Wales and the Britons, 350 - 1064

Oxford History of Wales #1

by T.M. Charles-Edwards

This, the first volume in the History of Wales , provides a detailed history of Wales in the period in which it was created out of the remnants of Roman Britain. It thus begins in the fourth century, with accelerating attacks from external forces, and ends shortly before the Norman Conquest of England.

The narrative history is interwoven with chapters on the principal sources, the social history of Wales, the Church, the early history of the Welsh language, and its early literature, both in Welsh and in Latin. In the fourth century contemporaries knew of the Britons but not of Wales in the modern sense. Charles-Edwards, therefore, includes the history of the other Britons when it helps to illuminate the history of what we now know as Wales. Although an early form of the name Wales existed, it was a word in the Germanic languages, including English, and meant inhabitants of the former Roman Empire; it therefore covered the Gallo-Romans of what we know as France as well as the Britons.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature

816 pages, Hardcover

First published November 29, 2012

About the author

Thomas Mowbray Charles-Edwards FRHistS FLSW FBA is an emeritus academic at Oxford University. He formerly held the post of Jesus Professor of Celtic and is a Professorial Fellow at Jesus College.

Reviews

[Brian Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book and essential for my research, every chapter! This study defines my own life-time studies and what my Masters is focused on. I highly recommend it.

[GRANT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew! That was a deep dive! A wonderfully erudite tome that I was amazingly able to understand in good part. It includes textural analysis, archaeology, linguistics, religion, history, sociology, geography, and more! It is published by Oxford University and I feel like I've sat through an intensely interesting series of graduate lectures and I'm glad I kept the notes. I couldn't have written it and I'm grateful that Charles-Edwards did. It does well with modern interpretations that the development of Britain was not the old story of invading marauders wiping out and replacing former peoples. It was much more of a cultural melting-pot with Brythonic Peoples mixing with others sometimes maintaining cultural dominance as in Wales and sometimes losing to the Irish, Saxons, or English (Vikings, too, in bits) The author valiantly presents his points while explaining contrary views and resolving some controversies. I will keep this as a reference book.

[Colin]

This book is an incredible work of scholarship but also very hard going (so difficult to give a rating). It is the first volume in the Oxford History of Wales, but if you read it expecting it to be about Wales then you'll be very disappointed, as I felt most of the time as if I was reading more about Irish, Anglo-Saxon and Viking history than Welsh, however, this is probably not the fault of the author, just the fact that the volume covers a period before Wales existed so he talks about all the British (i.e. Celtic) peoples throughout Britain (and Brittany) and their interactions with the Irish and English etc. The other problem is there are hardly any sources from the time and the author has to use a handful of stone inscriptions for the earlier part and for the later part sources dating from centuries after the events, or use sources from Ireland and England. The author also spends a lot of time explaining the sources and detailed explanations of how he has interpreted them.

[Liam Guilar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential refernence source.

[Cone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright, I skimmed this mind-blowing book—the most exhaustively researched history of pre-Wales Wales that exists, I am sure. Wide-ranging, but never shallow....just incredible scholarship.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rate this book a 3.5 and I would also say that it's the sort of book that requires a second reading.

[Chris Bevan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Exhaustive Study. Charles Edwards takes on an elusive topic in this book; one which has little primary source material, and so in this book one reads an exhaustive analysis of each tiny one. Much of the interpretation of this is correlated or even explicated by other secondary sources, and thus the history of Wales and Britons is largely inferred from the much more voluminous evidences for the Irish, the English, the Franks, and even the Vikings. Charles Edwards displays erudition and understanding in every aspect of this; linguistics, literature, historical interpretation, and all. This is a masterful, surely definitive study, and one which will remain a standard text for may years to come. i know of no other better reference than this. Its only drawback is that by its very nature it is not a lively, easy read; it is thorough and clear and concise.