Welsh Journals

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most penetrating criticism comes from the pen of the author himself, who admits that the absence of a conceptual framework within which local politics in Wales might adequately be understood, which necessarily must be anchored to the body of other comparable urban histories, has placed severe limitations on this work. Although studies by John Davies on Cardiff, and those of Briggs, Dyos, Fraser, Hennock and others on the structure of politics in English cities spring to mind, Jones's point remains generally valid. But by pressing on regardless with this study he has himself started the process of redressing the balance. Let it be the first of many. ALED JONES Aberystwyth THE WELSH IN CANADA. Edited by M. E. Chamberlain. Canadian Studies in Wales Group, 1986. Pp. 102. Most of the studies of the Welsh abroad-whether in Liverpool, Slough, Scranton or the Chubut-have been self-laudatory hagiography. The times are changing. Glyn Williams's work on Patagonia and Merfyn Jones's on Liverpool show exile as a complex of attitudes and the research of Bill Jones on Pennsylvanian Welshness in the nineteenth century, like that of Andrew Chandler on the new Midlands Welsh of the 1930s, is uncovering a cultural phenomenon made more nakedly revealing by the loss of the blanket of home. Now, these recent developments are complemented by the welcome publication of papers given at a conference held in University College, Swansea, in 1986 under the auspices of the Canadian Studies in Wales Group. Dr. Muriel Chamberlain, who has edited the essays, adds a short paper which, with characteristic foresight, she 'held in reserve in case of the late arrival of any of the distant speakers'. We are not told if the distance refers to Bangor or New Brunswick but, thankfully, all five speakers did arrive, and did deliver. The longest essay is that of Professor Wayne Davies, late of Pontypridd and Swansea, but long resident in Calgary where his interest in urban geographical 'number-crunching' has been diverted, by Welsh blood and the Canadian climate, into a geographical overview of 'The Welsh in Canada'. The result is an essay that places all of us in his debt as it surveys incisively, and often magisterially, the bibliographical and historiographical scene to date. The paucity of Welsh emigration to Canada-between 0.2 and 0.8 per cent of the Canadian population between 1871 and 1961­ does not prevent a rich detailing of their doings and some lucid reflections on acculturation up to 1945. It is an excellent foundation for future work and has appended to it a decidedly useful list of secondary sources. Primary research led Professor Peter Thomas, another Welsh-Canadian exile, to investigate the first Welsh settlements and, notably, the voyages of the Brig Albion just after the Napoleonic Wars. His paper here is drawn from his book on the same subject. Distress, economic and social, at home may have activated the early settlers but, as Peter Thomas shows most eloquently, it was culture and religion which bonded