The Rest Is History - 267: Wales: The Roar of the Red Dragon

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

What are the origins of Wales? And how do the Welsh define themselves against Englishness? As England play Wales in the World Cup today, Tom and Dominic are joined by Martin Johnes, Professor of History at the University of Swansea, to explore the age old rivalry between the two nations. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishist the day that England are playing Wales. And I think it's time for a sing-song. MUSIC PLAYS That was the opening verse of Amma Ahid by David Iffon. It's become very much the kind of the great theme for Welsh football. I'm sure it'll be sung on the terraces this afternoon. And Dominic, I will give you, because I'm assuming that your mastery of Welsh

isn't up to understanding what was being sung there, but maybe I'm wrong. Am I wrong? The podcast listeners know me, Tom, as the master of tongues. The master of tongues. Well, for those whose Welsh may not enable them to translate it.

Let me just quickly distance myself from your Welsh pronunciation. Just for the... Okay. Yeah. I just want to put that absolutely on the record. That's fine. Please continue. That's fine.

You are from Shropshire. You are entitled to say that. So the meaning of the words, you don't remember Maxim. Nobody knows him. 1,600 years, a time too long to remember when Magnus Maximus left Wales in the year 383, leaving us a whole nation. And today, look at us. So I think that is a magnificent sentiment. Firstly, because as far as I know, it's the only football anthem that mentions the Roman emperor. But secondly, Dominic, when he says

that nobody knows him, that's not true. Because regular listeners to The Rest is History will remember Magnus Maximus, because we did an episode on the ghostly afterlife of the Roman Empire. We did, yes. And we talked about how the Welsh princes over the early Middle Ages and into the final extinction of Welsh independence under Edward I, that they preserved this memory that they were kind of descended from, they had this Roman lineage, that they were princes by virtue of having been appointed to their rank by Magnus Maximus, who is this Roman general who stripped the island of its legions and went to Gaul and perished. And so that sense of the Welsh as a Roman people in opposition to the English who

were barbarians was very strong. You made an incredible claim at the end of that episode, didn't you? That the last Roman emperor was Prince Charles, as he then was. Because the argument was that Edward I, when he appoints his son, the future Edward II, as Prince of Wales, is kind of appropriating that tradition. And it's been handed down through the heirs of the British monarch right the way to the present day. And of course, there is a slight tension in the role played by the current Prince of Wales, who is Prince William, who's always been very, very out and proud as an England football fan. Yeah, there's been lots of controversy about this in recent days, Tom, because quite a few welsh fans the actor michael sheen prominent among them have been lambasting him and saying how can you be prince of

wales and be supporting england and his sort of you know classic house of winds of fudge is to say i'm supporting both i hope they both make it to the final and then i'll decide and i hope they both win but tom uh we have managed to do our classic thing, haven't we? We're talking for almost five minutes without even mentioning the guest who's been sitting waiting. We have a brilliant guest. Very, very patiently. So we do have a brilliant guest.

The subject today, as you've explained, is Wales. What is Wales? What is Welshness? And how does it define itself against England? The perfect subject for today's match. And we have the perfect guest. He is Martin Jones, Professor of History at the University of Swansea, and the author of the book, Wales, England's Colony.

Yes, the question mark is very important. So Martin, welcome to The Rest is History. Wales, England's Colony, or not? It depends when we're talking about. I wouldn't use the term to describe Wales today as a colony, but certainly if you go back to the medieval period, I don't think we can deny that Wales was militarily conquered and subject to colonial laws that put the Welsh in their place. They were second-class citizens in their own nation.

So I think if you want to go that far back, I think it's fine to call Wales maybe England's first colony. Right. And so when we look at the relationship between England and Wales, one of the themes that runs throughout your book is that for most of the history of that relationship, Wales has defined itself against England, whereas England has not defined itself against Wales. Exactly. I mean, Wales is a very small nation. Today it's 3.1 million people and throughout its history, its politics, its culture, its economy has existed in the shadow of England. And you could argue that one of the things that brought the different peoples of Wales together, the different medieval

kingdoms, was a sense of difference to England. You could argue that it was only once those laws that were passed that denied the Welsh civil rights in their own country that they began to feel something in common with each other. The people of Powys and Gwynedd developed a common identity. This isn't unusual. This happens across history. People define themselves against a large neighbour. The unfortunate thing is that sometimes that can lead to us having a slight chip on our shoulder, maybe not being as confident as we should be as a nation. Today in Welsh politics, a lot of the argument is about moving beyond that and enjoying Welshness for its own sake,

rather than just because it's different to England. So the very name Wales, that's a name imposed on Wales from outside, right? It means the strangers or the others or the foreigners. And that's a name imposed by the English. Am I right? I mean, imposed suggests that somebody's coming along and saying, you must take this name, and that isn't happening. The origins of the name are very difficult. I mean, when we're going that far back, it's difficult to know exactly what words meant. And it seems to have different meanings in different contexts. But at its heart is a sense of difference, of otherness. And that name is given to the people of what we now call Wales by the Anglo-Saxons,

although I suppose that's a controversial term in various ways. Not in this podcast. Not in this podcast. So it does take us back to the beginnings of England, the idea of the English. And the traditional story is that the Welsh initially defined themselves as Britons. They are the indigenous inhabitants of Britain. Absolutely. And that sense that the Welsh are British is really important in early Welsh history. There is a strong sense of loss in Welsh history that once they were the owners of this island and then these Germanic peoples came and took it from them. And within Welsh history,

