Political activity in Wales before the Napoleonic Wars has been viewed mainly in the context of the French Revolution of 1789. However, with very few exceptions, ideas and political material reached Wales filtered through the English language, and the English political reform, republican and loyalist movements. American and English political publications were read, distributed and translated, and the new democratic cultural forms arising in Anglo-America adopted into Welsh culture. Welsh radicals and loyalists alike moved in a British and transatlantic political landscape and public sphere from which they showed little sign of breaking away, in contrast to Ireland.

In this module, we will be analysing key texts, songs and paintings of the period between the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars. Our primary aim is to explore in which way Welsh men and women received external political ideas, and whether we can still consider this influence to be that of the French Revolution of 1789 or should attempt a more nuanced assessment. We shall consider the relationship between economic development, war and (political) protest, the close links religion and politics, and the role of women in Welsh religion and politics of the time.

If all this sounds like a return to political history, bear in mind that most of our sources here were created by barely educated (yet bilingual) individuals in a rural country without a university or a town of more than 7,000 inhabitants. Discuss!

All Welsh-language sources will be available in English translation.

• Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of religious, political and cultural movements and developments in Wales, c. 1785–c. 1815;

• Assess critically previous interpretations of ‘the French Revolution’ in Wales, and offer alternative interpretations which take the British political and religious context into account;

• Be able to analyse the connections between industrialisation and certain forms of popular protest in Wales;

• Show a deep understanding of the close links between religion and politics in the late Early Modern period in Wales;

• Be able to confidently analyse key sources of the French revolutionary period in Wales: private and public letters, official documents, literary texts and journalism, and visual material;

• Recognise and confidently apply key terms and concepts, such as ‘Dissent’, ‘republicanism’ and ‘Loyalism’;

• Confidently discuss key texts, artefacts and personalities of the period under review.

How the module will be delivered

A range of teaching methods will be used in each of the sessions of the course, comprising a combination of lectures, seminar discussion of major issues and workshops for the study of primary source material. The syllabus is divided into a series of major course themes, then sub-divided into principal topics for the study of each theme.

This module will encompass twenty-two two hours sessions divided into lectures and seminars. The lectures will be less formal and more interactive than in those in year two. The seminars will mainly engage in source analysis.

Lectures:

The aim of the lectures is to provide a brief introduction to a particular topic, establishing the salient features of major course themes, identifying key issues and providing historiographical guidance. The lectures aim to provide a basic framework for understanding and should be thought of as useful starting points for further discussion and individual study. Where appropriate, handouts and other materials may be distributed to reinforce the material discussed.

Seminars and Source Workshops:

The primary aim of the sessions will be to generate debate and discussion amongst course participants, focused in particular on primary source material. Seminars and source workshops for each of the course topics will provide an opportunity for students:

1. to discuss topics or issues introduced by the lectures, or

2. to discuss related themes, perhaps not directly addressed by the lectures, but drawing on ideas culled from those lectures, and

3. to analyse different types of primary sources available, discussing the principal ways in which they can be used by historians.

Seminars and source workshops will provide the student with guidance on how to critically approach the various types of primary source material. Preparation for seminars and workshops will focus on specific items from the sources and related background reading, with students preparing answers to questions provided for each session. Both seminars and source workshops will provide an opportunity to discuss and debate the issues with fellow students. Classes will be divided into smaller groups for discussion purposes, with the results presented as part of an overall class debate at the end of the session.

While studying this course, students will develop valuable critical reading and writing skills, analysing and engaging with diverse primary sources in order to contribute to historical discussions and debates. They will engage with and evaluate broad theoretical arguments and apply them to their own investigations. They will communicate ideas and arguments in a variety of forms, including oral presentations, group work, and in written form. They will learn to weigh up different interpretations and ideas, defending and, if need be, modifying their positions in both written and oral forms, and offering reasoned conclusions to arguments.

Essay 1 will contribute 20% 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, 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 30% 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). Students will be expected to offer a scholarly argument, considering interpretations and evidence before offering a reasoned conclusion.

