ABSTRACT
The Edwardian conquests of 1282–3 marked the final stages in the reduction of Wales to the status of an English colony. By the eighteenth century the affairs of Wales had come to be dominated by a small number of landlords of great power and wealth. Iron was smelted often from inferior grade ores at little charcoal furnaces dependent upon adequate local supplies of timber. The Tawe and Neath Valleys were the centres of copper and brass manufacture. Flannel was produced in many districts, but it was only late in the century that the first factories were established in mid-Wales. Early industry used relatively little labour, and then often on a part-time basis. The mass of the Welsh people, whether tenant farmers or cottagers and labourers, was locked into a system of peasant production on upland pastures.
