Ed George

[Post to the marxmail mailing list; October 2002.]

The first point is that I think we need to be wary of characterisations of Wales as a colonial nation , or of talk of occupation . If it is fundamental to understand that Wales is not England, it is also of equal importance to grasp that it is not Ireland either - the historical experience is in fact completely different: specifically, the Acts of Union of 1536, which formalised the incorporation of Wales into England, precisely did not make Wales a formal colony of England:

If colonialism is understood to be a specific, political relationship between two states, then quite the opposite [happened] in fact. […] As Gwyn Alf Williams has pointed out, it actually rescued us from colonialism. From being a disenfranchised and colonised people, the Welsh, or at least their ruling class, were made politically equal to their English counterparts.

More (html, 35 KB): A Note on Welsh History and Politics