within Welsh legends, there is a very strong idea that one day someone will come back and liberate us from English rule and give us back the island. That idea of sort of the son of prophecy, Amabdorogan, is applied to Owen Glyndŵr in his medieval uprisings against English rule. But it's also applied to Henry VII, Henry Tudor, who had some Welsh ancestry. And when he comes to the English throne, when he takes it after the Battle of Rosworth, there is a sense in Wales that this is Wales now taking back control of their island. And when Henry VII becomes king, he adds to his royal arms the red dragon. And that is the kind of the archetype of, If you want to express the story of the conflict between Saxons and Britons, English and Welsh in mythic form, the classic account is that Merlin is told of a vision of a red and a white dragon fighting one another, and that in the end, the red dragon chases the white dragon

off. Merlin says that the red dragon is Wales or the Britons, and that the white dragon is the Saxons. Presumably, the implication of that in the long run is that the Welsh will get what's now England back. Yeah. These stories are really important in Welsh culture right up to the present day in many ways, because they tell the Welsh that they're a nation in the face of English conquest, in the face of English oppression, if you want to put it that way. History gave the Welsh a better story, a story that was confident, a story that was optimistic, a story that made them feel that they were a people. So history has been really important in kind of sustaining a sense of Welsh nationhood over the years. And that idea of perseverance is really important. I mean, the song you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, Amal Hid, you know, translates

as still here. And the whole message of that song is not really about Maxen and Roman emperors. It's about how Welsh identity has survived through the years, as the song says, despite everyone and despite everything, we are still here. And history is so central to Welsh identity. And it's really controversial about whether we teach enough of our history in our schools, whether teaching Welsh history is political, whether it's a route to independence. But history is politicised in Wales and in ways that maybe it's not so much in England. But that identity, that Welsh identity has definitely kind of evolved, hasn't it? Because again, going right back to the beginning, so before the arrival of the Normans, it's the emergence of a unitary kingdom in what becomes England that basically pens the Welsh in. Because the land of England is so much richer than the more mountainous land of Wales. It means that there's an inevitable discrepancy of power, which presumably has then set the balance of the relationship for the thousand years that followed.

Yeah, geography is really important, I think, to medieval history. The mountains are one reason why maybe there wasn't the big push by the Normans into Wales after they take England. There are Norman incursions, they take low land areas, but the mountains were difficult to access, but also there's less reward for actually taking them. There's not a lot actually there. So the mountains sort of slow the English incursion into Wales, but it also turns Wales into something of a fortress, if you like. And that helps Welsh identity survive. And that survives down in the subsequent centuries as well, until the romantics of the 18th century start thinking of Wales as a beautiful place. It's a rough, dangerous, rugged place. And there's simply little reason for English

visitors to go there. And that protects Welsh identity and the Welsh language. So at this point we're talking about Welsh identity, the Welsh language, Wales. How much of those things are anachronistic, you know, concepts that we in the 21st century or people in the 20th century were projecting backwards? So in other words, would people in the 11th century or whatever, or the 12th century, would they have thought of themselves as Welsh, as being one people from north to south, speaking one language with one culture? I mean, they definitely wouldn't have thought of themselves as Celts, would they?

Because that, again, is a more modern invention, I guess. Yeah, Celts, I really don't like the term Celtic, although it's used quite a lot in Wales. It's misleading. If you go back to the Middle Ages, it's really obviously difficult to know what ordinary people, what peasants thought, because simply nobody asked them and nobody wrote it down. But the lords of Wales do seem to have had a sense of Welshness. They do talk about Welsh language, about the Welsh culture.

The princes of the various kingdoms of Wales talk about Welshness. They make alliances against the English or against the Normans. And it does seem that amongst the ruling class, there is a sense of Welshness. It coexists alongside a sense of being from Powys or Gwynedd or Deheabarth or any of the other Welsh kingdoms. But it does seem to be that a common language and a common law as well do give the Welsh a sense of identity and a sense of difference to the English on the other side of the border. So you, in your wonderful book, Wales, England's Colony, you quote the first Norman Bishop of St. David's as saying of the Welsh that they are entirely different in nation,

language, laws and habits, judgments and customs. Presume that is with reference to the English or to the Normans or to the totality of kind of Latin Europe. I mean, who's he comparing them to? I mean, sort of the English and the Normans get mixed up in this period, don't they? And, you know, it's sometimes hard to distinguish between who's exactly been spoken to about. But there is that sense of, you know, other people with habits. And it's important to think that, you know, nationhood in this period isn't just seen as kind of political units. It's about what we today would call race. Because on the topic of political union, really, there's only an eight-year period, isn't there,

where there is a kind of Welsh nation rather than a collection of different principalities that are all Welsh. Yeah, Wales is divided up into different kingdoms. They're constantly at war with each other. They're constantly vying for control, which one's most powerful ebbs and flows over the course of the centuries. But yeah, there is only an eight-year period where you could say all of the kingdoms of Wales are under one ruler. But that doesn't mean that there isn't this sense of the Welsh as a nation, as a people, that there isn't some sense of a common ancestry. And that's where we go back to this idea that once this was our whole island, and we are the true Britons, and the Anglo-Saxons came and

took it from us, and now the Normans have come and taken it from us. But one day we will return. So that king is Graffitap Llywelyn, who is a king just before the Norman conquest. And just as the Norman conquest is a traumatic experience for the English, so also, of course, is it clearly a very traumatic experience for the Welsh. And what is the impact of the coming of the Normans to Britain on the Welsh, on Welsh identity and on the coherence of a kind of political sense of Welshness? Well, the early Norman lords are almost given a free reign in Wales. You know, there is an opportunity for these barons to kind of set up almost like private enterprises in Wales. The English crown almost says, do what you want over there. And gradually, individual barons, individual Norman lords take land within Wales. So these are the marches. So it comes before the marches.

