‘Beer and Britannia’: public‐house culture and the construction of nineteenth‐century British‐Welsh industrial identity

Abstract

Prior to industrialisation, there was a nebulous and fragmented Welsh national character or mass collective identity. Industrialisation engendered significant sociocultural upheaval and change, and for this ‘new’ society to function effectively a cohesive Welsh identity had to emerge. Because the impetus behind industrialisation had occurred primarily in a British context, any newly formed Welsh identity would ultimately have to be reconciled to the nation's industrial import within a ‘United Kingdom’. Mass cultural commonalities and the role played by leisure in this procedure is a core element in the establishment of industrial modernist nation‐states. Therefore, this article argues that public‐house culture played a central role in the construction of a new industrial Welsh national ideology that was ultimately allied to, and a constituent of, a British imperial agenda designed to exploit both the natural resources and workforce of the area to its maximum extent.

Good, homely, troublesome or improving? Historical geographies of drinking places, c. 1850–1950

“…Drinking places were home to rich associational cultures as well as informal sociability. British pubs hosted political groups (Harrison, 1973), artisan botanists (Naylor, 2002;Secord, 1994), sports fans (Collins & Vamplew, 2002), Friendly Societies (Cordery, 2003), and literary societies and eisteddfods (Lambert, 1983;Pritchard, 2012). Social clubs, established as an alternative to pubs, provided facilities for both education and leisure (Cherrington, 2012;Tremlett, 1987).…”

The United Kingdom and British Empire: a figurational approach

“…This fitted more broadly with the proudly dubbed belief that Wales represented 'Ancient Britain' (Jenkins 2008), which affirmed 'their standing as the first possessors of the British Isles, as the speakers of the senior "British" tongue and as the guardians of the authentic "British" history' (Jenkins 2008, 172). In doing so, Welsh culture and British imperialism were interdependently woven into the fabric of the Welsh identity (Pritchard 2012).…”

Imagining the Welsh nation in a post-patriarchal, post-national world:Y Gwyll/Hinterlandand the re-construction of trans/national masculinity

“…That masculinities would be at the forefront of the critical investigation of nation in Hinterland is probably not surprising, considering the place of masculinities in the historical construction of Welsh identity. Ian Pritchard (2012), examining the development (and decline) of public house culture in Wales in relation to the construction of national identity in the nineteenth century, indicates: the male-only major heavy industries of coal and steel combined with the emerging constituents of the new industrial leisure culture, such as public houses and rugby football, to produce a Welsh collective consciousness that was overwhelmingly masculine. (p. 336) In this description, the nation is not only enacted by men, but also culturally constructed with reference to them.…”