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The University of North Carolina Press
408 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 24 illus., 4 tables, 6 maps, notes, bibl., index
A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields
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's 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.
"Excellent . . . beautifully written, deeply researched. . . . A first-rate piece of scholarship."
--The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
"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
"Concerns and methodology are scholarly--Lewis's] notes offer a valuable bibliography of Welsh American primary and secondary sources--but he writes in an accessible style and takes time to spin stories of upwardly mobile Welshmen."
--Planet: The Welsh Internationalist
"Lewis demonstrates that by fulfilling the American dream, Welsh immigrants eventually lost their identity. He offers a sustained and at times brilliant meditation on this theme, integrated into a general history that unfolds compellingly over time. Welsh Americans is a rich, mature, and fascinating piece of historical scholarship that will quickly assume its place as the definitive work on its topic and an important work of American immigration history."
--Kevin Kenny, Boston College
"In addition to providing a new dimension to our understanding of American ethnic groups in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Welsh Americans adds significantly to current understanding of the processes of industrialization in America, particularly the development of the coal mining industry. Interesting, insightful, and convincing, this book will be welcomed as a fresh and timely study."
--William D. Jones, Cardiff University, Wales
Cloth: $49.95
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