Yeah. And that creates what we call the marches, this kind of border area, which is essentially under Norman rule. So the conquest of Wales begins very quickly after the conquest of England. And that changes the whole politics of Wales, because suddenly there's this big foe on your doorstep, which is militarily superior, which has better resources, which is very difficult to beat. And that creates some sense of unity, I think, between the existing Welsh kingdoms. But they also become an ally, which the Welsh kingdoms can use in their battles and rivalries between each other. So the whole politics of not just Wales, but of the whole island is changed by the Norman conquest. I love all this because I'm from the Marches, Martin, as a Shropshire boy. So I grew up in

this sort of, Wales was just over the horizon, on the other side of the Long Mind and the landscape studded with castles. And I actually wanted to ask a question about castles because I guess the castles that were built in this period and afterwards are the most celebrated man-made landmarks that stand in Wales. But of course, you know, people walk around them today and people like the Sandbrook family go and buy swords and shields of dragons on and whatnot and really love it. But they are symbols of, I mean, they really are symbols of oppression, aren't they?

Of surveillance, of control, of foreign domination. Or am I being too harsh? That's what they're literally there for. The very first ones are quite small and they're to kind of implant Norman power over local areas. But the last ones, the ones built by Edward I, they are amongst the grandest medieval structures probably anywhere in the world. And I think it's reasonable to say they are far larger than was actually needed from a military point of view. It's very difficult to escape the conclusion that they are symbolic.

They are telling the Welsh people, you are a conquered people. But maybe not just telling the Welsh people that, but also maybe reminding other English lords, look at the power of the crown, the English crown, that we can build these structures. So the symbolism of them works two ways. And it's left a very complicated relationship with those castles, you know, through the rest of history. Because at one level, they remind the Welsh that there are conquered people, that they remind them of this very difficult history. But the size of them and the scale of them is also something comforting in some ways, because it's also a reminder we were difficult to beat. And they're also big money spinners, right? I mean, they bring in a lot of tourists. Yeah And they're also big money spinners, right? I mean,

they bring in a lot of tourists. Yeah, they're great for our tourism. And, you know, but one of the shames is often that actually when you walk around them, you don't really get a sense of the politics behind them. You know, it's very depoliticised, the narratives. And of course, the relationship between Wales and England is still happening today. And there isn't really any effort made to make that connection with today. So the most famous castles of all are those that are built by Edward I, who completes the conquest of Wales. His ring of iron. His ring of iron. Yes, his ring of iron. And you make the point in the book that one of the things that prompts the conquest of Wales is the fact that the kings of England have lost their lands

in Normandy. And so they now are looking for alternative theatres to kind of throw their weight in. And so Wales is in the way of the juggernaut. But you also give the extraordinary statistic that in 1287, under Edward I, a quarter of the entire Welsh male population was serving in Edward's army. So presumably it's not just about oppression. It's also about giving the Welsh, or at least elements within Wales, a stake within the new regime. When any nation, when any place is conquered, there are always local people who work with the political realities that they are faced with. Those as probably Welsh peasants serving in the Norman

army, did they have any choice about the matter? It's a well-paid job probably, you know, compared to trying to live off the land. If you've suddenly become a conquered people, joining the conqueror is a way of maybe getting some status. It's a way of survival. And I think there is a danger maybe of us looking back and thinking of these things in black and white. This is Norman or English versus Welsh, whereas the realities of life for people were quite different. I mean, just survival in the medieval period against the elements, growing enough food, looking after your family, none of these things were easy. And just on these people, they spoke Welsh, right? They didn't speak English. Are there people speaking English at this point? In the early Norman incursions, there are efforts to implant essentially new populations, settler populations. That happens in Gower near Swansea, and that happens in South Pembrokeshire in Southwest Wales. And those places today are still very anglicized. If you look at a map of those areas, the place names are English. You know, it's almost like literally the Welsh have been wiped off the map.

Now, what happened to the indigenous population, for want of a better term, is very difficult to know. Were they forced off their land? Was it relatively empty? You know, is there some kind of process of maybe even genocide going on? Well, it's exactly the same questions as haunt the question of what happens in Lowland Britain in the post-Roman period. I mean, it's really fascinating. But for Welsh speakers, what are the legal frameworks

that are governing them following the completion of the English conquest? It's not about language, first of all. I mean, you know, being Welsh is never defined by language. In essence, language was a sign of being Welsh, but it is seen as an ethnic identity. So it's kind of overtly racial then? Yeah, absolutely. And there are attempts by some Welsh people to define themselves as English. They go to local courts and say, oh no, look at my heritage. Despite my name,

I'm actually English. Because they're suffering legal restrictions. Because that gave you legal rights. So there are laws passed that denied the Welsh the ability to carry arms, to live in towns, to trade in certain places. These aren't always enforced. In some cases, they're just on the stature book. And historians have gone through the lists of tenants and people living in Welsh towns and actually shown a fair proportion of

them in some places do have Welsh names. But these laws are there on the books. And that made them people literally second-class citizens. And even if these laws aren't always enforced, they're always there in the background. So if you fall out with your neighbour, you know, and you're making better beer than him, and, you know, your neighbour might say, but hang on, you're Welsh, you shouldn't even be in this town, you know, and there does seem to be that in the background. I don't think it's too far to say that people were literally second-class citizens in their own nation. And they don't, there's no representation in the English Parliament? There's no representation in the English Parliament. There's no representation in the English Parliament.

