The history of the British Isles is an uneven affair, to put it mildly.
We’re familiar with how Scotland and Ireland drew the imperial short stick and enjoyed
the pleasure of being sat upon by England.
But perhaps the shortest stick of the bunch was drawn by Wales, who is often left out
of the discussion entirely!
And while I’m shocked that anybody could gloss over the country that has a freakin’
Dragon Flag, Wales has been tragically sidelined from the historical narrative of the isles,
and I will not stand for it.
Wales has impressively and improbably maintained a distinct Celtic culture since the very start,
and it is far too cool for historians to be doing them dirty like that.
So, to see how Wales did the hard-carry for Great Britain’s culture for 2,000 straight
years, Let’s do some History.
A proper understanding of this whole “Wales” business requires us to go wayyy back in British
history [Stonehenge] Nope, too far, [Celtic art] yeah there we go!
See, Celtic culture in Britain is the foundation of what will eventually become Wales, but
these guys aren’t the easiest to get a handle on.
The Celtic or Gallic people stretched out from Central Europe towards Gaul, Iberia,
and the British Isles, but also went southeast towards the Black Sea, and one problem for
us loser historians is that it’s unclear how and even kinda “IF” they settled in
Britain.
There are competing theories for Who When Where and Why, ranging from the standard Migration
models to the possibility that very few Celts actually settled in Britain.
Logic being that oversea trade was key to the Bronze Age economy, and Britain’s tin
deposits made them a big export hub.
Since tin is half the chemical structure for bronze, that meant people from all over Europe
and the Mediterranean came to the Atlantic coasts to get their bronze on, and this includes
our Celt-bois.
So it wasn’t mass migration that brought Celtic people to Britain, but rather local
Britons who buddied up with Celtic traders by speaking their language and copying their
swirly La Tène art.
So according to this “Meme” model, the local Britons thought Celtic culture was LOL
So Relatable XD that they adopted it all up and down the isles.
Whether or not this model is fully accurate, it would account for some weird archaeological
and linguistic discrepancies in the traditional migration theory, and it also foreshadows
the prestige placed on bards and literary prowess by later Celtic cultures.
Because it’s equal parts cool as all hell and existentially horrifying that a culture
can, basically by itself, take hold of an entire population by willing itself into existence.
This would be our first indication that Wales has Big Eldritch Energy.
Other civilizations, however, would not follow this lead, because the Romans found that culture
was best delivered by spear-point.
While on their way to fill out their pan-imperial punch-card and get their 10th new province
free, Roman emperors in the mid-first-century campaigned into Britain.
Most Roman settlements were in the south and east [Londinium, Eboracum] where all the easy
agriculture was, and although Goods, Coins, and Roman Legions did make their way west,
the cultural and linguistic impact on so-called Britannia Secunda was only slight.
Perhaps the most transformative thing the Romans did in Wales was leave, because the
Post-Roman migrations from central Europe into Britain totally upended the island’s
demographics.
Frustratingly, it’s nigh-impossible to show this kind of thing clearly on a map, which
is why turbulent centuries in history with slim documentation make Blue a sad boy, but
here’s the gist.
We know the Angels, Saxons, and Jutes from northern Europe arrived and displaced many
of the Romano-Britons, but over in the west there was also an influx of Irish Celts coming
in to settle.
This Age of Migrations was much more overtly migratory than the Celtic arrival in Britain
the millennium before, though, again, the native Britons didn’t really leave.
After a few decades of raiding gave way to much more peaceable settlement, most Britons
were happy to start speaking Germanic and make friends with their new Saxon neighbors
than to up and book it for the hills.
Still, the end result was the confinement of native Celtic culture to the far west in
Wales and Cornwall.
And that split explains why it’s called “Wales” — it comes from the Germanic
word Walha, meaning Foreigner, while the Welsh call it Cymru, from the Celtic word for Countrymen.
It’s also in this migratory shuffle that the legend of the Romano-British King Arthur
first pops up, though it’ll be a couple centuries before he’s labeled as Arthur,
or a King.
Honestly, the whole early medieval period in Wales has this pseudo-mythic, Age-of-Heroes
vibe to it.
Good documentation is Bleh, what else is new, but the oral traditions that will later become
the core of Welsh epic literature get their start in this era.
So as far as we can tell, what was going on in medieval Wales?
Well, isolation from Germanic-majority England was good for preserving a unified Celtic culture,
but the politics were much more wibbly.
Various local princes vied for hegemony over the many disparate realms, but succession
always proved their undoing, as sons would squabble and big kingdoms would shrink back
to where they started.
The princes of Gwynedd and Powys were the most successful of the bunch, and as a result,
King Offa of Mercia built a dyke across his border in the late 700s to try and keep Powys
out.
But that worked about as well as any frontier walls have worked throughout history, which
is to say, barely.
So despite the best attempts of Saxon Kings and the Irish Sea, Wales wasn’t entirely
cut off from the rest of the world, as they had gotten onboard with Christianity thanks
to the Missionary St. David back in the 6th century.
They might not have been the most consistent of pen-pals with the Pope in Rome, but they
were mostly on the same page.
Wales’ early medieval history of relative chill was aided by England’s near-constant
Viking tire-fire, which pushed “conquer Wales” wayyy down the To-Do list.
But that changed when our old pals the Normans Kite-Shielded their way to conquering England.
