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A WELSH historian who believes Wales’ part in the British Empire has been largely ignored has produced a new book to put the record straight.

Swansea University-based Professor Huw Bowen believes up to now Welsh historians have often viewed the Welsh as victims of the British Empire.

As a result he says, the story of Wales and the British Empire has concentrated on the working classes.

But Professor Bowen says the fabric of the British Empire was studded with Welsh soldiers, sailors, administrators, entrepreneurs, surgeons, diplomats and adventurers.

Swansea’s burgeoning metal factories were responsible for the copper-bottomed British ships that sunk Napoleon.

The British Empire’s uncompromising army rippled with Welsh warriors like Neath-born, Carmarthen-raised Sir William Nott the so-called “Hammer of the Afghans”.

Great houses and estates in places like Radnorshire, Breconshire, Montgomeryshire and Carmarthenshire were built on money made by Welsh entrepreneurs in the East India Company.

Even one of Wales’ best known institutions, Llandovery College, can trace it roots back to the days of Empire and the East India Company.

In 1847, when he was in his eighties, Thomas Phillips, a former East India Company surgeon, established what is now Llandovery College and he diverted much of the rest of his fortune into Welsh education and learning.

While countless books have logged the roles of English, Scots and Irish contributions to the empire, Professor Bowen says his edited work, Wales and the British overseas empire: interactions and influences, 1650-1830 (Manchester University Press) is the first to take a solely Welsh perspective on the British empire.

He said: “The Welsh were not just subjugated victims of the empire machine, many were an integral part of the aggressive, exploitative process that is an empire.

“And the riches many of them found as a result made their way back to Wales.

“There was exploitation of workers in Wales. While coal was being exported around the world living and working conditions in places like the Rhondda did not improve.

“And as the historian Gwyn Alf Williams said ‘what is the point of an empire if it does not make you rich?’

“But I want to put the whole thing in context: a number of those who drove the British Empire and its exploitation of people were Welsh, they were just not there in the same numbers as those from Scotland or Ireland or England simply because Wales had a smaller population.”

One of the prime examples of how the Welsh joined in with the British Empire adventure comes in the shape of Thomas Parry.

He was born in 1768, the third son of Edward Parry and Anne Vaughan, of Leighton Hall, near Welshpool.

He made such a mark on India, one of the central sectors of the bustling city of Madras (now Chennai) is known as Parry’s Corner after the headquarters building of his company (now EID Parry Ltd) which still dominates the area.

He found his way to Madras in 1788 as part of the East India Company then traded as a small merchant, soon branching out into shipping, insurance and industry, eventually becoming one of the most powerful businessmen in southern India before his death in 1824 from cholera.

Parry’s company, now taken over by the Murugappa Group, has interests in more than 200 enterprises ranging from agro-chemicals through to the ceramic bath ware that is adorned with the distinctive “Parryware” stamp.

Professor Bowen said: “I do a lot of research in South Asia and India and I have to say whenever paying a visit to the toilet I am often reminded of home by looking down at that Welsh name looking back at me.”

Many prominent figures in British India were from Wales, or at least had Welsh connections.

The judge and oriental scholar Sir William Jones was from an Anglesey family, Sir George Everest, surveyor-general of India who gave his name to the mountain, was born in Crickhowell, Powys.

And Sir William Nott, who now has a statue and a square named after him in the centre of Carmarthen, was a prominent army figure in India before becoming involved in the First Afghan War.

In 1842 he won three decisive battles, at Kandahar, Ghuznee, and Kabul.

As a result, Nott was invested with the order of the GCB. His health suffered in the East, and in 1844 he returned to Carmarthen where he died within four months of his return.

He was buried in St Peter’s Church.

Professor Bowen’s book, which is a collection of seven essays about Wales and the British Empire, is being launched at Swansea University next Thursday following a lecture entitled The Four Nations, Wales and the British Empire in Context by Professor John MacKenzie of Edinburgh University.