Wales, with a population of over three million on England’s western border, adds a rich Celtic block to the broader British state. As England's first colony, its economy, language, and broader socio-political society have long been entwined with the British Empire and the United Kingdom. The Welsh language sharply declined following colonization and industrialization which in the 18th and 19th centuries drew considerable migrant labor to mine, mill, quarry, and ship the raw materials that drove the Empire’s growth. Today, less than 20 percent of the population can speak Welsh, and 20th century deindustrialization has left some of the United Kingdom’s poorest counties in Wales.
These photographs, taken over the course of two years of fieldwork, capture a contemporary Welsh narrative much more diverse and divided than is stereotyped or institutionalized. National institutions like National Museum Wales or the National Eisteddfod, an annual festival, have historically pushed a standard narrative of Wales and what it means to be Welsh, but they operate within the legacies of colonialism, neoliberalism, and gentrification. Accordingly, they must find ways to balance Wales’ diversity. This also plays out in Cardiff, the capital city, where a new urban and economic geography, organized by the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, creates new landscapes that obscure the city’s economic history and drive further social divides.
Many people mistake National Museum Cardiff for “The National Museum of Wales.” At one time that would have been correct, but today, National Museum Wales includes seven museums, supports other heritage institutions in Wales, such as the Eisteddfod, and reaches beyond the walls to showcase events, performances, and other spaces to tell the many stories of Wales. This photograph taken during the 2017 National Eisteddfod in Y Lle Hanes [The History Place] ( St. Fagans National Museum of History ) demonstrates through eight stools the reach of the museum into other Welsh heritage institutions and the collective pluralistic narrative of National Museum Wales – seven equal parts of one greater whole.
These mosaics near the national Principality Stadium in Cardiff depict many of the stereotypical forms of Welsh identity: rugby, sheep, harps, castles, leeks, the Nonconformist church, mining, and choral singing.
The Welsh nation or language did not exist when the Romans invaded in the early 1st century, a point regularly made at the National Roman Legion Museum. Yet, the influence of Roman culture and society on the chiefdoms which would eventually form Wales, the Welsh language, and broader Celtic identity is clear. Here at the National Roman Legion Museum a wooden tablet with the oldest handwriting in Wales is in Latin not Welsh. Roman and Celtic culture continue to mix in the institutions and landscapes of Wales.
Tour guides and museum staff regularly help visitors navigate the museums’ narratives. In full Roman legionary dress, a staff member assists this young visitor with archery. Other events at the National Roman Legion Museum contextualize Roman cooking, medicine, and slavery with contemporary concerns of food, healthcare, slavery, and and labor. Likewise, the majority of staff members at the National Coal Museum are former miners, and the museums’ slate-splitters and weavers also bring their personal industrial experiences to the National Slate and Wool Museums. Visitors find these roles bring history to life.
At the center of Cardiff, the National Museum Cardiff houses the nation’s major art and natural science collections. Although one of the most visited tourist attractions in Wales, it struggles to operate at full capacity and regularly closed wings of the museum due to insufficient funds during my time there. In 2017, the museum, in partnership with the Welsh Government’s tourism office, Visit Wales, launched a system-wide effort aimed to attract visitors to the paid exhibition, Dinosaur Babies to offset decreased government support.
The split personality of Welsh identity comes through in National Museum Cardiff. On the ground floor fossil specimens, animals, and rocks found throughout Wales display a Welsh science, but there are also many scientific artifacts deemed important for the people of Wales. Likewise, the first floor’s art includes art painted by Welsh artists, art depicting Welsh landscapes, art purchased and donated by Welsh citizens, and art purchased by the museum for the people of Wales to experience. A controversy has waged since the 1970s about which of these collections are truly Welsh and belong in National Museum Cardiff.
St. Fagans Castle, at the National Museum of History, symbolizes the legacy of English Imperialism. Now flying the Welsh flag, the castle nonetheless still operates within the English introduced capitalist system. Its landscape and furnishings celebrate the material accumulation and labor exploitation begun under English colonial rule, while its café is staffed by temporary and underemployed workers.
While national attention and discourse may have shifted over the past twenty years toward Cardiff Bay, the historic center of the city and nation remains north of the City Centre. The epicenter of the old Welsh Mall, as I describe it, is Alexandra Gardens. The Gardens house many of the Welsh national monuments. From this angle you see the impressive Wales National War Memorial furthest back with the black and white plinth and stone from the 1982 Falklands Conflict in front. The foreground of this photo, however, shows the shadowed and (deliberately) worn memorial to the Welsh who fought in the Spanish Civil War. While many of the other memorials in Alexandra Gardens are to Welsh involvement in British actions, this memorial engages with a more independent, and in this case, socialist Welsh campaign.