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:

The usual provisions for reassessment are made in this respect. Individual cases will be decided by the Examination Board of the History Board of Studies. Reassessment generally will take the form of a reassessment of the failed examination via a resit paper in the August Resit Examination Period.

Session 1 Lectures From American Revolution to the Congress of Vienna. Introduction to period and modus operandi.

Session 2 Lecture & Seminar Jacobins, republicans and radicals, Whigs, Loyalist and Dissenters? Druids! Who was who in Great Britain?

From 1688 to 1789: Richard Price’s A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789).

Session 3 Lecture & Seminar The American Revolution and Wales

We will discuss Richard Price’s Observations on Civil Liberty (1776).

Session 4 Lecture & Seminar Welshmen in the English reform movement.

William Jones, Dialogue between a Gentleman and a Farmer (1882), and the repercussions of its Welsh adaptation.

Session 5 Lecture & Seminar News, politics and popular culture in Wales in the late eighteenth century.

The politics of Welsh almanacs, ballads, and border weeklies.

Session 6 Lecture & Seminar Democratizing the public discourse after 1789. The new periodical press.

Radicalism for sale: The first Welsh periodicals, 1793–1799

Session 7 Lecture & Seminar Nationalism, enlightenment and romanticism: The Eisteddfod and the vision(s) of Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg).

We will analyse the first Eisteddfod competitions and the ideology of the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain.

Session 8 Lecture & Seminar The industrial revolution, rioting and popular politics in the 1790s.

Letters to the Home Office: The Bersham ironworks in north-east Wales, politics and religion

Session 9 Lecture & Seminar Revolutionary Christianity in England and Wales.

Unitarians united: David Jones (The Welsh Freeholder) and Joseph Priestley. We’ll analyse one of Jones’s pamphlets.

Session 10 Lecture & Seminar Baptist reformer and revolutionary: Morgan John Rhys in Wales, France and America.

Morgan John Rhys, Cyngor Gamaliel (Gamaliel’s Counsel) (1794)

Session 11 Lecture & Seminar Transatlantic paradise: Welsh emigration to an imagined America.

America in radical Welsh writing: Prince Madoc and Benjamin Franklin.

Session 12 Lecture & Seminar Thomas Paine in Wales: Hero and hate figure.

The only Welsh republican: The pamphlets of John Jones (Jac Glan-y-gors), 1795 and 1797.

Session 13 Lecture & Seminar French revolutionary symbolism in Wales.

Lost in translation? ‘La Marseillaise’ comes to Wales.

Session 15 Lecture and Seminar The Grand Tour of Wales in the 1790s

We will explore Mary Morgan’s and Richard Warner’s impressions of Wales

Session 15 Lecture & Seminar English republicanism and Wales.

John Thelwall, the Treason Trials of 1794, and Welsh radicalism.

Session 16 Lecture & Seminar Fishguard 1797 and its political reverberations.

Accused: William Richard Lynn, Cwyn y Cystuddiedig (The Complaint of the Afflicted) (1798), and the ghost translation.

Session 17 Lecture & Seminar Women as victims and defenders of the land.

Hester Piozzi, Three Warnings to John Bull before he Dies (1798).

Session 18 Lecture & Seminar Welsh soldiers, war crimes, widows and pacifists.

The war in Wales: Analysing ‘Llanddwrog’ by Edward Pugh (1794).

Session 19 Lecture & Seminar War, the industrial revolution and the politics of starvation.

The riots at Merthyr Tydfil in 1800–1801 and their aftermath: letters and court speeches.

Session 20 Lecture & Seminar Unlikely allies? Methodism and the Established Church.

Loyalists united: We will discuss Methodist and other Established Church texts in support of the wars against France and Napoleon.

Session 21 Lecture & Seminar Political uses of a heroic past.

Arthur, Llywelyn and John Bull versus Napoleon. We will discuss loyalist writing which drew on Wales’s past.

Session 22 Lecture & Seminar Political concepts into new words

We will chart the development of ‘democracy’ in England and Wales.