It can be difficult to work your way up the ladder. But of course, the governance of any nation requires people, officials who speak the local language. So there are opportunities, career opportunities, for ambitious people within the Welsh gentry. And so there's one last kind of great national uprising, which is under Owen Glyndwr. Glyndwr. Well, sorry, I'm Henry IV part one-ing,

because he's a figure in Shakespeare's version of Henry IV's reign. That's a terrible portrait of him, isn't it? Because he's like a sort of necromancer babbling in Welsh. He speaks in very florid poetry, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah. Harry Hotspur sneers at him. I don't imagine that's a production. That's a Shakespeare production that's welcomed on the streets of Caerphilly or whatever.

Anyway, sorry, go on, Tom, ask your question. But what Shakespeare's treatment also does is offer Prince Hal, the future Henry V, he's Henry of Monmouth, and he is cast as someone who can bridge English and Welsh identity. Is that something that is reflective of the Tudor period, by which point we've got a dynasty that claims descent from Wales, or is that approximating to something that does emerge in the wake of Aung Lyn Ddur's rebellion? I mean, there's always the practical politics. People want to get on in life. And Alwyn Glyndwr is a good example of that. He'd learned, he'd plied his trade in the

law in London. He'd served in the English army. His family had English connections. Like a lot of the Welsh gentry after conquest, he started to make a career of himself with using the structures of power with England. But something goes wrong. He falls out with another landowner and somehow that turns into a national uprising. There seems to be this undercurrent of resentment about the way Welsh people were treated. And Glyndwr's rebellion plays upon that

and it draws people out. And Glyndwr's rebellion plays upon that and it draws people out. And this kind of suppressed sense of anger that people seem to have had about the way Wales was treated bursts into flame. And it is an incredibly violent, aggressive uprising. The towns of Wales are burnt because they're symbols of English colonialism, because of these laws about who can live in them. It's full-scale kind of civil war in many ways. There are open battles as well against the English army. This is not a small event. And in many ways, it ravages the Welsh economy for the next couple of centuries. And it leaves a degree of bitterness and a degree of anger as well about the way it fizzled out, but also

about how ethnic tensions between the Welsh and the English, what they can turn into. And I think it does create a sense we can't ever go back to that. We need to rebuild a future, which is cooperation. Among the Welsh themselves or with the English crown? Because I was just asking about Henry V, that he goes on to win the Battle of Agincourt with the longbow, which is a Welsh weapon. Is there any sense in the 15th century of English and Welsh identity starting to merge, or is that just a later back projection that Shakespeare's engaging in? There's a degree of reconciliation that the Welsh gentry are kind of like, we must

never go back to this, to what happened in Glyndwr's period. But the English crown is also, we don't want another uprising. And, you know, it doesn't act too harshly after the uprising is crushed. You know, there is some reconciliation. There's even some compensation paid to some communities. But the fact that there are Welsh archers serving in the English army, again, that's part of a much longer history. And that's much more about individuals wanting to find work in some places. So the hiring of foreign mercenaries, the hiring of foreign people by the English army is nothing new. That didn't need reconciliation between the Welsh and English, but that is happening slowly.

But when the Tudors come in, you quote a Welsh writer, Owen of Henlis, am I pronouncing that right? Henlis. Henlis, who calls Henry the Moses who delivered us from bondage. And he famously names his son Arthur, great British hero. And as I mentioned, he adds the red dragon to his coat of arms. So is there a feeling in Wales that with the Tudors, things genuinely change? Yeah, absolutely. Henry Tudor exploits his Welsh ancestry in many ways. He uses it as a way of gaining support and manpower within Wales as he's marching towards Bosworth for his battle to seize the English crown. But once he actually has the

English crown, he does seem to hold up to some of his promises. He brings Welsh people to court, he does these symbolic things like putting the dragon on his heraldry and things like that. And there is a sense in Wales, or at least amongst the Welsh people who wrote about these things, the poets and the lords, that Wales has retaken its position at the heart of Britain. That our previous oppression, our previous shame, our sense of being conquered, that's all in the past now. Now there is a Welshman on the throne of England and Wales is back in control of this island, just as it should be. And then there are acts of union just a generation or so later. So under his son, Henry VIII.

So this is driven by Thomas Cromwell, is that this is his project of kind of, Thomas Cromwell's kind of, Hilary Mantel would call it his kind of social democratic modernization of England and Wales. So he's trying to smooth out the eccentricities of their relationship

to create some new counties, to just get everything in order. I mean, is that basically what it's all about? Yeah. I mean, there's two things driving it. There is, I think, a desire for it from some people within Wales. So even though the Tudors are on the throne now, and even though they're making symbolic gestures towards Wales, I think many of the Welsh gentry felt they still weren't fully equal. And some of these laws are still there in the background. So there was a sense that amongst the Welsh gentry that they wanted legal equality with the English and the Acts of Union was a way to achieve that. But Wales was very complicated administratively. There were the marches still, which were under the control of individual English barons.

And then there is what was called the Principality of Wales, which was essentially the bit that used to be independent and then got taken by the English crown by Edward I. So there's almost like two Waleses. And in the Principality, Welsh law is still used in the marches. It's a bit of English law and a bit of Welsh law, really, often according to what would suit the local baron. And it was administratively complicated. And there was a sense of danger there as well, that it was a place of crime. But of course, also, by this period, the whole question of religion is starting to become important. The tensions between Catholicism and Protestantism. And as a Protestant state starts to emerge in England, Wales is seen as like a threat. You know, we can't have these irregularities.

