The history of the British Isles is an uneven affair, to put it mildly.

We’re
familiar with how Scotland and Ireland drew the imperial short stick and
enjoyed the pleasure of being sat upon by England. But perhaps the shortest
stick of the bunch was drawn by Wales, who is often left out of the discussion
entirely!
And while I’m shocked that anybody could gloss over the country that
has a freakin’ Dragon Flag, Wales has been tragically sidelined from the
historical narrative of the isles, and I will not stand for it.
Wales has impressively and improbably maintained a distinct Celtic
culture since the very start, and it is far too cool for historians to be doing them
dirty like that. So, to see how Wales did the hard-carry for Great Britain’s
culture for 2,000 straight years, Let’s do some History.
A proper understanding of this whole “Wales” business requires us to go
wayyy back in British history [Stonehenge] Nope, too far, [Celtic art] yeah there
we go! See, Celtic culture in Britain is the foundation of what will eventually
become Wales, but these guys aren’t the easiest to get a handle on.
The Celtic or Gallic people stretched out from Central Europe towards
Gaul, Iberia, and the British Isles, but also went southeast towards the Black
Sea, and one problem for us loser historians is that it’s unclear how and even
kinda “IF” they settled in Britain.
There are competing theories for Who When Where and Why, ranging
from the standard Migration models to the possibility that very few Celts
actually settled in Britain.
Logic being that oversea trade was key to the Bronze Age economy, and
Britain’s tin deposits made them a big export hub. Since tin is half the chemical
structure for bronze, that meant people from all over Europe and the
Mediterranean came to the Atlantic coasts to get their bronze on, and this
includes
our Celt-bois.
So it wasn’t mass migration that brought Celtic people to Britain, but
rather local Britons who buddied up with Celtic traders by speaking their
language and copying their swirly La Tène art. So according to this “Meme”
model, the local Britons thought Celtic culture was LOL So Relatable XD that
they adopted it all up and down the isles.
Whether or not this model is fully accurate, it would account for some
weird archaeological and linguistic discrepancies in the traditional migration
theory, and it also foreshadows the prestige placed on bards and literary
prowess by later Celtic cultures.
Because it’s equal parts cool as all hell and existentially horrifying that a
culture can, basically by itself, take hold of an entire population by willing itself
into existence. This would be our first indication that Wales has Big Eldritch
Energy. Other civilizations, however, would not follow his lead, because the
Romans found that culture was best delivered by spear-point.
While on their way to fill out their pan-imperial punch-card and get their
th
10 new province free, Roman emperors in the mid-first-century campaigned
into Britain. Most Roman settlements were in the south and east [Londinium,
Eboracum] where all the easy agriculture was, and although Goods, Coins, and
Roman Legions did make their way west, the cultural and linguistic impact on
so-called Britannia Secunda was only slight.
Perhaps the most transformative thing the Romans did in Wales was
leave, because the Post-Roman migrations from central Europe into Britain
totally upended the island’s demographics. Frustratingly, it’s nigh-impossible to
show this kind of thing clearly on a map, which is why turbulent centuries in
history with slim documentation make Blue a sad boy, but here’s the gist.
We know the Angels, Saxons, and Jutes from northern Europe arrived
and displaced many of the Romano-Britons, but over in the west there was also
an influx of Irish Celts coming in to settle.
This Age of Migrations was much more overtly migratory than the Celtic
arrival in Britain the millennium before, though, again, the native Britons didn’t
really leave.
After a few decades of raiding gave way to much more peaceable
settlement, most Britons were happy to start speaking Germanic and make
friends with their new Saxon neighbors than to up and book it for the hills. Still,
the end result was the confinement of native Celtic culture to the far west in
Wales and Cornwall.
And that split explains why it’s called “Wales” — it comes from the
Germanic word Walha, meaning Foreigner, while the Welsh call it Cymru, from
the Celtic word for Countrymen.
It’s also in this migratory shuffle that the legend of the Romano-British
King Arthur first pops up, though it’ll be a couple centuries before he’s labeled
as Arthur, or a King. Honestly, the whole early medieval period in Wales has
this pseudo-mythic, Age-of-Heroes vibe to it.
 Good documentation is Bleh, what else is new, but the oral traditions that
will later become the core of Welsh epic literature get their start in this era. So
as far as we can tell, what was going on in medieval Wales?
Well, isolation from Germanic-majority England was good for preserving
a unified Celtic culture, but the politics were much more wibbly. Various local
princes vied for hegemony over the many disparate realms, but succession
always proved their undoing, as sons would squabble and big kingdoms would
shrink back to where they started.
The princes of Gwynedd and Powys were the most successful of the
bunch, and as a result, King Offa of Mercia built a dyke across his border in the
late 700s to try and keep Powys out. But that worked about as well as any
frontier walls have worked throughout history, which is to say, barely. So
despite the best attempts of Saxon Kings and the Irish Sea, Wales wasn’t
entirely cut off from the rest of the world, as they had gotten onboard with
Christianity thanks to the Missionary St. David back in the 6th century.
They might not have been the most consistent of pen-pals with the Pope
in Rome, but they were mostly on the same page. Wales’ early medieval history
of relative chill was aided by England’s near-constant Viking tire-fire, which
pushed “conquer Wales” wayyy down the To-Do list. But that changed when
our old pals the Normans Kite-Shielded their way to conquering England.