Many heritage institutions, particularly outside of National Museum Wales, only offer a shadow of the economic wealth and job opportunity the economic activities they depict provided. Here, Cadw, the Welsh historic preservation branch of the Welsh Government, maintains the Blaenavon Ironworks. This industrial heritage, coupled with the Big Pit National Coal Museum, provides only a handful of jobs. Despite its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000, the town of Blaenavon has seen very little economic prosperity.
As a part of the UNESCO Blaenavon Industrial Landscapes, Big Pit and the surrounding area speak to the role Wales played in the global economy and international labor movements. However, these global connections fall short of engaging with imperial narratives associated with these industrial developments, such as fueling the British Empire. Likewise, the wealth generated from slavery which supported the slate industry in North Wales remains obfuscated within the Welsh heritage narratives.
From the 16th century to the 18th, English influence and markets made sheep raising and wool production among Wales’ most important economic activities. Sheep breeding reached its zenith in the pre-industrial Celtic fringe. Some of the best-known “native” Welsh sheep arrived as part of Irish, Viking, and Roman influence, occupation, and trade. The National Wool Museum states that landscape and industry were in harmony. However, the impact of the dye and other runoff from the mills, as well as all the water diverted into mill races, certainly affected the environment of Wales.
Half built into a brick warehouse and with train lines still running throughout the floors, the National Waterfront Museum’s new slate, steel, and glass building symbolizes the confluence of the past and present of Welsh industrial and urban life.
Dancers Eithne Kane and Beth Powlesland joined others at the National Waterfront Museum during the 2017 Swansea Dance Days in a weekend of performances on climate change and environmental destruction around the city. These events complement the museum’s Energy and Landscape galleries. Despite Wales’ long history of industrialization and environmental impact, from my visitor survey data, these two galleries were the least engaging in terms of Welsh history. Events like Dance Days and Roman reenactments can cut through the traditional narratives of the national museums.
The National Eisteddfod, literally the “sitting of the bards,” is an annual festival that travels between North and South Wales showcasing the best of Wales through the Welsh language. Poetry, music, literary, and other competitions accompany other traditions and contemporary concerts for ten days every August. It interweaves all the contradictory and complementary influences of Welsh heritage and landscape. This photo is from the main pavilion at the 2017 National Eisteddfod, held within a pay-to-enter walled field on an island off the coast of Wales. The 2018 festival, held freely and intermixed amid the urban landscape of Cardiff Bay, could not have been more different. Yet many of the internal landscapes of the festival did remain the same. There was still a history place, an art place, pavilions for literature and poetry, stages for major acts, ongoing social and political lectures, and the All-Welsh Rule kept the language at the forefront.
The National Eisteddfod holds an All Welsh Rule, which requires all official events at the festival to be conducted in Welsh. Thus, the 10-day event has come to be known as a bubble of Welshness that annually recharges the Welsh speaking. Despite being held in the English-dominated capital, the 2018 Eisteddfod actually had more Welsh speakers than the more isolated 2017 one because of its easy and open access. This monolingual sign in Cardiff Bay, nonetheless shows the prevalence of English, the difficulty of maintaining Welsh, and the cultural response to that monolingualism.
Cardiff Bay’s built environment highlights the capital and the nation’s past. In the foreground, remnants of the Cardiff Docks indicate one of the primary uses of the area. The bright red brick pierhead building at the center of the photograph symbolizes the wealth generated by the coal industry in Wales. Just right of the pierhead is the Senedd, or Welsh Parliament, created in response to the 1997 General Referendum that approved devolution from the UK’s Parliament and the creation of a new Welsh National Assembly.
The Welsh Senedd symbolizes the most significant shift in Cardiff over the past century. Previously centered in the aptly named Civic Centre, Welsh national consciousness has shifted to the newly developed Cardiff Bay. The area now houses many government buildings and other projects of the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, which significantly shaped the urban landscape of Cardiff south of the City Centre post-1980. These developments sit on the footprint of Butetown, once Cardiff’s docklands and coal exporting center. It has been a community of European, Asian, Middle Eastern, African, and American immigrants, and remains a center of Somali and Yemeni refugees. The governmental, tourist, and retail-focused bayfront stands in stark contrast to the core Butetown community to its north.
This Butetown mosaic contrasts strikingly with the earlier traditional mosaic. This draws on the multicultural history of Wales, Cardiff, and the economic development of the coal and shipping industry. There are specific examples incorporating transnational symbols like the red, yellow, and green dress symbolizing the wider Pan-African and Rastafarian movements which both saw prominence in the docklands of Cardiff and throughout Wales.
