Welsh Journals

Professor Glanmor Williams writing on the cultural bases of nationalism in Wales emphasizes the creative activity of the nineteenth century in forming Welsh nationalism. Nearly all the Welsh words for nationalism appear for the first time in the 1850s and 1860s (p. 123). The chapels, and a wealth of books and newspapers, all using the Welsh language, helped to create 'an informed and self-conscious public opinion among the Welsh speaking population over practically the whole of Wales'; and 'an awareness of social and cultural distinctiveness among whole new social groups of industrial workers and tenant farmers for the first time' (pp. 121 -2). However Professor Williams discerns in the history of Wales two nationalisms-a language-based 'new nationalism', and an older state-based, 'old nation' nationalism, which accepted both English and British loyalties. Hence he is able to explain the comparative failure of the new nationalism in the twentieth century-and the explanation is cultural rather than economic. The comparisons with the nationalisms of northern Europe are rewarding but like many such broad ranging comparisons, promise more than they deliver. The editor, in a skilful concluding paper, draws out some insights: language confirms rather than creates nationalism; newspapers and printing are neglected sources of nationalist development (in Britain, London's newspaper dominance is crucial to the maintenance of the union); nineteenth-century nationalism is related to the social and cultural consequences of economic change, not to a simple recognition of economic grievance. Grand failures and collapses-the famine in Ireland, military defeat in Denmark-have complex consequences for the national movements. In Scotland, 'the demand for more national recognition appears closely related to cultural decline and institutional failure' (p. 141). Everywhere the expansion and democratisation of the state is the necessary basis for modern statist nationalism. Rosalind Mitchison concludes with Butt Philip that: 'It is the protean strength of nationalism that it can take many forms religious or secular, martial, historic, racist, internationalist, intellectual or philistine. It can appeal to a sense of injury or to one of achievement' (pp. 166-7). But is this variability not a weakness? Political movements require a principle of organisation, a dynamic, and objectives. Nationalism has not found the One Great Truth on which to base a revolutionary politics. Hence nationalist movements are doomed to disintegration. This is a comforting conclusion for a liberal pluralist. P. J. MADGWICK Oxford BIOLOGY OF MAN IN HISTORY: SELECTIONS FROM ANNALES: ECONOMIES SOCIETIES, CIVILISATIONS. Translated by E. Forster and P. M. Ranum; edited by R. Foster and O. Ranum. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975. Pp. 205. £ 3.50. This book contains the first of a projected series of translations from the French journal Annales E. S. C. The subjects (contraception, diet, disease, and the use of blood groups in studying types of customary law)