'Calon wrth Galon': The Bristol Cambrian Society. A Window on Welsh Migrant Identity: 1869 to 1935

Identity is an elusive and nebulous concept, both variable and mutable. It is very difficult to comprehend the term ‘Welsh identity’ by considering the inhabitants of Wales, or the Welsh diaspora, as a whole. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to understand the Welshness of a discrete group of like-minded individuals, the Bristol Cambrian Society, who though emigres saw themselves as part of a Welsh nation for a period of nearly seventy years, spanning the last third of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth. It addresses questions of how successfully the Society preserved a Welsh identity, and in what form. By considering the aims, membership and activities of the Society it is argued that whilst the Society maintained a visible Welshness for an extended period the members maintained a pragmatic Welsh identity. The Society was more an agent of integration than of national separatism, a badge of distinction rather than difference