Because suddenly this new Norman England had a much stronger army, and
they proceeded to point it right at Wales.
Norman lords pushed into Wales along the northern and southern coasts,
and made some but not a lot of progress. Since Wales was made of small
principalities, the Normans could play the Welsh off each other, but then all of
their gains were only incremental. Not so easy as winning Hastings and calling
it a day. While casual war was the standard for the next two-hundred years
along the borderland Marches, elements of Anglo-Norman and Welsh
culture made their way across.
The princes of Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth picked up some
Norman political structures, and England learned about Welsh Longbows the
hard way. Although Wales didn’t form into a unified nation, they did get close a
couple times. Llywelyn Fawr fought off his family members to become prince
of Gwynedd and proceeded to bap all of his enemies out of the way so that he
could assert his hegemony over Wales.
 He also tried to streamline the rules for royal succession so every
interregnum didn’t immediately explode into a civil war. He then pushed
eastward into the March and defeated King John of England so handily that
his Barons made him sign the Magna Carta to stop being such a royal knob.
Llywelyn’s military successes weren’t quite matched by his grandson, uh, also
Llywelyn. Though he did the Biggest Prince In Wales routine again, he was
defeated by England’s King Edward Longshanks.
The next year, in 1283, Edward pushed into Wales and stomped out the
princes, using the old Norman trick of building a buttload of castles in newly
conquered territory to stop the locals from getting ideas. In a twist that should
surprise no one, England needed more than a few of these to do the trick, so
Wales has the highest castle-density of any country in Europe, with over 600
built and 100 still standing today.
That is, and I really cannot stress this enough, a stupid amount of castles.
That’s the density-equivalent of twenty-three castles in New York City, with a
less-impressive but still formidable two castles just in Manhattan. Good Lord.
In any case, the Post-Conquest period was a weird century for Wales. Suddenly
they were subordinate to England, but soon they got tied up in the 100 years war
and then everybody had Plague to contend with.
So while it was a real wacky time, it was also surprisingly indicative of
the history still to come, as England goes about its business while holding a
pillow over Wales’ face, gently shushing them and hoping nobody notices.
Forgive me for speed-running the next several centuries but I’ve already done
the England plotline once and that was painful enough. A century after a
thwarted independence uprising in 1400, Wales had the good fortune to pull a
reverso and put a Welshman on the English throne.
The man in question was one Henry 7, notable ender of the War of the
Roses, and he set Wales up for greater integration with England and way more
rights than they had before. This all became official via the Laws in Wales Acts
passed by Henry 8 in the mid 1500s. He drew up county borders, standardized
laws, gave Welshmen equal status as Englishmen, and gave Wales
representation in parliament. And as an added bonus of Henry’s hop over to
Protestantism, the church translated the Bible into Welsh.
This protection of the Welsh language coincided with a new interest in
medieval culture and ancient literature, and Language became a defining feature
of the Welsh identity. While all this was going on, the political story of Wales
got folded into the larger English narrative, what with the Spanish Armada-ing,
the Union-Of-The-Crowns-Of-England-And-Scotland-ing, and the Creation-Of-
A-Globe-Spanning-Empire-ing.
Despite playing second fiddle… eh, well, maybe closer to fourth — in the
history of the British Empire, Welsh literature was rising in prominence during
the Romantic movement, thanks in part to some shiny new editions of classic
works.
Specifically, Lady Charlotte Guest compiled and published the four
branches of the Mabinogi; and doubly translated too, so Welsh and English
readers could both enjoy the medieval folklore. In contrast to Scots Gaelic
going kaput and Irish Gaelic suffering a steep decline in the 1800s that they’re
only recently bouncing back from, Welsh literature and poetry came in clutch
for the long-term endurance of the language.
But while the Romantic era was in full swing, so too was the Industrial
Revolution. So all these fancy new machines and choo choo trains needed coal
if they wanted to do anything, and Wales happened to have a crap ton of the
stuff. Southern Wales swiftly became the mining capital of the empire, and
while coal and slate may have been big busines, they were also hellish jobs to
work.
So Wales ended the century more urbanized than it had ever been, but the
Welsh probably weren’t so thrilled about why, especially as British attitudes
towards them soured and Wales got the dingy reputation shared by all other
regions doing heavy industry. Although the 1900s started out pretty rough, what
with the coal mining and a nasty spell of discrimination against the Welsh
language in schools and work, Wales turned a corner after the Second World
War.
Industry diversified, and politicians campaigned for more regional autonomy
and protections for the language.
The Welsh Language Acts of 1967 and ’93 elevated Welsh to par with
English: granting bilingual signage, the right to use Welsh in legal proceedings,
and Welsh-language broadcasting. So now, a third of Wales can speak the
native
language. And in 1999, Wales (and also Scotland but that’s a different story)
got its own national assembly, later promoted to Parliament. And that’s Wales!
Far too often sidelined in the history of the isles, Wales has an enchanting
historical vibe the other 3 countries lack. Maybe it’s the ancient Celtic language
and the dragon flag getting to me, but Wales feels older, like you can wander
slightly too far off a hiking trail and stumble into Narnia. As anybody who
knows Welsh can confirm, it just sounds like the language Dragons would
speak.