'A handful of interesting and exemplary people from a country called Wales': identity and culture maintenance: the Welsh in Ballarat and Sebastopol in the second half of the nineteenth century

© 2000 Dr. Robert Llewellyn TylerThe colony of Victoria, in the decades following the discovery of gold in the early 1850s, provides an attractive setting for an analysis of a Welsh immigrant community and the resilience of its cultural identity. Welsh-born immigrants in Victoria, besides the transitory populations of the seaport towns, were found in significant numbers only in a relatively few urban areas which emerged with the development of the gold mining industry. Most notable amongst these were the city of Ballarat and the adjacent township of Sebastopol. The nature of the Welsh immigrant community in this area will be addressed with regard to its linguistic ethos, religious and cultural institutions and activities not usually associated with Welsh migrants. The ability of the Welsh to retain their cultural integrity in whatever form was closely linked to a variety of factors. Settlement patterns, economic specialisation and .mobility, religious schisms, exogamy and the conscious desire of many Welsh immigrants to cast off their old world cultural shackles, will be considered in relation to the continuation, modification and decline of a discernible Welsh ethnolinguistic community. The study also focuses on those responsible for defining Welsh identity and propagating Welsh social and cultural mores in colonial Victoria, analyses the components of that identity and establishes the extent to which the mass of the Welsh-born population conformed. The sometimes paradoxical loyalty to Wales and Britain, and attempts to establish a purely Welsh settlement, as they related to a continued sense of Welsh identity, are also considered. This thesis provides an analysis of the Welsh immigrant community in the Ballarat/Sebastopol area during the second half of the nineteenth century. The study explores all aspects of the Welsh immigrant experience, and, in addition to qualitative evidence, employs quantitative analysis at micro-level. By viewing all Welsh immigrants in one particular area over a set period of time a clearer picture is obtained regarding the true nature of the community and the ways in which it changed