Welsh Journals

enthusiasm is reserved for the Unitarians and his identification of the 'Black Spot' around the Teifi valley which was associated with the shift from Calvinism to Arminianism to Arianism. This is not exactly a new discussion, but the author handles his printed sources well and introduces details from a most interesting find, the diary of John Thomas (1784-1861), pastor of Pontydefaid. Perhaps the most problematic chapter is that entitled 'Issues', where the author tries to relate religion and the nonconformists to political and reform movements. He takes on board rather too trustingly the Calvinist- Arminian dichotomy as a template for caution or progressiveness, without fully evaluating the inherently highly individualistic nature of Protestantism or the nuances within Calvinism, particularly by 1851. The subtle transformation from sectarianism to denominationalism requires more attention too, perhaps by re-emphasising the series of fervent 'awakenings' which took place from 1780 onwards and were still unfinished in 1851, and by highlighting further the changes in the social background of the 'methodized' preachers and pastors. These reservations notwithstanding, what we are given here are features which made for the formation of a distinctive, if not original, Welsh pattern of religious practice and mores-chapel orientated, scriptural and popular. W. P. GRIFFITH Bangor WAS WALES INDUSTRIALIZED? ESSAYS IN MODERN WELSH HISTORY. By John Williams. Gomer Press, Llandysul, 1996. Pp. 272. £ 12.95 (paperback). Of course Wales was, and surely is, industrialized. Has not the very essence of Welsh material progress over the past two centuries been the growth of its industrial activities which have found, and formed, and partly fashioned the mineral wealth of the country? Was not Swansea the world's major centre of non-ferrous metal smelting for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; did not the many works dotted along the northern rim of the south Wales coalfield, and including the major establishments of Dowlais and Cyfarthfa, make the upper reaches of the valleys of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire the world's major centre of wrought-iron manufacture during the first half of the nineteenth. century; and of course was not the prosperity of south Wales ever and inextricably linked to its ability to sell the black gold, so hard won, to the rest of the world? In north Wales, also, did not the coalfield stretching up to and along Deeside form