And what we can't have as well is the danger of a Catholic invasion coming to England via Wales from Ireland. And of course, that's how Henry took the throne of England in the first place. He invaded England via Wales. So there is an attempt to kind of keep the Welsh on side to give more rights to their gentry, to iron out this complicated administrative situation. And Cromwell was a great fan of doing things, of bureaucracy in many ways. Making omelettes by cracking eggs. Yeah. And now the Acts of Union is seen as this moment of colonialism where Wales is essentially abolished as a separate political unit. Whereas the reality of the 16th century was it was way more complicated than that. It wasn't some attempt to say Wales no longer exists. There's no attempt to ban the Welsh language or anything like that. But well, quite the contrary, isn't it? Because the Bible is translated into Welsh. So that's a hugely significant development. And also, Wales now gets representation in Parliament.

It does get representation in Parliament. And that's symbolically important more than practically important, perhaps, because of course, they're a minority of the MPs at Westminster. And just as today, you know, Welsh voices in Westminster are easily drowned out by English voices. You know, the whole question of the United Kingdom, whether we're talking about this period or today, is the size of England compared to the other constituent nations. You know, English voices will always dominate the conversation. So Wales does get some representation through the Acts of Union. But as you said, the translation of the Bible, which happens a little after the Acts of Union, that's the really important moment, I think, in this period. And that's done with the approval of the English state as a way of ensuring that Wales joins this Protestant revolution and

isn't some kind of Catholic outlier on England's doorstep but what it does is give the Welsh language dignity and respect if you can hear the word of God in Welsh if you can pray to God in Welsh if you can be married in Welsh you know these are these are major things in people's lives. And I think today we forget the importance of religion in past societies. Not here. The word of God was everything. And the fact that it's available in Welsh gives the Welsh language status and dignity.

In a world where English was the language of law, it was the language of power, it was the language of politics. English was the language you needed to get on. And that meant it was very easy to portray Welsh as a backwards, uncivilized language. And that did happen a lot. But a language can't be uncivilized if the word of God is written in that language. And so the vast, vast majority of people in Wales are speaking Welsh throughout the 16th century, throughout the 17th century. And then with the 18th century, with the development of industrialisation, then things do start to change. And perhaps we could take a break at this point. And when we can come back, we could look at the coming of the Industrial Revolution to Wales and the impact that that has. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Look at what these bastards have done to Wales.

They've taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our houses and live in them for a fortnight every year. And what have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We've been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English. And that is who we are playing this afternoon. So that's the late Phil Bennett, the great Welsh rugby fly half in March 1977 before a five nations match, which Wales won 49.

And yet, as I imagine you will know, Martin, the irony of that is that just a few weeks later, Phil Bennett and a lot of his teammates joined up with the English to go on the British Lions tour of New Zealand. So that moment actually speaks to exactly what you're writing about, which is the complicated relationship between Wales and England. So that quotation from Phil Bennett, which I could see you smirking while I started to read it because it's very famous in Wales, isn't it? It is. He mentions coal, he mentions water, and he mentions steel. So we've cantered through the medieval period.

We've skipped over a little bit of the early modern. And as we approach the 18th and 19th centuries, obviously, coal and steel transform Wales, don't they? I mean, just explain, I guess, to the listeners, because previously Wales had been very, very rural. And then with the Industrial Revolution, it is completely changed. Yeah. If you go back to the middle of the 18th century, Wales is a rural backwater in many ways. It's isolated, it's marginalised. Probably at least 90% of the population only speak Welsh. Some of the gentry are kind of moving to England and have connections. But by and large, Wales is on the periphery of the United Kingdom and economically just not that important.

But the Industrial Revolution changes everything because Wales has the right minerals. It has coal in abundance, and not just coal, it has very good quality coal, but it also has the minerals you need to make iron and later on steel. And that changes Wales because suddenly it matters within the United Kingdom. The British government becomes more interested in Wales. It becomes interested in why do they not speak English there? And that question is asked because it doesn't seem to make sense to the English state because to them, English is the language of modernity and progress, et cetera. So how come a corner of our kingdom doesn't speak this language? And because industrialization

creates very difficult living conditions, working in coal industry or the iron industry was not a pleasant experience. Yes, the wages were better than living off the land, but the living conditions were very difficult as towns grew up very fast, full of disease, full of overcrowding, etc. So Wales starts to develop a reputation for being unruly. There are a series of riots and protests. The army is sent in on several occasions and opens fire and kills people. And as the English government is saying, well, what are we going to do about this? Attention starts to focus on the Welsh language. And the idea that maybe the problem is that the Welsh people don't speak the same language as the rest of us. And maybe we need to do something about that.

