Welsh History Podcast

A time before the NHS, before universal care, before the idea that healthcare might be something guaranteed. And yet, in this period, we begin to see something remarkable.

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In 41 CE, Rome did something unexpected. It made an emperor out of a man who had spent most of his life being ignored.

That man was Claudius.

Photos in this episode

http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/image.asp?id=13471, Public Domain,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2254930

Bust of Emperor Claudius

1:10 model reconstruction of a quadrireme

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Music: Celtic Impulse - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100297Artist: http://incompetech.com/

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By the early twentieth century, rugby was not simply popular in Wales. It was emotional infrastructure. It was civic ritual. And in 1905 a game between Wales and New Zealand would set Rugby Union at the heart of Welsh national pride.

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Music: Celtic Impulse - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100297Artist: http://incompetech.com/

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Because we have so little written history it might seem that Britain was relatively static in the Iron Age. Britain, however, was not frozen in time. It was dynamic. And that dynamism, that competition between kingdoms and elites, created the conditions that made Roman intervention possible.

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For centuries, the history of Wales was written as a history of men—of coal miners, ironmasters, and preachers. But by the 1880s, a quiet revolution was brewing in the valleys and coastal towns. Welsh women were no longer content to be the "angels of the hearth."

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Music: Celtic Impulse - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100297Artist: http://incompetech.com/

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Jonathan has returned to the UK and talks about what he wants to do now that he has returned.

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Between 1900 and 1914, Wales was not simply becoming modern. Wales was arguing about what modernity meant, and whether it had to come at the cost of Welsh language, Welsh institutions, and Welsh identity. Some of that argument happened in Parliament, through bills, speeches, and legislation. Some of it happened in newspapers, in chapels, at eisteddfodau, and in reading rooms. And some of it happened in verse, in voice, and in shared chorus.

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Before Rome ever landed soldiers on British shores in 43 CE, Britain had already been measured, judged, and classified. Not morally, but administratively.

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Music: Celtic Impulse - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100297

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

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This episode we talk about the human cost of the Boer War and give a couple of examples of those who logged their witness of what was being done in the name of the British Empire including the forced imprisonment of women and children into the first Concentration Camps.

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Today we turn to a conflict that shaped the final years of the Victorian era and left deep marks on towns and villages across Wales. The Boer War, fought between 1899 and 1902, was a clash between the British Empire and the two Boer republics in South Africa. It was a conflict of imperial ambition, political controversy and human tragedy, and Wales was deeply involved in all of it.

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Music: Celtic Impulse - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100297

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

© 2025 Evergreen Podcasts

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