Read 2 articles today: one on "postcolonial" Wales and one on Welsh slave owners in the Caribbean. The second essay made the former, describing Wales as a "postcolonial" country absolutely sickening.
Stating that Wales was a colony in the 12th C negates the fact that society was fundamentally different. It's so clear that society under mercantilist capitalism and colonialism proper was so different from Wales under "colonialism" that to create a link is offensive and absurd.
We might as well in that instance talk about athenian colonialism as being relevant today. To be "underdeveloped" or "peripheral" does not necessarily equate to colonialism nor imperialism. Contradictions of capitalism exist within, between, and on the borders of, states.
You can state, rightly, that Wales 'relatively' speaking (yet, only within Europe) has been a loser of capitalism. Globally, it has been a winner as part of Europe and the British empire. Yet talk of socialism in Wales is harder than the easy answer of "colonial oppression".
Neither is this class reductionism, it is clear that there exists cultural differences that have been solidified by class differences between Wales and England. It is fine to support Welsh independence due to this linkage, but don't pretend that you do so because of "colonialism"
To borrow from Dubois there seems to be a different double consciousness in Welsh identifiers: a visceral hatred for britishness and empire while simultaneously being unable to accept that their own forefathers were culpable in that project.
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