Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

REVIEWS MODERN WALES, 1536-1990: PORT TALBOT, CAMBRIDGE AND PENNSYLVANIA Philip Jenkins observes at the beginning of his sparkling A History of Modern Wales, 1536-1990 (Longmans, 1992, pp. xii, 452. £ 32 hardback; £ 14.99 paperback) that it is a foolhardy thing to write the history of a country over a long time-span. He might have added that it compounds the folly to review other people's efforts shortly before producing your own: critics will be given a rod with which to smite you. He has called for a total history which stresses the social and economic distinctiveness of Wales and finds Geraint Jenkins's Wales unbalanced and Whiggish.' Yet if anyone is equipped for this task it must be the author of the distinguished The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry, 1640-1790 (Cambridge, 1983), who produces articles at a rate which must send the bibliographer at the National Library in constant search of extra RAM packs. He combines this with a boldness which makes the most of the long time-span by making fruitful comparisons across the centuries, and in the process often reveals an essayist's gift. Many will plunder his pithy remarks and append 'Discuss' to them. There is, of course, nothing foolish in Professor Jenkins undertaking this exercise: he has written an important and stimulating book. It appears some forty years after David Williams's History of Modern Wales (1950). There are parallels between them, in that they cover broadly similar periods (David Williams went back to 1485, though he lost interest about 1890) and both provided up- to-date syntheses of the modem period for their time. Philip Jenkins was not even born when Professor Williams's book appeared. David Williams looked at Wales from the perspective of a Rhydwilym Baptist. His other influences were French, though he soon forsook the French Revolution for the Wales of the Chartists and Rebecca. Philip Jenkins comes from Port Talbot, studied at Cambridge and now teaches in Pennsylvania State University. These are not simply biographical details but the contours of his approach to modern Wales. John Davies's Hanes Cymru (1990) has shown us the emotive and analytical power of triads of places. He will forgive my appropriation of it. David Williams wrote with the values of rural Wales very much in his mind. Welsh radicalism originated there, and he was always inclined to associate Welshness with rural Wales rather than with industry. This was a much wider current in approaches to Wales and some years later Emrys Bowen produced a sweeping interpretation of Welsh history in which the western portions of Wales ('inner Wales') nurture tradition and a slow-changing Welshness while dynamic change comes from 'outer Wales', essentially the borders and the south Wales coastal plain. It was not without its critics. Glanmor P. Jenkins, 'A New History of Wales'. Historical Journal, 32 (1989).