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247 pages

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The first of two volumes on the social history of Wales in the period 1870–1948, People, Places and Passions concentrates on the social events and changes which created and forged Wales into the mid-twentieth century. This volume considers a range of social changes little considered elsewhere by studies in Welsh history, accounting for the role played by the people of Wales in times of war and the age of the British Empire, and in technological change and innovation, as they travelled the developing capitalist and consumerist world in search of fame and fortune.

Contents
Prologue: Sources for a ‘sullen art’
Introduction: Private Lives: the individual and society
1 The structures of everyday life: endurance and endeavour
2 ‘Lead us into temptation’: consumerism, creativity and change
3 ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’: Ambition, Aspirations and Education.
4 ‘Ffair Wagedd’ - Vanity Fair: people, class and hierarchy
5 Hiraeth and Heartbreak - Wales and the World: curiosity, boldness and zest
6 ‘The Blood never dried’ - the Welsh in Empire: envy, greed and zeal
7 Ha! Ha! among the trumpets - a century of warfare : cowardice, courage and hatred
8 ‘Once more into the breach’: Wales and the Welsh go to war, again’: fear, terror and tragedy
L’Heure Bleue (The Blue Hour): a brief conclusion
Notes

Sujets

Histoire

Great Britain

History

Europe

Informations

Publié par	University of Wales Press
Date de parution	15 juin 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783162390
Langue	English

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PEOPLE, PLACES AND PASSIONS
PEOPLE, PLACES AND PASSIONS
Pain and Pleasure : A Social History of Wales and the Welsh, 1870-1945
Russell Davies
Russell Davies, 2015 Cover image: Donkey rides in Aberdaron c.1885. From the John Thomas Collection, by permission of The National Library of Wales.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78316-237-6 eISBN 978-1-78316-239-0
The right of Russell Davies to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
i dri hanesydd, meistri eu crefft, a geisiodd ddysgu hanes fy ngwlad a m pobl i mi:
John Davies Geraint Jenkins Ieuan Gwynedd Jones
pe bawn ond wedi mynd i fwy o ddarlithoedd . . .

ac i bedair cenhedlaeth o Gymry sydd wedi cyfoethogi fy nhaith:
fy nhad John Haydn Davies, Dai a Beryl Nerys Betsan a Dylan, Ffion ac Udara Cati a Beca
Contents
List of Illustrations
Prologue: Sources for a Sullen Art

Introduction: Private Lives, the Individual and Society
She ate the food of angels : after the death of a fasting girl
Perchance to dream? : private lives, public witnesses
Ac eto nid myfi : individual experience, emotional expression and society
Hen wlad fy mamau - our mothers land - women and Welsh society

1 The Structures of Everyday Life: Endurance and Endeavour
People and places: vital statistics
Ill fares the land : the failures and fortunes of Welsh agriculture
Heavy metal: the age of steel
Industry and diversity: copper, tin and transport
How black was my valley? The rise and fall of King Coal

2 Lead us into Temptation : Consumerism, Creativity and Change
Envy - keeping up with the Joneses : consumerism, fashion and beauty
The conquest of time and space
Technology and social change

3 Bonfire of the Vanities : Ambitions, Aspirations and Education
Ambitions and aspirations, classes and masses.
Work.
The Corn is Green : education, the great escape ladder

4 Ffair Wagedd - Vanity Fair: People, Class and Hierarchy
The decline and fall of the Welsh aristocracy?
Great expectations: nobility and mobility
People and professions: the middling people
Useful toil: labouring lives
Bleak expectations: poverty and pauperism

5 Hiraeth and Heartbreak - Wales and the World: Curiosity, Boldness and Zest
River out of Eden: migration and emigration
Gwalia Deserta: the Welsh in England
Wandering Stars
The American Dream
East of Eden: the Pacific Welsh
I Wlad sydd well i fyw : Patagonia
To boldly go : adventure
and adventurers The Worst Journey in the World : explorers and exploration

6 The Blood never Dried - the Welsh in Empire: Envy, Greed and Zeal
The Welshman s burden: the Welsh and empire
Rwy n gweld o bell : religion and imperialism
If this is your land, where are your stories? : settlers and natives
The day of the scorpions : the Welsh and the Raj
Emerald Peacocks : imperial identity and the experiences of empire
The making of history : the Welsh and the Colonial Office
Soldiers of the Widow: some small, sad wars of empire

7 Ha! Ha! among the Trumpets - a Century of Warfare: Cowardice, Courage and Hatred
Gwaedd y bechgyn : Wales and the Welsh fight to end war
All Quiet on the Western Front : some experiences of war
Keep the home fires burning : the war at home
The Hall of Mirrors: the illusion of peace 1919-39
8 Once more unto the breach - Wales and the Welsh go to War, Again: Fear, Terror and Tragedy
The morbid age? : Wales in the twenties and thirties
Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye
Run Rabbit Run : the war at home
Welsh Warriors
The Wizard War : the battle of wits
These are the men : Dunkirk and other disasters
The Real Cruel Sea: the war at sea
Their finest hour : the war in the air
Hell on earth: prisoners of war