Claeys, Gregory, The French Revolution Debate in Britain: The Origins of Modern Politics (Basingstoke, 2007)

Constantine, Mary-Ann and Dafydd Johnston (eds.), ‘Footsteps of Liberty and Revolt’: Essays on Wales and the French Revolution (Cardiff, 2013)

Davies, David, The Influence of the French Revolution on Welsh Life and Literature (Carmarthen, 1926)

Dickinson, H. T. (ed.), Britain and the French Revolution 1789–1815 (Basingstoke, 1989)

Doyle, William, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1989)

Evans, Chris, Debating the French Revolution. Britain in the 1790s (London, 2006)

Goodwin, Albert, The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (London, 1979)

Löffler, Marion, Political Pamphlets and Sermons from Wales 1790–1806 (Cardiff, 2014)

Löffler, Marion, Welsh Responses to the French Revolution: Press and Public Discourse 1789–1802 (Cardiff, 2012)

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

Williams, Gwyn A., Artisans and Sans-Culottes: Popular Movements in France and Britain during the French Revolution (2nd edn., London, 1989)

Barker, Hannah, Newspapers, Politics, and Public Opinion in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1998)

Barrell, John, Edward Pugh of Ruthin 1763 –1813 ‘A Native Artist’ (Cardiff, 2013)

—, ‘Exhibition Extraordinary!!’ Radical Broadsides of the mid 1790s (Nottingham, 2001)

— and Timothy Whelan (eds), The Complete Writings of William Fox: Abolitionist, Tory, and Friend to the French Revolution (Nottingham, 2011)

Bartel, Roland, ‘The Story of the Public Fast Days in England’, Anglican Theological Review, XXXVII/3 (1955), 190–200

Braithwaite, Helen, ‘From the See of St Davids to St Paul’s Churchyard: Joseph Johnson’s Cross-Border Connections’, in Davies and Pratt (eds.), Wales and the Romantic Imagination, pp. 43–64

Charnell-White, Cathryn A., Welsh Poetry of the French Revolution 1789–1805 (Cardiff, 2012)

— Bardic Circles: National, Regional and Personal Identity in the Bardic Vision of Iolo Morganwg (Cardiff, 2007)

Claeys, Gregory, The French Revolution Debate: The Origins of Modern Politics (Basingstoke, 2007)

—, (ed.), Political Writings of the 1790s. Volume 4: Radicalism and Reform 1793–1800 (London, 1995)

Clemit, Pamela (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the French Revolution in the 1790s (Cambridge, 2011)

Conway, Alan, The Welsh in America: Letters from the Immigrants (Minnesota, 1961) WG 4.6.C

Conway, Stephen, The British Isles and the War of American Independence (Oxford, 2000)

Davies, D. Elwyn J., ‘They Thought for Themselves’: A Brief Look at the History of Unitarianism in Wales and the Tradition of Liberal Religion (Llandysul, 1982)

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

Davies, Hywel M., ‘Loyalism in Wales, 1792–1793’, Welsh History Review, 20/4 (2001), 687–716 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

—, ‘“Very Different Springs of Uneasiness”: Emigration from Wales to the United States of America During the 1790s’, Welsh History Review, 15/3 (1991), 368–98 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

—, ‘Morgan John Rhys and James Bicheno: Anti-Christ and the French Revolution in England and Wales’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XXIX/I (1980), 111–27 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

Denney, Peter, ‘Popular Radicalism, Religious Parody and the Mock Sermon in the 1790s’, History Workshop Journal, 74/1 (2012), 51–78

Emsley, Clive, ‘Revolution, war and the nation state: The British and French experiences 1789–1801’, in Mark Philp (ed.), The French Revolution and British Popular Politics (Cambridge, 1991, 2002), pp. 99–117

Chris Evans (ed.), The Letterbook of Richard Crawshay 1788–1797 (Cardiff, 1990)

Evans, John James, Dylanwad y Chwyldro Ffrengig ar Lenyddiaeth Cymru (Lerpwl, 1928)

Evans, R. J. W., ‘Was there a Welsh Enlightenment?’, 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. 142–59

Evans, Thomas, The Background to Modern Welsh Politics 1789–1846 (Cardiff, 1936)

