The Welsh identity has always been separate to the English and only ever weakly subsumed under the British identity.
They have their own language & their own separate cultural heritage, particularly focused on public performance of music and poetry. After incorporation into England a distinct Welsh sensibility was maintained through religion with the high numbers of non-conforming protestant churches inside Wales staying formally and doctrinally separate from the Church of England. There has been no established state Church in Wales for over 100 years at this point.
The process of state formation in Britain involved a conscious and continuous effort to denigrate the Welsh language & promote the Church of England as with similar processes in Ireland.
If this does not constitute a separate ethnicity then the Irish, the Finns, the Sami, the Basque & even the Hungarians are not separate ethnicities than the capitals that used to or still do rule over them.
Hell, are the English even really separate to the French? Are we all actually Anglos because we've grown up under modern capitalism?
If this does not constitute a separate ethnicity then the Irish, the Finns, the Sami, the Basque & even the Hungarians are not separate ethnicities than the capitals that used to or still do rule over them.
Lack of shared language?
Are we all actually Anglos because we've grown up under modern capitalism?
All the examples I gave have elites speaking a common language, be it Swedish, Castilian Spanish or Austrian German: in the same way Welsh, Gaelic and Irish elites spoke English while their subjects spoke their native languages prior to the process of state formation from the 18th century onwards.
Hence by this schema there is no English ethnicity prior to the modern era as the elites all spoke French and were part of the shared common cultural history; which is why I am dubious about the analytical value of this framing.
The Welsh identity has always been separate to the English and only ever weakly subsumed under the British identity.
They have their own language & their own separate cultural heritage, particularly focused on public performance of music and poetry. After incorporation into England a distinct Welsh sensibility was maintained through religion with the high numbers of non-conforming protestant churches inside Wales staying formally and doctrinally separate from the Church of England. There has been no established state Church in Wales for over 100 years at this point.
The process of state formation in Britain involved a conscious and continuous effort to denigrate the Welsh language & promote the Church of England as with similar processes in Ireland.
If this does not constitute a separate ethnicity then the Irish, the Finns, the Sami, the Basque & even the Hungarians are not separate ethnicities than the capitals that used to or still do rule over them.
Hell, are the English even really separate to the French? Are we all actually Anglos because we've grown up under modern capitalism?
Lack of shared language?
"The European Garden"
All the examples I gave have elites speaking a common language, be it Swedish, Castilian Spanish or Austrian German: in the same way Welsh, Gaelic and Irish elites spoke English while their subjects spoke their native languages prior to the process of state formation from the 18th century onwards.
Hence by this schema there is no English ethnicity prior to the modern era as the elites all spoke French and were part of the shared common cultural history; which is why I am dubious about the analytical value of this framing.