And that turns people's attention to the question of education. And MPs are saying, you know, it's cheaper to send some schoolmasters to Wales than to hold a unit of army there. Just before we come to education, because this is obviously such a massive thing, just on the Industrial Revolution and the coal and the steel and the huge development of the South Wales Valleys and so on. I mean, obviously, one thing that that does is it creates a great disparity between North and South Wales in a much more marked way than it existed before. But there are some historians, aren't there, who say,

well, this is basically a purely extractive economy. So this really is a colonial economy. The English are doing to the Welsh what they're doing to so many people around the world. They're just taking their resources and Wales is gaining nothing from this. Is that true? Well, I mean, it is literally an extractive economy because things have been dug out of the ground and sent to other places. It's a complicated one because there isn't a straightforward pattern. Some of the industrialists are English. Some of the early iron masters are English, but they settle in Wales. They become

part of Welsh society. Some of them learn Welsh. So it's a little bit misleading, I think, to call them English. In the coal industry, a lot of the big early developments are led by local entrepreneurs, you know, making money, looking for opportunities to make money. Yes, there are English coal owners, but the majority are Welsh. And of course, it's not always easy to distinguish between who is English and Welsh because you have families with Welsh backgrounds living in England, you have English families who settle in Wales where there is some extraction that's that's going on in many ways is in the mineral rights so if you were the local landowner you you were entitled to a share of the profits essentially when somebody dug things

out of your ground and a lot of the landowners like people like the Marquesses of Bute, were not local. And money is leaving Wales to go to England via the mineral rights. So industrialisation creates immense wealth, but just as in England, that wealth is very concentrated in a handful of pockets. In many ways, this is a story of class oppression rather than national oppression. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you about that. Wales is historically very much a Labour voting country, and presumably the roots of that lie in the Industrial Revolution. And the dilution of the sense that what is the principal differences between English and Welsh comes to be blurred, and it comes to be between the industrial masses and those who are profiting from their Labour. I mean, in the 19th century, Wales is a liberal

country. Wales is voting liberal. I mean, of course, it's not a full democracy in that period, but the Liberal Party see themselves as a symbol of Welshness. They promote the rights of non-conformity, and Wales was a chapel-going society, and that was a symbol of difference with England. The Liberal Party celebrate Welsh culture, Welsh language, Welsh history. You know, there is this middle class liberal establishment who are very much pushing a Welsh agenda, celebrating Welsh nationhood. I mean, some historians talk about Wales being reborn in the late 19th century. It rediscovers its history. It rediscovers its sense of identity. And that's part, of course, of European movement. You know, across Europe in the late 19th century, there are national movements and Wales is part of that.

And Wales is presumably very, very well suited to that because there really is a properly ancient Bardic tradition. And scope for dressing up as Druids is very, very rich and exciting. I mean, some of the traditions are invented. Yeah. But that's what romantic nationalism is all about, isn't it? Exactly. But they're drawing upon something real. Welshness isn't invented. The sense of history, the sense of difference to England is very profound because there was a real cultural difference. Even at the end of the 19th century you know half the population of wales speak a different language to england well that's that's not that long ago that's a massive thing isn't it

the issue of the language and education so so here's the sort of standard version i guess that i had read before i read your book and i guess a lot of people in Wales will tell you, which is that in the middle of the 19th century, the 1840s, Westminster, the directive comes down, stamp out Welsh. Everybody should learn English. Welsh is backward and primitive. And what the famous sort of embodiment of this is this thing that you have to wear around your neck at school called the Welsh knot. And if you're caught speaking Welsh, you put it on. And then the boy who's, or I guess girl, who's wearing it at the end of the day is punished in some way. And people are beaten for speaking Welsh. I mean, I can remember.

So my grandfather was Welsh. He had emigrated from Wales, as so many people did, in the sort of early years or middle of the 20th century. He'd lost his accent. He was still very proud to be Welsh. And I remember him saying to me when I was little, we were beaten at school for speaking in Welsh. And I have to say, he was a great teller of tall stories, which obviously does not run in the family at all. So I had my doubts even then. But Martin, your book suggests that this is all a little bit exaggerated and oversimplified. Is that right?

Yeah, it's complicated, the history. I mean, definitely in the middle of the 19th century, the British government was worried about Wales. And there is a sense that it is a threat in some ways. And the language being the obvious sense of difference, that's where attention focuses. And commissioners are sent to Wales Wales and they have this big education inquiry that says, you know, Welsh is a backwards language. It's holding the Welsh back from joining civilization. And the sooner the language sort of disappears, the better Wales will be. But actually not a lot actually happens after that in terms of policy, because, you know, the early and the mid 19th century, the British state is very small.

It's not actually doing an awful lot in terms of interfering in daily life in any sphere. There are limited grants available in the education, in the field of education, but by and large, this is a period of kind of laissez-faire politics. The government is hands off. So it has no respect for the Welsh language. It certainly would be happier

if the Welsh language died off, but it doesn't really do anything about that. But what does happen within Wales is that parents want their children to learn English because English is the language of modernity, you know, people look around and they see that anybody with a job that doesn't break your back speaks English. People understood that English was the root out of misery and poverty. And that meant schools, not out of some diktat from Westminster, but because of local pressures, are run through the medium of English. They're there to teach people English. The question is, how do you teach people who don't speak a language a new language? And some people thought the way to do that was to basically beat them if they spoke their domestic language. And the Welsh knot, this wooden board put around people's children's necks if they were heard to speak Welsh. That was to almost create a sense of shame and association between speaking Welsh and shame and being humiliated. Do the parents back this? The parents do seem to back it. There doesn't seem to be any kind of outcry against it and certainly there is some evidence that those kinds of measures are introduced in

some places at the request of parents. And most of the teachers in these areas are Welsh speakers. They're local people from the community. This is something that the Welsh people are doing to themselves. The government isn't telling them to, but the government agrees with the broad principle. The problem is it didn't work because what was literally happening in these schools was these kids don't hear English outside school because nobody's speaking it in the community. You know, in rural Wales, these are entirely Welsh speaking places. So they're coming into school. They've been taught to read these words through literally somebody putting them up on a blackboard or being given a book. And the teacher says the word and the children repeat after them. And they're learning how to say these words. They're learning how to kind of read.

