South Wales was one of the main centres of the Industrial Revolution in Britain but the story of the rapid growth of an industrial society there has not yet been fully told, since much of the work done has consisted of articles rather than books. This volume brings together a selection of important contributions hitherto only accessible in a large number of scattered periodicals. These articles have been selected to present a considered sequence and are preceded by an introduction which puts the story of the industrialization of Wales into perspective. They deal firstly with the problems of population and migration then with the basic industries of iron, coal, tinplate and copper. These are followed by essays on banking, and the volume concludes with contributions on trade unionism and building. This is by no means merely the story of regional development since the book has a wider appeal; a number of the articles are concerned with the links with America and with the place of Wales in the Atlantic economy. Amongst the authors are the late Sir Lewis Namier and some of the leading writers on the history of modern Wales including Brinley Thomas and A. H. Dodd.

This volume tells a story of Welsh industrial history different from the one traditionally dominated by the coal and iron communities of Victorian and Edwardian Wales. Extending the chronological scope from the early eighteenth- to the late twentieth-century, and encompassing a wider range of industries, the contributors combine studies of the internal organisation of workplace and production with outward-facing perspectives of Welsh industry in the context of the global economy. The volume offers important new insights into the companies, the employers, the markets and the money behind some of the key sectors of the Welsh economy – from coal to copper, and from steel to manufacturing – and challenges us to reconsider what we think of as constituting ‘industry’ in Wales.

Since the 1960s, nations across the “developed world” have been profoundly shaped by deindustrialization. In regions in which previously dominant industries faced crises or have disappeared altogether, industrial heritage offers a fascinating window into the phenomenon’s cultural dimensions. As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, even as forms of industrial heritage provide anchors of identity for local populations, their meanings remain deeply contested, as both radical and conservative varieties of nostalgia intermingle with critical approaches and straightforward apologias for a past that was often full of pain, exploitation and struggle.