Frame, Paul, Liberty’s Apostle: Richard Price, His Life and Times (Cardiff, 2015)

Gilmartin, Kevin, Writing Against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790–1832 (Cambridge, 2007)

Goodrich, Amanda, ‘Surveying the Ebb and Flow of Pamphlet Warfare: 500 Rival Tracts from Radicals and Loyalists in Britain, 1790–1796’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 30/1 (2007), 1–12

Goodwin, Albert, The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (London, 1979)

Griffith, John T., Rev. Morgan John Rhys: The Welsh Baptist Hero of Civil and Religious Liberty of the Eighteenth Century (Carmarthen, 1910)

Herbert, Trevor, and Gareth Elwyn Jones (eds), The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century (Cardiff, 1988)

Hole, Robert, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in England, 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1989)

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

Innes, Joanna & Mark Philp, Re-imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions. America, France, Britain, Ireland 1750–1850 (Oxford, 2013, 2015)

James, R. Watcyn, ‘Ymateb y Methodistiaid Calfinaidd Cymraeg i’r Chwyldro Ffrengig’, Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymdeithas Hanes y Methodistiaid Calfinaidd, 12/13 (1988/89), 35–60

Jenkins, Geraint H., Bard of Liberty. The Political Radicalism of Iolo Morganwg (Cardiff, 2012)

—, Ffion Mair Jones and David Ceri Jones (eds.), The Correspondence of Iolo Morganwg (3 vols., Cardiff, 2007)

—, (ed.), A Rattleskull Genius: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg (Cardiff, 2005)

—, ‘“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

Jenkins, R. T., Hanes Cymru yn y Bedwaredd Ganrif ar Bymtheg: Y Gyfrol Gyntaf (1789–1843) (Caerdydd, 1933)

—, Hanes Cymru yn y Ddeunawfed Ganrif (Caerdydd, 1928)

—, ‘Political Propaganda in West Wales in 1793’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, VI/III (1932), 276

—, ‘William Richards o Lynn’, Trafodion Cymdeithas Hanes y Bedyddwyr (1930), 17–6

—, and Helen M. Ramage, A History of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion and of the Gwyneddigion and Cymreigyddion Societies (1751–1951) (London, 1951)

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

Jones, Colin, The Longman Companion to the French Revolution (London, 1990)

Jones, D. J. V., ‘The Corn Riots in Wales, 1793–1801’, Welsh History Review, 2/4 (1965), 323–50

Jones, Emrys, (ed.), The Welsh in London 1500–2000 (Cardiff, 2001)

Jones, Emyr Wyn, Yr Anterliwt Goll: Barn ar Egwyddorion Llywodraeth (Aberystwyth, 1984)

Jones, Ffion Mair, Welsh Ballads of the French Revolution 1793–1815 (Cardiff, 2012)

—, ‘“Brave Republicans”: Representing the Revolution in a Welsh Interlude’, in Constantine, Mary-Ann and Dafydd Johnston (eds.), ‘Footsteps of Liberty and Revolt’: Essays on Wales and the French Revolution (Cardiff, 2013), pp. 189–208

—, ‘“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

Jones, Middleton Pennant, ‘John Jones of Glan-y-Gors’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1911), 60–94

Löffler, Marion, ‘Serial Literature and Radical Poetry in Wales at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, in John Kirk, Michael Brown, Andrew Noble (eds), Cultures of Radicalism in Britain and Ireland: Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution. 3 (London, 2013), pp. 113–28

—, ‘Thomas Charles a Gwleidyddiaeth y Methodistiaid’, in D. Densil Morgan (ed.), Thomas Charles o’r Bala (Caerdydd, 2014), pp. 93–109

—, ‘Cerddi Newydd gan John Jones, “Jac Glan-y-Gors”’, Llên Cymru, 33 (2010), 143–50

—, ‘The Marseillaise in Wales’, in Constantine, Mary-Ann and Dafydd Johnston (eds.), ‘Footsteps of Liberty and Revolt’: Essays on Wales and the French Revolution (Cardiff, 2013), pp. 93–113

