‘The Best Welshman is a Welshman Abroad’: Wales, China, and the Globalized Nation in the Age of Empire Open Access
Levine, Alex (Spring 2022)
Published
Abstract
This thesis considers and seeks to expand the way historians of Wales and of the British
Empire have written late nineteenth and early twentieth century Welsh history, by
examining Wales’ connections to China and the Far East. I illustrate how media reports
at home in ‘gallant little Wales’ concerning the Boxer Rebellion and the activities of
Welshmen in China during the late-1890s and 1900s helped write Wales into the British
Empire and the wider world and played into conceptions of national identity, shaping
major anti-Chinese rioting in Cardiff in 1911. The connection between religion and
national identity, which was particularly strong in the Welsh case and has been seen as
intimately connected to a national struggle for church disestablishment within the United
Kingdom, was also necessarily shaped by a globalized system of information, not least
involving Welsh missionaries, and by imperial expansion and spectacle. Small but
influential Welsh communities also emerged in the Europeanized metropolises of
Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong and – alongside Welsh individuals in the Chinese
interior – were tuned into political and cultural debates occurring in Wales. Their
approach to national identity was shaped by their tentative positions in the Far East,
engendered by the British Empire’s power and endangered by the rise of nationalism in
China. They proved remarkably supportive of British imperial expansion and the
exertion of imperial power in China – in contradiction to Welsh nationalists at home – yet
they prioritized the Welsh language in their cultural celebrations, justifying Welsh
nationalism as an expression of support for the empire. These individuals and
communities looked back to Wales, working to recreate the national homeland in China
at the same time that they sought to involve themselves in cultural developments in the
metropole. Throughout all these interactions, Welsh individuals understood their position
within Wales and the wider world as being shaped by their distinct national background.
Thus, I make the case that in order to fully understand British activity overseas,
distinctive national backgrounds have to be taken into account; and in order to understand
a seemingly national Welsh history it is essential to consider the global and imperial.
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................1
Global Wales: National and Religious Identity and the Media....................................................9
St. David’s Day and Welsh Society in the Far East....................................................................37
Recreating Wales: Welsh Cultural and Linguistic Traditions in the Far East...............................61
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................86
Bibliography.........................................................................................................................90
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