Migrant Wales - 30 credits (HS1736)
Module Tutor: Bill Jones
In the years between 1790 and 1939, migration was a key theme in the history of Wales. Up to 1914, there was large scale movement into the new industrial and urban centres from the rural areas accompanied by the arrival there in sizeable numbers of migrants from elsewhere in Britain and beyond, among them English, Irish, Italians, Jews and Spaniards, as well as representatives of a large number of African and Asian ethnic groups. These inward movements were agencies for profound cultural, demographic, economic and social change. In the inter-war years, however, this pattern was dramatically and traumatically reversed as nearly 25% of the population moved out. Between 1790 and 1939, also, the out-migration of Welsh people gave Wales a more prominent international dimension. Throughout the period significant numbers of Welsh people emigrated overseas, mainly to the United States and to a lesser extent Australia and Canada. There were attempts to establish independent Welsh colonies, the most well-known being the ‘Wladfa’ in Patagonia. This module examines the patterns and processes of emigration, settlement, acculturation and language change among Welsh migrants in these countries and analyses the economic, demographic, social and cultural influences which shaped their experiences, and the institutions – churches, newspapers and ethnic societies – that helped to sustain and construct their ethnicity. The module also investigates the experiences and impact of in-migrants in Wales and the reception they received, thus posing fundamental questions about the extent of tolerance and racism in Welsh society in the years concerned.
Bill Jones researches nineteenth and early twentieth century Welsh emigration and Welsh communities outside Wales. His current project is on Beyond Wales: The Welsh Overseas 1600 to the present, and is the author with E. Wyn James Michael D. Jones a'i Wladfa Gymreig (2009) and with Aled Jones, Welsh Reflections: Y Drych and America, 1851-2001 (2001).
Preliminary Reading for this module:
Alan Conway, The Welsh in America: Letters from the Immigrants
Muriel Chamberlain, ed., The Welsh in Canada
Aled Jones, and Bill Jones, Welsh Reflections: Y Drych and America, 1851-2001
Emrys Jones ed., The Welsh in London
R. Merfyn Jones and D. Ben Rees, The Liverpool Welsh and their Religion
William D. Jones, Wales in America: Scranton and the Welsh 1860-1920
Anne K. Knowles, Calvinists Incorporated: Welsh Immigrants on Ohio’s Industrial Frontier
Paul O’Leary, Immigration and Integration: The Irish in Wales 1798-1922
Charlotte Williams, Neil Evans and Paul O’Leary, eds., A Tolerant Nation?: Exploring Ethnic Diversity in Wales
Glyn Williams, The Desert and the Dream
Glyn Williams, The Welsh in Patagonia: the State and the Ethnic Community
Gwyn A. Williams, The Search or Beulah Land