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This is the first full-length study of Swansea’s urban development from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. It tells the little known story of how Swansea gained an unrivalled position of influence as an urban centre, which led it briefly to claim to be the ‘metropolis of Wales’, and how it then lost this status in the face of rapid urban development elsewhere in Wales. As such it provides an important new perspective on Welsh urban history in which the role of Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil and even Bristol are better known as towns of influence in Welsh urban life. It also offers an analysis of how Swansea’s experience of urbanisation fits into the wider picture of British urban history.
This volume tells a story of Welsh industrial history different from the one traditionally dominated by the coal and iron communities of Victorian and Edwardian Wales. Extending the chronological scope from the early eighteenth- to the late twentieth-century, and encompassing a wider range of industries, the contributors combine studies of the internal organisation of workplace and production with outward-facing perspectives of Welsh industry in the context of the global economy. The volume offers important new insights into the companies, the employers, the markets and the money behind some of the key sectors of the Welsh economy – from coal to copper, and from steel to manufacturing – and challenges us to reconsider what we think of as constituting ‘industry’ in Wales.
The first book to detail the global impact of copper production in Swansea, Wales, and how a major technological shift transformed the British Isles into the world's most dynamic center of copper smelting. Eighteenth-century Swansea, Wales, was to copper what nineteenth-century Manchester was to cotton or twentieth-century Detroit to the automobile. Beginning around 1700, Swansea became the place where a revolutionary new method of smelting copper, later christened the Welsh Process, flourished. Using mineral coal as a source of energy, Swansea's smelters were able to produce copper in volumes that were quite unthinkable in the old, established smelting centers of central Europe and Scandina...
A collection of essays, the contributors to this volume describe the experiences of Irish migrants who moved to Wales. The essays also examine in depth the social and cultural impact the Irish immigrants made on the country.
Street processions were a defining feature of life in the Victorian town. They were diverse in character and took place regularly throughout the year in all towns. They provided opportunities for men and women to display themselves in public, carrying banners and flags and accompanied by musical bands. Much of the history of nineteenth-century Wales has been written around political demonstrations and revolt, but this book examines how urban communities in Victorian Wales created inclusive civic identities by using the streets for peaceful processions.
A fresh account of the remarkable rise of Dundee as a global industrial city - and the origins of its later demise. The background to jute, the product most closely associated with Dundee, is investigated in unprecedented depth. The role of flax and linen as foundations for the jute industry is emphasised. The book challenges many perceptions of Dundee. Linen was as important to Dundee before c.1850 as jute was afterwards; the significance of jute pre-1850 has often been exaggerated by historians. Traditionally Dundee's success was attributed to the production of cheap coarse cloth for sacks, bagging etc. Yet many firms manufactured high quality, admiralty grade canvas, and colourful rugs an...
Places the British Industrial Revolution in global context, providing a fresh perspective on the relationship between technology and society.
The promotion of knowledge was a major preoccupation of the Victorian era and, beginning in 1831 with the establishment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a number of national bodies were founded which used annual, week-long meetings held each year in a different town or city as their main tool of knowledge dissemination. Historians have long recognised the power of 'cultural capital' in the competitive climate of the mid-Victorian years, as towns raced to equip themselves with libraries, newspapers, 'Lit. and Phil.' societies and reading rooms, but the staging of the great annual knowledge festivals of the period have not previously been considered in this context. T...
This book illustrates the diversity of the Irish experience by reference to studies of specific towns and regions which have hitherto received little attention from historians of the Irish in Britain during the Victorian period.
Based on the most recent historical research and current debates about Wales and Welshness, this volume offers the most up-to-date, authoritative and accessible account of the period from Neanderthal times to the opening of the Senedd, the new home of the National Assembly for Wales, in 2006. Within a remarkably brief and stimulating compass, Geraint H. Jenkins explores the emergence of Wales as a nation, its changing identities and values, and the transformations its people experienced and survived throughout the centuries. In the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, the Welsh never reconciled themselves to political, social and cultural subordination, and developed ingenious ways of maintaining a distinctive sense of their otherness. The book ends with the coming of political devolution and the emergence of a greater measure of cultural pluralism. Professor Jenkins's lavishly illustrated volume provides enthralling material for scholars, students, general readers, and travellers to Wales.