens of Eden: Welsh Missionaries in British India’, in R. R. Davies and Geraint H. Jenkins (eds), From Medieval to Modern Wales : Historical Essays in Honour of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths (Cardiff, 2004)

Jones, Aled, ‘Culture, “race” and the missionary public in mid-Victorian Wales’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 10/2 (Winter 2005)

Jones, Aled and Bill Jones, ‘The Welsh World and the British Empire c. 1851–1939: An Exploration’, in Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich (eds), The British World. Diaspora, Culture and Identity (London, 2003), pp. 57–81

Jones, David Ceri, Boyd Stanley Schlenther and Eryn Mant White, The Elect Methodists: Calvinistic Methodism in England and Wales 1735–1811 (Cardiff, 2012)

Jones, David J. V., Before Rebecca. Popular Protest in Wales 1793–1835 (London, 1973)

Jones, Francis, ‘The Society of Sea Serjeants’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1967/I), 57–91 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

Jones, Ffion Mair, ‘“English Men Went Head to Head with their Own Brethren’: The Welsh Ballad Singers and the War of American Independence’, in John Kirk, Michael Brown, Andrew Noble (eds), Cultures of Radicalism in Britain and Ireland (London, 2013), pp. 25–48

Löffler, Marion, Political Pamphlets and Sermons from Wales, 1793–1806 (Cardiff, 2014)

—, Welsh Responses to the French Revolution. Press and Public Discourse (Cardiff, 2012)

—, ‘Hall, Augusta, Lady Llanover (‘Gwenynen Gwent’)’, in DoWB <http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s10-HALL-AUG-1802.html>

—, ‘Dathlu Trichanmlwyddiant Pregeth a Bregethwyd yng Nhapel Ty-Ely yn Holbourn 1716’, Ysgrifau Beirniadol, 34 (2016), 113–34

—, ‘A Century of Change: The Eisteddfod and Welsh cultural nationalism’, in Alexei Miller, John Neubauer, Louis Vos (eds), Building Cultural Nations. The Matica and Equivalent Intermediary Structures in Europe (forthcoming) [on Blackboard as pdf if not out]

—, ‘‘Bunsen, Müller a Meyer: Tri Almaenwr, y Gymraeg, y Frenhines a’r Ymerodraeth’, in Y  Traethodydd, CLXXIII/724 (2018), 19–32 [Bunsen, Müller and Meyer: Three Germans, the Welsh language, the Queen and the Empire]

—, ‘“This nation” in 1716: Considering the first privately financed political translation into Welsh’, Paper delivered at ‘Early Modern Wales. Space, Place and Displacement’, Bangor-Aberystwyth; 6 July 2016 <www.academia.edu>

—, ‘Thomas Stephens a Llythyru Cyhoeddus yng Nghymru Oes Fictoria’, Y Traethodydd, CLXV/692 (2010), 35–49

— (with Hywel Gethin Rhys), ‘Thomas Stephens and the Abergavenny Cymreigyddion: Letters from the Cambrian 1842–3’, NLWJ (2009) <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

Lord, Peter, Words with Pictures. Welsh Images and Images of Wales in the Popular Press, 1640–1860 (Aberystwyth, 1995)

—, The Visual Culture of Wales. Industrial Society (Cardiff, 1998)

—, ‘The Visual Culture of the Industrial Community’, in idem, The Visual Culture of Wales. Industrial Society (Cardiff, 1998), pp. 63–7

—, ‘The artisan and the middle class’, in idem, The Visual Culture of Wales. Imaging the Nation (Cardiff, 2002), pp. 182–8

—, The Francis Crawshay Worker Portraits (Aberystwyth, 1996)

Morgan, Prys, ‘Lady Llanover (1802–1896)’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, n.s., 13 (2007), 94–106 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

—, ‘From Long Knives to Blue Books’, in R. R. Davies et al. (eds), Welsh Society and Nationhood. Historical Essays Presented to Glanmor Williams (Cardiff, 1984), pp. 199–215

—, ‘Early Victorian Wales and its Crisis of Identity’, in Laurence Brockliss and David Eastwood (eds), A Union of Multiple Identities: The British Isles, c.1750–1850 (Manchester, 1997), pp. 95–109

Morris, E. Ronald, Chartism in Llanidloes 1838–1830 (Llanidloes, 1989)

Page, Anthony, ‘The Dean of St Asaph’s Trial: Libel and Politics in the 1780s’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32/1 (2009), 21–35

Palmer, Alfred Neobald, ‘John Wilkinson and the Old Bersham Iron Works’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1899), 23–64 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

Philp, Mark, Reforming Ideas in Britain. Politics and Language in the Shadow of the French Revolution, 1789–1815 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2104, 2017)

Prescott, Sarah, ‘“What Foes more dang’rous than too strong Allies?”: Anglo-Welsh Relations in Eighteenth-Century London’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 69/4 (2006), 535–54

Rees, D. Ben, Vehicles of Grace and Hope: Welsh Missionaries of in India, 1800–1970 (William Carey Library, 2000)

Roderick Thomas, Iris, Cyfarthfa and the Crawshays (Merthyr Tydfil, 1999)

Thomas, D. O., Ymateb i Chwyldro / Response to Revolution (Caerdydd/Cardiff, 1989)

Thomas, Peter D. G., Politics in Eighteenth-Century Wales (Cardiff, 1998)

—, ‘Jacobitism in Wales’, Welsh History Review, I/3 (1962), 287–92 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

Thorne, David, ‘Cymreigyddion y Fenni a dechreuadau ieitheg cymharol yng Nghymru’, National Library of Wales Journal, 27/1 (1991), 97–107 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

Tyson Roberts, Gwyneth, The Language of the Blue Books. The Perfect Instrument of Empire (Cardiff, 1998)

Walters, Gwyn, ‘Books from the “Nabob”. The Benefactions of Thomas Phillips at Lampeter and Llandovery’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymrodorion, new series, 5 (1999), 36–61 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

White, Erin, ‘Merched, Methodistiaeth a Llythrennedd yng Nghymru’r Ddeunawfed Ganrif’, Cylchgrawn Hanes: Historical Society of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, 33 (2009), 8-20

Williams, David, ‘Rhyfel y Sais Bach. An Enclosure Riot on Mynydd Bach’, in Ceredigion, 2/1 (1952), 39–52 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

Williams, Gwyn A., When Wales Wales? A History of the Welsh (1985, 1991)

—, ‘The Beginnings of Radicalism’, in Trevor Herbert and Gareth Elwyn Jones (eds), The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century (Cardiff, 1988), pp. 111–148

—, ‘The Insurrection at Merthyr Tydfil in 1831’, Transcactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1965/2), 222–43 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

—, Gweriniaeth y Silwriaid / The Silurian Republic (1988) and other publications, see <http://www.gwynalfwilliams.co.uk/articles.php>

Digitial resources

‘Teithwyr Ewropeaidd i Gymru / European Travellers to Wales’ <http://etw.bangor.ac.uk/>

The Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion <https://www.cymmrodorion.org/>

Dictionary of Welsh Welsh Biography <http://yba.llgc.org.uk>

Welsh newspapers online <http://newspapers.library.wales/>

Welsh journals <https://journals.library.wales/>

The Welsh Almanac collection <https://www.llgc.org.uk/en/discover/digital-gallery/printed-material/the-welsh-almanac-collection/>

The ‘Blue Books’ of 1847 <https://www.llgc.org.uk/en/discover/digital-gallery/printed-material/the-blue-books-of-1847/>