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

McCann, Andrew, Cultural Politics in the 1790s: Literature, Radicalism and the Public Sphere (Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999)

Mee, Jon, ‘“Every Honest Man is a Prophet”: Popular Enthusiasm and Radical Millenarianism’, in idem, Dangerous Enthusiasm. William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s (Oxford, 1992), pp. 20–74

Michaelson, Patricia Howell, ‘Religion and Politics in the Revolution Debate: Burke, Wollstonecraft, Paine’, in Lisa Plummer Crafton (ed.), The French Revolution Debate in English Literature and Culture (Westport, Connecticut, 1997), pp. 27–40

Morris, Owen H., ‘Ffurfiau Gweddi’, National Library of Wales Journal, XXIII/2 (1983), 130–40 [forms of fast-day prayers; in English despite title]

Morton, Timothy & Nigel Smith, Radicalism in British Literary Culture, 1650–1830. From Revolution to Revolution (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2002)

Navickas, Katrina, Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798–1815 (Oxford, 2009)

Oddy, John, The Writings of the Radical Welsh Baptist Minister William Richards (1749–1818) Selected, Edited and, Annotated with an Introduction (Lampeter, 2008)

O’Gorman, Frank, ‘The Paine Burnings of 1792–1793’, Past & Present, 193 (2006), 111–55

Owen, Geraint Dyfnallt, Thomas Evans (Tomos Glyn Cothi): Trem ar ei Fywyd (n.p., 1963)

Paine, Thomas, Thomas Paine. Rights of Man, Common Sense and Other Political Writings, ed. Mark Philp (Oxford, 1998)

Philp, Mark (ed.), Resisting Napoleon: The British Response to the Threat of Invasion, 1797–1805 (Aldershot, 2006)

Philp, Mark (ed.), The French Revolution and British Popular Politics (Cambridge, 1991, 2002)

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

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>

Pendleton, Gayle T., ‘The English Pamphlet Literature of the Age of the French Revolution Anatomized’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 5 (1978), 29–37

Polasky, Janet, Revolutions without Borders. The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World (Yale University Press: New Haven, 2015)

Rees, D. Ben, ‘Rebels in the Established Church: Welsh Calvinistic Methodism in the Diocese of St Davids in the Early Nineteenth Century’, The Journal of Welsh Religious History, new series, 4 (2004), 29–40 <http://welshjournals.llgc.org.uk>

Roberts, Arthur Meirion, Thomas Roberts Llwynrhudol a’i Gyfnod (Pwllheli, 2006)

Scrivener, Michael (ed.), Poetry and Reform: Periodical Verse from the English Democratic Press 1792–1824 (Detroit, 1992)

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

Thomas, J. E., Social Disorder in Britain, 1750 –1850. The Power of the Gentry, Religion and Radicalism in Wales (London, 2011)

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

White, Erin, ‘A “Poor, Benighted” Church?: Church and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Wales, in Davies, R. R. & G. H. Jenkins, G. H. (eds), From Medieval to Modern Wales: Historical Essays in Honour of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths (Cardiff, 2004), pp. 123-141

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

Williams, Gwyn A., Artisans and Sans-Culottes: Popular Movements in France and Britain during the French Revolution (2nd edn., London, 1989)

—, Madoc: The Making of a Myth (Oxford, 1987)

—, The Search for Beulah Land: The Welsh and the Atlantic Revolution (New York, 1980)

—, ‘The Beginnings of Radicalism’, in Herbert and Jones (eds.), The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 101–47

—, ‘John Evans’s Mission to the Madogwys, 1792–1799’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XXVII/IV (1978), 569–601

—, ‘Morgan John Rhys and his Beulah’, Welsh History Review, 3/4 (1967), 441–72

—, ‘Morgan John Rhys and Volney’s Ruins of Empires’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XX/I (1962), 58–73

Digital Resources

Wales & the French Revolution <http://frenchrevolution.wales.ac.uk>

Iolo Morganwg and the Romantic Tradition in Wales<http://www.iolomorganwg.wales.ac.uk>

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

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