A visit to Narberth, a Welsh town steeped in myth, got me thinking about how we as a nation view ourselves and our impact on the wider world. And that it’s time we Welsh people truly took responsibility for ourselves.
In this article I look at Welshmen who had a significant and lasting impact in Russia, China, and Iraq. In part two we’ll turn our attention to Africa, with two more of the famous Welshmen mentioned by the Reverend Halliwell Jones. Then we’ll consider the subject of the second biography I bought in Narberth: a Welshman whose impact on Africa, and elsewhere, was enormous, but whose legacy is deeply ambiguous and still raises challenges for us today.
Who’s who
As the rain of Storm Bert howled past in horizontal torrents, I took the train with friends to visit the art exhibition My Little Empire. It’s a collection of works by Welsh musician Nicky Wire, which was shown at the really rather good Narberth Museum. Wire’s fame as a member of the Manic Street Preachers meant the exhibition was well attended, with coach-loads of fans turning up from as far as Japan. It’s a good indicator of how Wales and its culture can be globally influential.
Narberth itself is well known from the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, but I think it’s fair to say that Wales today is best known internationally for sports and culture. There’s the positive impact of the FAW’s Red Wall and the cheery reputation of our rugby fans. There’s the music, from Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, and John Cale to Catatonia and the Manics, and the latest generation such as Adwaith.
Then there are the actors: Richard Burton, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Rakie Ayola, Luke Evans, Morfydd Clark, and Michael Sheen are just a few among many. Writers and poets and artists. Booker Prize winner Bernice Rubens, Danny Abse, Arthur Machen, Jan Morris, Dylan Thomas. Someone should write a list of all the Welsh people who’ve achieved global success in the cultural sphere – it would fill its own ‘Who’s Who’.
But what about other fields of achievement? Have any of the Welsh had a global impact while retaining their Welshness? The question was answered for me in the museum’s secondhand bookshop, where I always find something interesting. This time, on impulse, I picked up two old biographies which proved very illuminating.
A Celt looks at the world
The first is the autobiography of the Reverend G Halliwell Jones, A Celt Looks at the World. You won’t find much about him online, but in his lifetime (1859–1944) he was closely involved in the internal politics of the Church in Wales.
Born in Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, Powys, he spent much of his life in Oxford as a fellow of Jesus College. He was subsequently the rector of Nutfield in Surrey, where he remained despite later offers of positions in Wales because, as he bluntly explained, it was one of the best-paid positions available. A proud Welshman, he wrote a number of books on Celtic history and, in his memoir, mentioned some important Welshmen of his time.
One was Merthyr’s John James Hughes, the Welsh-speaking engineer and entrepreneur who in 1870, aged 55, travelled to the empty steppes of Novorossiya with shiploads of fellow Welsh-speakers, at the invitation of the Tsar. There they established the industrial city of Hughesovka – now Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine.
Halliwell Jones mentioned that he knew “Mrs Edgar Jones of Barry”, who had worked there in the Hughes household. She was Annie Gwen Jones, the mother of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones. He also had a major impact on world affairs, with his reporting on the Soviet famine that killed millions in the 1930s in Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan.
Soldier of fortune
Though he wasn’t mentioned by Halliwell Jones, I would include Henry Lloyd (1718–1783) of Llanbedr in Meirionnydd (or possibly Wrexham), who was also connected with Russia. Educated at Jesus College, Oxford, he was one of the very few Welsh Jacobites who actually joined the rising of 1745 – most supported it from their armchairs – and escaped to the continent after Bonnie Prince Charlie’s defeat.
After decades as a soldier of fortune in various countries he ended his career as a general, commanding an army for Russia’s Catherine the Great. His legacy is that it was this Welsh-speaker who wrote the first theoretical study of military strategy, establishing it as a subject that could be taught. His impact was substantial. His work influenced generals such as George Washington and George S Patton, and the founder of tank warfare, JFC Fuller. It was also on the curriculum of Soviet military colleges.
Returning to Halliwell Jones’ memoir, another impactful Welshman was “Mr Ifor Lloyd of Baghdad” (1893–1977). From an Aberdyfi family, he was awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry in the first world war trenches. He then joined the Mesopotamian Political Service, where he helped to define the border between Turkey and Iraq.
Appointed a barrister in 1928, he became a judge in the Iraqi courts, then president of the Civil and Criminal Courts in the country’s southern districts. Rising to become Controller of Foreign Property in Iraq and an economic advisor to its government, he was a member of Iraqi delegations at the United Nations. By the end of his career, he was legal advisor to the Iraqi Embassy in London. He was a friend of the Afghan writer and Sufi mystic Idries Shah, who mentions Lloyd in his book The Natives Are Restless.
Advisor to an emperor
Another name now largely forgotten is Timothy Richard (1845–1919), of Tanyresgair Farm in Ffaldybrenin, Carmarthenshire. Educated at the grammar school in Llanybydder, he paid school fees by working as a schoolteacher himself at Penygroes, where he taught both children and coal miners old enough to be his father.
Leaving Wales in 1869, he spent 45 years as a Baptist missionary in China, where he was deeply involved not only in promoting Christianity but also more worldly work. Apart from organising relief efforts for the famines that frequently afflicted the Chinese countryside in that period, he led campaigns against the custom of binding women’s feet.
Richard was closely involved with Wan Guo Gong Bao (Review of the Times), an influential Chinese-language magazine that introduced western ideas of governance and industry to the Chinese intelligentsia, and influenced a generation of reformists who later rose to prominence. In 1900, the Welshman was invited to become an advisor to the Emperor, a young man who sought to modernise his country.
Unfortunately, the imperial court was under the control of the deeply reactionary Dowager Empress Cixi, who quickly had the Emperor arrested and held in isolation. He was eventually poisoned and replaced with the child-emperor Puyi.
Through Richards’ influence, a modern university was established in Shanxi province, along with two others in Beijing and Tianjin. The Welshman brought western-style higher education to China.
Part two in this series will be published next week.
