Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 2 - Wales in Britain

  • from Part I - Origins
  • Edited by Andrew Murphy, Trinity College Dublin
  • Book:
    The Nation in British Literature and Culture
    Published online:
    20 July 2023
    Print publication:
    10 August 2023, pp 34-50

  • Summary

    Historically, the idea of Britain is closely tied to Wales and the Welsh people, who saw themselves as the sovereign rulers of the island nation of Britain, cruelly dispossessed by the Saxons. This chapter traces the historical processes by which the kingdom of England first asserted and then legally established its right to include Wales within the nation of England, appropriating Britishness as a proxy for Englishness. This ideological strategy, first normalised by the Tudors and resisted through Welsh literary production, continues to the present day. In the twentieth century, the rise of Anglophone writing in Wales challenged the link between the Welsh language and Welsh nationhood, but increasing immigration and the achievement of devolution in 1999 encouraged a more inclusive and multilingual national identity. Though political devolution has enabled Wales to define itself as a substate nation within a federated state, the ideological impetus to claim Britishness for itself continues across the border in England.