But because nobody is telling them what these words mean in their own language, they have no idea what they are reading. That's not Duolingo, is it? So in that case, what is it that leads to the decline of Welsh, which has been such a core celebre in Wales in the 20th century? The key issue, I'd argue, is migration. So industrialisation creates well-paid jobs. You know, they're harsh communities, overcrowded communities, et cetera, et cetera. But ultimately, they are better paid jobs than living in the land. So people start to move into industrial Wales from places like Shropshire, the southwest of England, and then further afield.

And that brings the English language into working class communities for the first time in many ways. Now, initially, those early migrants learn Welsh because that's the dominant language of the community. But as their numbers grow, they stop learning Welsh. And increasingly, local people start learning English. And because they are starting to learn English at school, particularly after people start working out the Welsh not doesn't work, we actually need to teach them English through the medium of Welsh. As schooling, as education policies get better, people are learning English at school, and then they're using English in the community with these migrants. And as migration grows, the balance, the linguistic balance in industrial communities with these migrants. And as migration grows, the balance, the linguistic

balance in industrial communities starts to tip. Yeah. You've got some amazing stats here. You've got, so the Rwanda saw its population grow from under a thousand in 1851 to more than 150,000 by 1911. And you talk about the growth of Cardiff, which had been a small market town and ends up one of the, I mean, not just one of the most kind of important industrial ports, but one of the most cosmopolitan. Yeah. I mean, industry brings people from, you know, from all over the world and Cardiff has, you know, in some ways the oldest black community anywhere in the United Kingdom. It's very self-contained in the docks area of Cardiff, which are a little bit separated from the main city it's often treated appallingly by the local authorities there's considerable racism but industrialization does change the very structure of Welsh society and one other thing that as well as the English language

arriving there's an English game which the Welsh adopt as their own and I'm curious why why this and how this happens and that game game is, of course, rugby, which is now absolutely identified with Wales. I mean, Wales are obviously at the Football World Cup, which is why we're doing this story. But really, rugby has always been Wales' traditional game. Why? It's a sport of the English public schools. And some of the Welsh gentry, some of the Welsh middle classes are being sent to English public schools and are coming back with this game. But also because it was the sport of the English public schools and are coming back with this game. But also because it was the sport of the English public schools, it had some social status. And, you know,

when we think about why individuals decided to speak to their children in English rather than Welsh, it was because English had social status. And it's the same with, you know, with anything that's coming from England. There's some cachet to it. So people adopt rugby because of that. The sport spreads very quickly, but it very quickly becomes a symbol of Welshness because you have these diverse communities in industrial areas where people have come from all over the place.

Rugby enabled them to unite under kind of the banner of Welshness. It didn't matter if you're a middle class or working class, whether you spoke English or Welsh, didn't matter what your family heritage were a lot of the early welsh rugby players are migrants from england but they have moved to wales so they don the rest and the red shirt and because wales ends up with a very good rugby team in the late 19th century in the early 20th century that adds an emotional element to it because you don't want your national symbols to be something that you're bad at.

And because Wales happens to have a really good team, it becomes incredibly attractive. So rugby becomes a really powerful symbol of Welshness, which unifies people in a way that kind of language or politics doesn't. And I'd argue that through the 20th century, the fact that Wales had its own national teams in football and rugby is one of the key reasons

why Welsh identity has stayed so powerful. Well, I wanted to ask about that because, I mean, there's so much we will have to skip over. So there's obviously a Welsh prime minister, a Welsh speaker in David Lloyd George. As you say, Wales has become economically transformed in the previous hundred years. And I suppose one thing that you might not have been able to predict at that point was the revival of Welsh nationalism. So Plaid Cymru, the Welsh

Nationalist Party, is founded in 1925. Do you think the rise of Welsh nationalism was inevitable because it has 19th century roots, it happens all over Europe, nationalist parties and so on? Or do you think it is a distinctive story because obviously that economy in which Wales has built its new identity is doomed, actually? It's quite a short-lived moment, isn't it the the industrial golden age because as you say in your book the interwar years are dreadful for wales and then after that it's kind of downhill for coal and steel and all these things something must be done the future edward the eighth isn't it visiting the um the depressed areas so is nationalism a reaction to that or is it more just an inevitable like irish nationalism a product of that sort of swirl of 19th century ideas? The important thing to remember about Welsh nationalism in the early 20th century is that it's not political, it's cultural. The goal is not necessarily an independent Wales. The goal is protecting the Welsh language was so clearly in decline by the 1920s and the 1930s, partly because of these demographic changes we've already talked about, but also in the 20s and 30s, there's a mass migration from Wales because of the Depression.

And by the 20s and 30s, people are starting to think the Welsh language might actually die out in the next century. And unless we act, nothing is going to, you know, that's actually going to happen. So, you know, the initial kind of birth of Plaid Cymru and the first couple of decades of Welsh nationalism, it's not about politics. It's not about trying to rebuild the Welsh economy. It's about trying to protect the language. And indeed, in the early period of Plaid Cymru, there's actually an antipathy towards industry. And there's some people saying, actually, the future for Wales should be if we go backwards and we become another rural agricultural society again, because that's when Welsh was at its strongest. It's only in the post-1945 period does Welsh nationalism start to develop this political

