Wales

Wales (called Cymru in Welsh) is one of the countries making up the United Kingdom. It sits on the island of Great Britain, with the Irish Sea to its north and west, England to the east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. In 2021, its population stood at 3.1 million people. Covering 21,218 square kilometres (8,192 square miles), Wales has more than 2,700 kilometres (1,680 miles) of coastline. Much of the land is mountainous, especially in the north and centre, where Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) rises as the highest peak. The climate is temperate and maritime, meaning it changes often. Cardiff serves as both the capital and the largest city.

A distinct Welsh culture took shape among the Celtic Britons after the Romans left Britain in the 5th century. For a short time in 1055, Gruffudd ap Llywelyn united Wales. Following more than two centuries of conflict, King Edward I of England finished conquering the territory in 1283. In the early 1400s, Owain Glyndŵr led a revolt against English rule, briefly setting up an independent Welsh state with its own parliament.

During the 1500s, the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542 formally annexed the whole of Wales into England and brought it under English law. The 1800s saw the rise of a distinctive Welsh political scene. Welsh Liberalism, championed in the late 1800s and early 1900s by figures like David Lloyd George, later gave way to the growth of socialism and the Labour Party. Over the 20th century, national feeling grew: a nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, was founded in 1925, and the Welsh language society, Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, started in 1962.

A system of devolved government now operates in Wales, with the biggest step being the creation of the Senedd (Welsh Parliament, originally the National Assembly for Wales) in 1998, which handles a range of devolved policy areas.

At the start of the Industrial Revolution, mining and metallurgy transformed Wales from an agricultural society into an industrial one. The exploitation of the South Wales Coalfield caused a rapid population increase. Today, two-thirds of the population live in South Wales, including Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, and the nearby valleys. The eastern part of North Wales holds about a sixth of the total population, with Wrexham as its largest city. The rest of Wales is sparsely populated. After the decline of traditional extractive and heavy industries, the public sector, light industry, services, and tourism now play major roles in the economy. Agriculture in Wales focuses mostly on livestock, making the country a net exporter of animal products and helping the UK’s overall food self-sufficiency.

Both Welsh and English are official languages. Most people in Wales speak English. Welsh is the dominant language in parts of the north and west, with 538,300 speakers across the whole country. Wales has four UNESCO World Heritage sites, three of which are in the north.

The English words “Wales” and “Welsh” come from the same Old English root, which itself derives from a Proto-Germanic term that originally referred to the Gauls known to the Romans as Volcae. Over time, this term was used broadly for inhabitants of the Western Roman Empire. Anglo-Saxons applied it specifically to the Britons, and the plural form evolved into the name for their land, Wales. Historically, these words were not limited to modern Wales or the Welsh; they referred to anything Anglo-Saxons associated with Britons, including other non-Germanic areas in Britain (like Cornwall) and places in Anglo-Saxon territory linked to Britons (such as Walworth in County Durham and Walton in West Yorkshire).

The modern Welsh name for themselves is “Cymry,” and “Cymru” is the Welsh name for Wales. Both words (pronounced [ˈkəmrɨ]) come from the Brythonic word “combrogi,” meaning “fellow-countrymen,” and likely came into use before the 7th century. In literature, they could be spelled “Kymry” or “Cymry,” whether referring to the people or their homeland. Latinised forms—Cambrian, Cambric, and Cambria—survive in names like the Cambrian Mountains and the Cambrian geological period.

Although the Welsh nation did not emerge until the Middle Ages, the territory of Wales has been permanently settled since the end of the last ice age. The first farmers left impressive funerary monuments and settlement sites that suggest a dispersed culture. With the Bronze Age, the Great Orme in North Wales became Britain’s leading producer of copper, a key ore for smelting bronze. The wealth of mineral resources in Britain, especially Wales, likely attracted the Roman invasion, but by then the island had become distinctly Celtic in culture, and the Neolithic population had largely been replaced. This Iron Age Celtic culture and its common language were what the Romans called the Britons.

After the Romans left, Britain split into various kingdoms. Still, the Roman withdrawal in 383 created a sense of a post-Roman nation of Britons, with Magnus Maximus proclaimed Roman emperor in Britannia and Gaul. Although the term “Cymry” was adopted much later, the concept of a British people—from whom the Welsh would emerge—was established here. Encroachment by Germanic Anglo-Saxon settlers gradually displaced the indigenous culture and language of the Britons. One group of these Britons became isolated by the geography of the western peninsula, bounded by the sea and English neighbours. Those English neighbours named the land Wallia and the people Welsh. The people of Wallia, medieval Wales, remained divided in various kingdoms.