Overview

This title discusses about Welsh miners, American coal, and the construction of ethnic identity.In 1890, more than 100,000 Welsh-born immigrants resided in the United States. A majority of them were skilled laborers from the coal mines of Wales who had been recruited by American mining companies. Readily accepted by American society, Welsh immigrants experienced a unique process of acculturation. In the first history of this exceptional community, Ronald Lewis explores how Welsh immigrants made a significant contribution to the development of the American coal industry and how their rapid and successful assimilation affected Welsh American culture.Lewis describes how Welsh immigrants brought their national churches, fraternal orders and societies, love of literature and music, and, most important, their own language. Yet, unlike eastern and southern Europeans and the Irish, the Welsh - even with their """"foreign"""" ways - encountered no apparent hostility from the Americans. Often within a single generation, Welsh cultural institutions would begin to fade and a new """"Welsh American"""" identity developed.True to the perspective of the Welsh themselves, Lewis' analysis adopts a transnational view of immigration, examining the maintenance of Welsh coal-mining culture in the United States and in Wales. By focusing on Welsh coal miners, """"Welsh Americans"""" illuminates how Americanization occurred among a distinct group of skilled immigrants and demonstrates the diversity of the labor migrations to a rapidly industrializing America.

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9780807832202

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Reviews

Includes a good assessment of the Welsh interaction with other immigrants. The book's readability also makes it accessible to general audiences, particularly those of Welsh ancestry seeking a better understanding of their ethnic roots. . . . Recommended.-- Choice

A masterful survey. . . . Add[s] depth and context to an immigrant group that was crucial to American economic development. . . . [A] superb and important addition to immigration and labor history. <br>- American Studies

A detailed and readable work based on a wide variety of sources from both Europe and the United States. Welsh scholars and comparative immigration historians will find the book to be a valuable asset in their collections. -- Journal of Southern History

An important addition to the historiography of immigration and ethnic identity . . . adds a great deal to our general understanding of mining culture and industrial development. <br>-- Journal of American History

Author Information

RONALD L. LEWIS holds the Stuart and Joyce Robbins Chair in History at West Virginia University. He is author or editor of fourteen books, including Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change in West Virginia, 1880-1920 (from the University of North Carolina Press).

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