edge and people start to really kind of debate, what is our relationship with Westminster? Should we have our own parliament? Should we be an independent nation? And so what is the state of play now in terms of that, in terms of Wales' sense of itself in relation to England and in relation to the idea of Britain? So Wales has retained a very strong sense of itself. Despite the paranoia in some ways of the early 20th century, Welshness did survive. The Welsh language was weakened, but Welshness itself survived because it wasn't just based upon the language. And as I said, sport is one of the reasons why I think that happened. So Welshness has continued to live on. But the question is, what does it mean? Should it have a political role? And increasingly, in the second half of the 20th

century, as successive governments in Westminster failed to deal with the economic problems of Wales, increasing numbers of people started to say, the only way to rebuild our economy is to take matters into our own hands. It's a minority throughout the period. And even today, opinion polls suggest maybe only a quarter of the population support Welsh independence. But it is growing. Part of the story there is Brexit because the United Kingdom

that people used to have an emotional connection to doesn't exist in many ways. Though Wales, a majority in Wales, voted for Brexit. They did, but not necessarily because they wanted to break away from the European Union, but because it was sticking two fingers up at the establishment, an establishment that had let them down. And I think it was really a vote against the establishment rather than a

vote for the nuances of Brexit. But what Brexit also showed was that major constitutional change can happen. 10 years ago, people were saying, you know, Welsh independence is a pipe dream. You know, it's not much more than 10 years ago that people were saying the idea that Britain would leave the EU, you know, that would have seen fantastical politics. Rapid change can happen. Major constitutional change can happen. So for those people on the left, Brexit has meant, I don't like the UK anymore. For those people on the right, Brexit has shown, actually, maybe we could become independent. And a lot of the arguments over Brexit about sovereignty, about looking after yourself,

about rebuilding the economy from the bottom up, those are the same ideas that can be applied to Welsh independence, to Scottish independence. And I know historians, I know from personal experience, historians are terrible, terrible predictors of the future. But if you were a betting man, do you think in our lifetime or our kind of children's lifetime, there will be an independent Welsh state? Or do you think the union with England is too deep-seated to undo? I think federalism of some form is inevitable. I don't think the United Kingdom can survive in its current form.

But the United Kingdom, like Wales, has proved remarkably resilient. And if it is able to change and to adapt to the demands for recognition and equality in Wales and Scotland, then that may well happen. Ultimately, what happens to Wales will depend on what happens in Scotland. We're doing this because England are playing Wales today, and there's all kinds of nationalist tub-thumping around the game. But at the same time, as with rugby, so with football, English and Welsh players know each other incredibly well. The relationship between clubs and the national teams is very, very strong. And so in that sense, I guess this match does hold up quite a good mirror to the complexities and the ambivalences of the relationships between England and Wales,

because it's not all just about hostility and nationalist anthems and so on. Absolutely. And we need to take a lot of things with a pinch of salt. When people sing sort of patriotic songs, that doesn't mean they hate their neighbours. A lot of this is kind of pantomime in many ways. Sports, sport football in particular is very much like that you know the the economies of wales and england are very closely related most people in wales have family probably um in england our societies are very closely related and that means that you know it is an inevitable that the two countries will will drift apart and even if they do even if there is um welsh independence scottish independence you know the united kingdom will

retain a cultural you know and and a social function you know we're a very small island and we're all too closely related but you know to completely break away from each other it's a nice conclusion now we didn't one thing we didn't talk about which i would like to quickly advertise to the listeners martin did a brilliant program on Radio 4 a couple of years ago. It was about the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales, wasn't it? That was the peg. But it also had this amazing story of this place called Treweren, where there was a little village that was flooded to make way for a reservoir to serve the people of Liverpool, which was a huge boost to- The colonialists of Liverpool. Yeah, the colonialists of Liverpool, exactly.

That's not a phrase you often hear. So that was a lovely programme. And for people who... I imagine you might be able to find it on Radio 4. It was actually really quite moving, Martin, I thought. Am I being too purple about your programme? There was lovely music and very haunting. It wasn't like the rest is history.

It's a really powerful story because here was a small entirely Welsh-speaking community that were moved from their homes to build a reservoir for England. This was about the loss of Welsh landscape. This was about the loss of the Welsh community. But it was also

about the relationship between Wales and England because most, not all, but most of the Welsh MPs voted against it. But it went through Parliament, because there are more English MPs than Welsh MPs. And now it's become like this badge in Welsh culture. And there's graffiti across Wales that says, cofioch drweryn, remember drweryn. And you're being asked to remember the loss of language, but also the inequality between Wales and England. Some people describe the relationship as being like in bed with an elephant. Whether it's trying to crush you or not isn't the point.

Inevitably, at some point, it will roll over and squash you. Well, let's hope that doesn't happen today, eh, Tom? Well, I reserve judgment on that. I actually feel very conflicted about the England-Wales match because I am a quarter Welsh and I always like to root for the underdog. I don't at all. Don't you? You want England to absolutely hammer the Welsh.

It's funny, actually, because I sometimes think, so the guy who used to run the books pages at the Sunday Times, he was a big rugby fan and an incredibly mild-mannered, sort of tolerant, nice person. And he absolutely loathed the Welsh rugby team. Absolutely loathed them. Andrew Holgate. Yeah, I think it's because he grew up in the 70s.

And he just said, you know, they used to rub our faces in it year on year. So there you go, Martin. That's a very bleak note on which to end. No, I think we should just re-emphasize that it is, on the footballing level, so much pantomime. It is pantomime, yeah.

Basically. And essentially, they're all friends. So being proud of your country doesn't mean you have to hate anyone else's. Oh, what a nice note. What a lovely note. On that bombshell. Thank you so much, Martin.

Thank you, everyone, for listening. And may the best team win bye-bye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club.

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