Welsh Journals

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The Cambrian Railways served a very real need: they brought com- munication to mid-Wales. If their economic viability was questionable, there can be no doubt that the social implications of the construction of the network were considerable. For a period they helped to arrest rural depopulation by providing employment, and generally they opened up mid-Wales to the outside world. Christiansen and Miller illustrate the way in which the Cambrian system stemmed from local initiative to serve local needs. Indeed, they show how, for nearly the whole of their long existence, the Cambrian Railways were local railways. The vision of Irish traffic and competitive routes faded, but the mere fact that the system survived almost intact until the early sixties of the present century is proof that it met a social need in mid-Wales. The Cambrian Railways is not a book for the general reader. It is a work geared essentially to the railway enthusiast, but it also has a strong appeal for the person who knew the network and who knows the area over which the Cambrian ran. A criticism of recent railway histories has been that they deal with their subject in vacuo, filling a volume with a dreary record of track laying, opening ceremonies and rolling stock lists, and making no attempt to relate the development of a railway to the social, economic and cultural development of an area. In the case of the Cambrian, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to divorce the develop- ment of the railway from the economic, social and cultural background of nineteenth-century mid-Wales. The authors succeed in showing this relationship, as well as providing as chroniclers the lists of official openings, rolling stock, etc. The Cambrian Railways were for so long a very impor- tant part of Wales that their contribution to the economic and social development of mid-Wales and the border in the nineteenth century cannot be neglected. Christiansen and Miller have produced a book which is both authoritative and entertaining. Their style is readable without being garrulous, and for those who knew the system in its declining years the illustrations are relevant and capture nostalgically the spirit of 'The Cambrian Railways'. ROBERT V. BARNES Swansea RICHARD COBDEN: THE INTERNATIONAL MAN. By J. A. Hobson. New Edition, with Introduction by Neville Masterman. Benn, 1968. Pp. 421. 45s. 'Free Trade is God's diplomacy': this dictum, included in a letter to the French liberal, Aries Dufour, in 1857, is the key to Richard Cobden's view of foreign affairs. Abandon militaristic adventures overseas, forsake