This Butetown mural with the national anthem, “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” [Land of My Fathers], in blue also invokes the rich poetic and historic traditions of Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, and Iraq. The mural complemented its sponsor’s (National Theatre Wales) production connecting the colonial histories of Wales and the Middle Eastern world. An anti-colonial Welsh chant transcends national bounds in this mural, where the “hostile array” of the British Empire can be understood beyond Welsh colonization to include the British involvement in Somaliland, Yemen, and Iraq, as well.
The only permanent memorials to women in Wales celebrate royal, spiritual, or mythical figures. Of the twenty-nine individuals in the Faces from Wales Gallery in National Museum Cardiff, only four are women. As this protestor at the 2018 National Eisteddfod on the steps of the Senedd asks in Welsh “But where are Cardiff’s women statues?” while a lecture on memorializing women took place inside. The first statue of an individual woman will go up in 2020. It is of Betty Campbell and honors her work for racial justice and education in Butetown, Wales, and the United Kingdom.
In another two of the Waterfront Museum’s galleries, Paul Robeson, the famous American artist, activist, athlete, and scholar, holds a prominent seat among “Welsh Achievers.” Here in the Communities Gallery, Robeson speaks via telephone in 1957 at the South Wales Miners Eisteddfod in Porthcawl. Because the U.S. State Department illegally seized his passport, Robeson could not travel for eight years, yet his ideologies of socialism, anti-colonialism, and human rights resonated with certain populations in Wales.
This connection between Paul Robeson and Wales continues, and at the 2018 National Eisteddfod, the first two opening concerts were a commissioned musical in tribute to Robeson called Hwn yw fy Mrawd [This is my Brother]. These connections signal an expanded effort on the part of the Welsh Government and Welsh national institutions to recognize both the multicultural influences within Welsh heritage and the multinational nature of Wales itself. Coordinated with the 2018 musical was the parade and film Carnifal y Môr honoring the heritage and continuing legacy of Eastern European, African, Middle Eastern, Caribbean and African American influence on the Welsh nation, particularly in the community of Butetown in Cardiff.
While the development of the Cardiff Bay continues to economically and physically dislocate and exploit people living in Butetown, it also creates spaces of memorialization. This statue of Ivor Novello, the famous gay Welsh playwright, looks back on the Wales Millennium Center and the ongoing 2018 Welsh National Eisteddfod. Only a few weeks later, Pride Cymru took over the City Centre, and during this Eisteddfod one prominent theme was Mas ar y Maes [out on the site]. These are clear indicators of an emerging inclusive discourse in the memory work and landscape of Welsh national institutions.
The importance of landscape throughout and surrounding the national institutions, as well as in the whole of Wales reflects an understanding of cynefin (a combination of landscape, haunt, and habitat). Cynefin roots an individual to the land. I experienced my own cynefin by tracing my ancestry back to the Vaughans of Tretower in addition to my overall field experiences. This cynefin also works in the opposite direction. There were plenty of interviewees attached to their cynefin, yet unable to access broader discourses of Welshness because their gender or ethnicity barred them from those typical narratives.
The last twenty years has seen an increasingly independent and powerful Cardiff-led Welsh government. This photo, taken during the 2018 National Eisteddfod just feet from the art installation, “The Heart of Wales,” in the center of the Senedd’s debate chamber further embodies the inescapable involvement of my own biases and character into the research. Particularly attempting to understand nation and identity as an American presents barriers of language, trust, and local knowledge that even months in the field and years of preparation cannot reverse. I do not pretend to be separate from my research as my own narratives shape my perception of memory, but I do strive to bring this research back to Wales in meaningful ways.
This photo essay demonstrates the ongoing challenge to Welsh memory and heritage of balancing traditional understandings of Welshness with an inclusive form of memory that includes legacies of colonialism, economic development, and minority voices in society. Welsh memory and national identity, even through national institutions, is a pluralistic discourse. Overlapping heritage themes permeate Wales from the conceptualization of being the first industrial nation to the significance of immigrants in national development to the porous situation of the Welsh language and urban development. In general, I found a subtle shift towards a more inclusive understanding of Welsh and a Welsh past through the national heritage institutions. Through this inclusion, what results is a multidimensional landscape of a multinational Wales.
Mark Rhodes is an Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of Social Sciences Michigan Technological University researching heritage and labor at the intersection of landscape, memory, and identity. This photo essay doubled as the conclusion to his dissertation on national institutions of heritage in Wales. He would like to thank many of the staff of National Museum Wales and the National Eisteddfod for their time and support, his advisor at Kent State University, Dr. Chris Post, and the American Association of Geographers, the Ethnic Geography Specialty Group, and the Kent State Graduate Student Senate, Division of Graduate Studies, and Department of Geography for providing financial support.