Because suddenly this new Norman England had a much stronger army, and they proceeded to
point it right at Wales.
Norman lords pushed into Wales along the northern and southern coasts, and made some but not
a lot of progress.
Since Wales was made of small principalities, the Normans could play the Welsh off each
other, but then all of their gains were only incremental.
Not so easy as winning Hastings and calling it a day.
While casual war was the standard for the next two-hundred years along the borderland
Marches, elements of Anglo-Norman and Welsh culture made their way across.
The princes of Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth picked up some Norman political structures,
and England learned about Welsh Longbows the hard way.
Although Wales didn’t form into a unified nation, they did get close a couple times.
Llywelyn Fawr fought off his family members to become prince of Gwynedd and proceeded
to bap all of his enemies out of the way so that he could assert his hegemony over Wales.
He also tried to streamline the rules for royal succession so every interregnum didn’t
immediately explode into a civil war.
He then pushed eastward into the March and defeated King John of England so handily that
his Barons made him sign the Magna Carta to stop being such a royal knob.
Llywelyn’s military successes weren’t quite matched by his grandson, uh, also Llywelyn.
Though he did the Biggest Prince In Wales routine again, he was defeated by England’s
King Edward Longshanks.
The next year, in 1283, Edward pushed into Wales and stomped out the princes, using the
old Norman trick of building a buttload of castles in newly conquered territory to stop
the locals from getting ideas.
In a twist that should surprise no one, England needed more than a few of these to do the
trick, so Wales has the highest castle-density of any country in Europe, with over 600 built
and 100 still standing today.
That is, and I really cannot stress this enough, a stupid amount of castles.
That’s the density-equivalent of twenty-three castles in New York City, with a less-impressive
but still formidable two castles just in Manhattan.
Good Lord.
In any case, the Post-Conquest period was a weird century for Wales.
Suddenly they were subordinate to England, but soon they got tied up in the 100 years
war and then everybody had Plague to contend with.
So while it was a real wacky time, it was also surprisingly indicative of the history
still to come, as England goes about its business while holding a pillow over Wales’ face,
gently shushing them and hoping nobody notices.
Forgive me for speed-running the next several centuries but I’ve already done the England
plotline once and that was painful enough.
A century after a thwarted independence uprising in 1400, Wales had the good fortune to pull
a reverso and put a Welshman on the English throne.
The man in question was one Henry 7, notable ender of the War of the Roses, and he set
Wales up for greater integration with England and way more rights than they had before.
This all became official via the Laws in Wales Acts passed by Henry 8 in the mid 1500s.
He drew up county borders, standardized laws, gave Welshmen equal status as Englishmen,
and gave Wales representation in parliament.
And as an added bonus of Henry’s hop over to Protestantism, the church translated the
Bible into Welsh.
This protection of the Welsh language coincided with a new interest in medieval culture and
ancient literature, and Language became a defining feature of the Welsh identity.
While all this was going on, the political story of Wales got folded into the larger
English narrative, what with the Spanish Armada-ing, the Union-Of-The-Crowns-Of-England-And-Scotland-ing,
and the Creation-Of-A-Globe-Spanning-Empire-ing.
Despite playing second fiddle… eh, well, maybe closer to fourth — in the history
of the British Empire, Welsh literature was rising in prominence during the Romantic movement,
thanks in part to some shiny new editions of classic works.
Specifically, Lady Charlotte Guest compiled and published the four branches of the Mabinogi;
and doubly translated too, so Welsh and English readers could both enjoy the medieval folklore.
In contrast to Scots Gaelic going kaput and Irish Gaelic suffering a steep decline in
the 1800s that they’re only recently bouncing back from, Welsh literature and poetry came
in clutch for the long-term endurance of the language.
But while the Romantic era was in full swing, so too was the Industrial Revolution.
So all these fancy new machines and choo choo trains needed coal if they wanted to do anything,
and Wales happened to have a crap ton of the stuff.
Southern Wales swiftly became the mining capital of the empire, and while coal and slate may
have been big busines, they were also hellish jobs to work.
So Wales ended the century more urbanized than it had ever been, but the Welsh probably
weren’t so thrilled about why, especially as British attitudes towards them soured and
Wales got the dingy reputation shared by all other regions doing heavy industry.
Although the 1900s started out pretty rough, what with the coal mining and a nasty spell
of discrimination against the Welsh language in schools and work, Wales turned a corner
after the Second World War.
Industry diversified, and politicians campaigned for more regional autonomy and protections
for the language.
The Welsh Language Acts of 1967 and ’93 elevated Welsh to par with English: granting
bilingual signage, the right to use Welsh in legal proceedings, and Welsh-language broadcasting.
So now, a third of Wales can speak the native language.
And in 1999, Wales (and also Scotland but that’s a different story) got its own national
assembly, later promoted to Parliament.
And that’s Wales!
Far too often sidelined in the history of the isles, Wales has an enchanting historical
vibe the other 3 countries lack.
Maybe it’s the ancient Celtic language and the dragon flag getting to me, but Wales feels
older, like you can wander slightly too far off a hiking trail and stumble into Narnia.
As anybody who knows Welsh can confirm, it just sounds like the language Dragons would
speak.
And I know better than to disrespect the Dragon-Lords.
Thank you so much for watching.
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