‘Beer and Britannia’: public‐house culture and the construction of nineteenth‐century British‐Welsh industrial identity

Prior to industrialisation, there was a nebulous and fragmented W elsh national character or mass collective identity. Industrialisation engendered significant sociocultural upheaval and change, and for this ‘new’ society to function effectively a cohesive W elsh identity had to emerge. Because the impetus behind industrialisation had occurred primarily in a B ritish context, any newly formed W elsh identity would ultimately have to be reconciled to the nation's industrial import within a ‘ U nited K ingdom’. Mass cultural commonalities and the role played by leisure in this procedure is a core element in the establishment of industrial modernist nation‐states. Therefore, this article argues that public‐house culture played a central role in the construction of a new industrial W elsh national ideology that was ultimately allied to, and a constituent of, a B ritish imperial agenda designed to exploit both the natural resources and workforce of the area to its maximum extent.