Wales And The American Dream

The Welsh comprised a distinct and highly visible ethno-linguistic group in many areas of the United States during the late decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. Through a consideration of settlement patterns, cultural and religious institutions, language retention, and marriage preference, this book provides a micro-study of four identifiable Welsh communities over a set period of time. The nature, strength and long-term viability of these communities is analysed and assessed, as are the ways in which they changed; a process which saw the Welsh become Welsh-Americans and, ultimately, Americans. Welsh immigrants in the USA were invariably portrayed as models of American citizenship by virtue of their perceived national characteristics and their standards of social behaviour. This book tests the assumption that the Welsh were prime illustrations of the American Dream by analysing one facet of that dream; socio-economic success as revealed by occupational mobility. To what extent did the Welsh as a group occupy a privileged position in the occupational hierarchy, and were they able to maintain and improve upon their social and economic position in a relatively short space of time?

In 1971, Californian congressman Thomas M. Rees told the US House of Representatives that ‘very little has been written of what the Welsh have contributed in all walks of life in the shaping of American history’. This book is the first systematic attempt to both recount and evaluate the considerable yet undervalued contribution made by Welsh immigrants and their immediate descendants to the development of the United States. Their lives and achievements are set within a narrative outline of American history that emphasises the Welsh influence upon the colonists’ rejection of British rule, and upon the establishment, expansion and industrialisation of the new American nation. This book covers both the famous and the unsung who worked and fought to acquire greater prosperity and freedom for themselves and for their nation.

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream, Second Edition considers how major economic and historical factors shaped the nature of celebrity culture as we know it today, retaining the first edition’s examples from the first celebrity fan magazines of 1911 to the present and expanding to include updated examples and additional discussion on the role of the internet and social media in today’s celebrity culture. Equally important, the book explains how and why the story of Hollywood celebrities matters, sociologically speaking, to an understanding of American society, to the changing nature of the American Dream, and to the relation between class and culture. This book is an ideal addition to courses on inequalities, celebrity culture, media, and cultural studies.

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.

America’s emergence as a global industrial superpower was built on iron and steel, and despite their comparatively small numbers, no immigrant group played a more strategic role per capita in advancing basic industry than Welsh workers and managers. They immigrated in surges synchronized with the stage of America’s industrial development, concentrating in the coal and iron centers of Pennsylvania and Ohio. This book explores the formative influence of the Welsh on the American iron and steel industry and the transnational cultural spaces they created in mill communities in the tristate area—the greater upper Ohio Valley, eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania—including boroughs of Allegheny County, such as Homestead and Braddock. Focusing on the intersection of transnational immigration history, ethnic history, and labor history, Ronald Lewis analyzes continuity and change, and how Americanization worked within a small, relatively privileged, working-class ethnic group.

Exam board: AQA Level: AS/A-level Subject: History First teaching: September 2015 First exams: Summer 2016 (AS); Summer 2017 (A-level) Put your trust in the textbook series that has given thousands of A-level History students deeper knowledge and better grades for over 30 years. Updated to meet the demands of today's A-level specifications, this new generation of Access to History titles includes accurate exam guidance based on examiners' reports, free online activity worksheets and contextual information that underpins students' understanding of the period. b” Develop strong historical knowledge: b” Build historical skills and understanding: b” Learn, remember and connect important events and people: /bAn introduction to the period, summary diagrams, timelines and links to additional online resources support lessons, revision and courseworkbrbrb” Achieve exam success: /bPractical advice matched to the requirements of your A-level specification incorporates the lessons learnt from previous examsbrbr