ABSTRACT

As soon as you ask why a nation’s political or economic institutions, or social relations, are the way they are today, you start to delve into history. If you want to understand why the British Parliament has the powers it does, or operates in the way it does, then one of the rst things you need to know is what happened in the seventeenth century with the Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution. If you want to know why the countryside looks as it does, why country roads meander, why elds are odd shapes, you need to look back into the past history of the ownership and exploitation of the land. If you want to know why non-conformism is so strong in Wales, then you have to look at patterns of evangelism in the past, but also at patterns of political power and of economic deprivation. Studying British history is not a patriotic duty engaged in by chauvinists, it is something any inquisitive person, who wants to understand the society of which he or she is part, continually nds it impossible to do without.