L Heure Bleue (The Blue Hour): a brief conclusion
Notes
List of Illustrations
1 The powerhouse of the rural economy were the fairs and markets which took place amid a sea of human and animal waste . This one, at Llanidloes, took place in 1881. John Thomas Collection, National Library of Wales.
2 Craftspeople at the Kidwelly Tinplate Works c .1910. The tasks which required most dexterity were often undertaken by women and girls.
3 Perhaps the first photograph of an aeroplane in flight in south Wales, on 23 January 1911. The magnificent man was Ernest Sutton, the flying machine a Bl riot XI at Oxwich Bay. South Wales Daily News .
4 The staff and owner of John Ashton s shop in Carno, Mont-gomeryshire, about 1885. A clear representation of power and prestige in the hierarchy of a rural enterprise. John Thomas Collection, National Library of Wales.
5 Despite his disability, Harri Bach of Bodedern, Anglesey, had to struggle to survive or otherwise starve. The work of such carriers was a vital aspect of rural Wales ( c .1875). John Thomas Collection, National Library of Wales.
6 The Kid : Owen Rhoscomyl in his cowboy years, c .1880-4.
7 The original Welsh action hero, Caryl ap Rhys Pryce. Public-school educated, son of the Welsh Raj, soldier and policeman in Africa and leader of the socialist revolution in Mexico in 1911.
8 The Great War 1914-1915 ? Sadly, the optimism of the South Wales Daily Post in January 1915 proved to be very premature.
9 The Swansea Pals Battalion with their mascot, Tawe. The initial belief that collecting men from the same area into battalions known as the Pals Battalions would aid recruitment was dis-abused, when the fighting began and a single area or town was confronted with catastrophic casualties. Source: Bernard Lewis, Swansea Pals: a history of the 14th (Service) Battalion the Welsh Regiment in the Great War (Barnsley, 2004).
10 Two war horses and heroes from Swansea. King and Bob, two greys working for Hancock s Brewery, joined up in the euphoria of August 1914 and survived, winning the 1914-15 Star Ribbons, the Victory Ribbon and the General Service Ribbon. They worked until 1929. South Wales Daily News .
11 Nurse Mary Jane Hughes (1887-1986) and some of her patients, all of whom were from Llanelli. Being cared for by a Welsh-speaker must have eased some of the hurt and hiraeth of these wounded soldiers. Source: Joyce Mollet, With a Camera in my Pocket: the Life and Times of a First World War Nurse (Baddeley, 2005).
Prologue: Sources for a Sullen Art

Nes na r hanesydd at y gwir di-goll, ydyw r dramodydd, sydd yn gelwydd oll.
(Closer than the historian to the lost truths is the dramatist who deals in lies).
R. Williams Parry, Gwae Awdur Dyddiaduron
Historians, especially those working on the earliest historical periods, often bemoan their lack of sources. Others, with an echo of British Rail s excuse that the wrong type of snow caused train delays, complain that the material available does not allow them to answer the particular questions they wish to ask. Anyone who has worked on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is aware of another difficulty - there is too much material for teams of academics, let alone an individual, to read and comprehend. Thus the historian of modern Wales must have considerable sympathy for the hero of Laurence Sterne s eighteenth-century novel Tristram Shandy, who worries that, since he has spent two years chronicling the first two days of his life, material will accumulate faster than he can cope with it and, as time goes by, he will be further and further from the end of his history.
The shelves of the libraries, museums and archives of Wales groan under the weight of autobiographies, biographies, census reports, diaries, family and personal papers, journals, letters, official govern ment papers, newspapers, hymn books, novels and poems, each of which is relevant to our study. Many of these documents are now available on internet sites, providing the historian with unbroken and unlimited access to the sources. In this respect a priceless resource is the Gathering the Jewels project, which enables the historian to browse the treasures of the Welsh archives from desk - or laptop. 1
It is almost axiomatic for many historians that the facts of the past are to be found in the official documents created by a society. The stately and staid volumes of the reports of official bodies appointed by governments, to inquire and enquire into specific events or to observe and preserve society s attitudes, are often regarded as if they possess an almost biblical prescience and infallibility. But we need to remember that official documents are not exempt from the problems and pitfalls of all historical sources. They too contain bias, opinion and prejudice and many are as much creative works as they are factual testimonies. Official sources do not always reveal the entire story. Public records such as court papers and the Registrar General s statistics provide skeletal details that hint at vivid tales of illegitimacy, forced marriages, infant mortality, enforced separations of warring partners and entire families and neighbourhoods locked in moral decline. Other sources are needed to tease out the detail of these tragic tales.
A people s literature, in contrast to official records, reveals much of what actually concerned people. Fiction is often as useful as fact in reve