Welsh Journals

INDUSTRIALISM, URBANIZATION AND THE MAINTENANCE OF CULTURE AREAS: NORTH-EAST WALES IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY* THE impact of nineteenth-century industrial and urban growth on the social and cultural evolution of Wales is a topic worthy of a fuller exploration than it has received so far-if only to clarify existing controversies. Two opposing viewpoints have continued to come through in the written assessments published in the last two decades. On the one hand, it has been postulated that nineteenth- century industrialization emphasized cultural divisions because it brought in a large non-Welsh population which has never been fully assimilated. Moreover, in the urbanization of Wales an alien element has been transplanted into a distinctive culture area which has been both modified and modifier.1 In effect, Welsh culture has become the culture of rural communities, so much so that it is possible to recognize two broad culture regions within the country: I Inner Wales, in the north and west; and, in the south and east, Outer Wales.2 On the other hand, implications arising out of these interpretations have been vigorously challenged on a number of occasions. In an impressive argument published originally in 1959, with subsequent restatement, Professor Brinley Thomas writes: The telling fact, which historians have not noticed, is that the Welsh language was saved by the redistribution of a growing population brought about by industrialism If Wales had been an agricultural country like Ireland, the whole of her surplus population which was Welsh to the core would have had to go to England or overseas; these people, together with their descendants, would have been lost to the land of their birth for ever. This would have been a major disaster to the Welsh language .3 The author is indebted to Professor Richard Lawton of the Department of Geography, University of Liverpool, for his overall guidance in the research project on which this paper is partly based. He thanks also Dr. D. T. Herbert of the Department of Geography, University College, Swansea, and Professor Harold Carter of the Department of Geography, University College, Aberystwyth, for their comments on an earlier draft of the paper. 1 D. Williams, A History of Modern Wales (London, 1950), p. 269; D. Williams, 'Rural Wales in the Nineteenth Century', in A. J. Roderick (ed.), Wales through the Ages, II (Llandybie, 1960), 352; H. Carter, The Towns of Wales (Cardiff, 1965), p. 352. E. G. Bowen, Daearyddiaeth Cymru fel cefndir i'w hanes (Llundain (BBC), 1964). See also J. G. Thomas, 'The Welsh Language', in E. G. Bowen (ed.), Wales: a Physical, Historical and Regional Geography (London, 1957), pp. 253 et seq.; E. G. Bowen, 'Le Pays de Galles'. Trans. Inst. Brit. Geogr., No. 26 (1959), pp. 1-23. B. Thomas, 'Wales and the Atlantic Economy', Scots. J. Pol. Econ., VI (1959), 181-92; B. Thomas (ed.), The Welsh Economy-Studies in Expansion (Cardiff, 1962), pp. 26-29; B. Thomas, Migration and Urban Development (London, 1972), pp. 179-81.