Thread by @NationCymru

"The Welsh-language community has always been multi-ethnic.

It was multi-ethnic at birth (it was a fusion between two components of Romano-British culture) and has remained so… there has never been a period when Welsh has not been multi-ethnic."

✍️ @seimon_brooks | THREAD ⤵️

"The Roma of nineteenth-century rural Wales were by and large fluent…

Irish and English migrants to the towns of the industrialising south and north-east learnt Welsh in their thousands.

Jewish migrants who settled… where Welsh was the dominant language learnt Welsh."

"Since the eighteenth century there have been black Welsh speakers: in rural Wales, the coalfield, Cardiff… South Asian speakers of Welsh in Wales are present by the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
nation.cymru/opinion/why-we…

"This does not mean that Welsh speakers from minority ethnic backgrounds did not face racism.

The first black speakers of Welsh learnt the language as a consequence of the slave trade."

"Anti-Irish racism was rife in Welsh-language culture all through the nineteenth century. The Roma faced centuries of racism, as they did at the hands of people all over Britain."
nation.cymru/opinion/why-we…

"Welsh speakers… developed specifically Welsh-language forms of colonialism, in Patagonia and also as Welsh-speaking missionaries…

Yet at times the Welsh could constitute an ethnic minority themselves."

"In Liverpool in the C19… the Welsh maintained over 50 places of worship… a Welsh-language press… the local economy… particular communities such as Toxteth, and passed on a cultural identity based on the Welsh language to the second, third and… fourth generations."

"They faced discrimination too. In advertisements for domestic servants in newspapers on Merseyside in the 1850s and the 1860s, the refrain ‘No Welsh need apply’ was remarkably common."
nation.cymru/opinion/why-we…

"For much of its history, the Welsh-speaking community formed a marginalised social group, both economically and also in relation to Anglophone power.

It had undergone Conquest."

"The history of Welsh-language interaction with other minorities is not always a simple relationship between a majority and a minority.

It was normally… between two minorities, although… the Welsh-speaking minority… had more power than groups excluded on the basis of race."

"Nevertheless, the fact that the Welsh-speaking community is itself a minority means that Welsh models of multiculturalism cannot be theorised in exactly the same way as in America or England."

✍️ @seimon_brooks | MORE ⤵️
nation.cymru/opinion/why-we…

Our apologies to Dr Simon Brooks for the erroneous Twitter handle. He can be found at @Seimon_Brooks_.

Simon is an acclaimed academic and writer.
His latest work, "Hanes Cymry," is the first history of ethnic diversity in the Welsh-language community, and is available now.