Description
Are the Welsh a postcolonial population? The answer is not self-evident, but the query affords ample opportunities for engaging with provocative questions within the discipline of International Relations (IR). This is particularly true for scholars whose research focuses on the British Isles and those peoples who call the Atlantic Archipelago their home. The paper makes a contribution to the discipline of IR by contextualising the case of the Welsh people (y Cymru) within the congeries of Celtic peoples whose ‘postcolonial’ condition is less controversial (particularly the Irish, Scots, and Manx). The case of y Cymru, the paper argues, unsettles key historical narratives, territorial assumptions and binaries centred on race in IR generally and postcolonial IR particularly. Beyond the discipline, this contribution complicates the already roiling debate around identity politics in a post-Brexit UK as its constituent peoples seek to refine various fidelities, affinities, distinctions, and differences.
