Welsh Journals

are also a number of surprising omissions from Dr. Lindsay's biblio- graphy-Elizabeth Beazley's book on Madocks; R. Emrys Jones's Canrify Chwarelwr; Gwynfryn Richards's paper in Trans. Caerns. Hist. Soc., vol. 29 (1968), on the quarries of Dyffryn Nantlle etc. Further gaps in the study are the lack of a satisfactory map, and of tables and graphs presenting data on output, prices, trade and wages consecutively for as much as possible of the period covered. The absence of a subject index is especially unfortunate in a book where much of the treatment is chronological so that discussion of particular topics is dispersed. These are aspects of what the present reviewer regards as a major weakness of the work-the lack of sufficient sustained analysis, as in the studies of Dylan Pritchard, of the forces involved in the growth, decline and operations of the slate industry. Nevertheless, the book contains much of lasting value, and reading it has been a pleasurable and instructive experience. R. O. ROBERTS Swansea BEFORE REBECCA: POPULAR PROTESTS IN WALES, 1793-1835. By David Jones. Allen Lane, 1973. Pp. 287. £ 3.50. The history of modern Wales and the study of popular protest and riot are flourishing subjects, and Dr. David Jones's Before Rebecca makes a significant contribution to both. It is not so much a coherent book as a series of virtually self-contained studies framed by an introductory essay on 'Welsh Society in the Late Eighteenth Century', and an interesting final chapter of 'Interpretation' and generalization. Two chapters deal with pre-industrial unrest-corn riots and resistance move- ments by small farmers and squatters; two with industrial conflict-the 1816 south Wales strike and the 'Scotch cattle'; two with disturbances during the Reform crisis-Carmarthen and Merthyr in 1831; and one with the machinery of law enforcement. Quite apart from the substantial merits of the text, Dr. Jones is to be congratulated for his sense of geography, as illustrated by some useful distribution maps and the diagrams of the spread of action in industrial south Wales. Some of the movements described have already been the subject of an extensive literature, notably the Merthyr riots of 1831, but in general Dr. Jones's treatment, always based on primary research, must be regarded either as the first comprehensive account or-as in the case of the admirable chapter on the 'Scotch cattle'-as the best available analysis. The chapters on pre-industrial unrest, which seem largely to break new ground, especially about the struggles of the squatters, have no comprehensive precedents. Before Rebecca clearly contains only a selection of the disturbances Dr. Jones has investigated in Wales for the period 1790-1832, though he points out that several parts of Wales were not much affected, and does not claim that there was more violence during his period than before or after it. No systematic explanation for the relative immunity of, e.g.,