The Entrepreneurial Society of the Rhondda Valleys, 1840–1920: Power and Influence in the Porth-Pontypridd Region by Richard Griffiths (review)

Most work on the south Wales coal industry has a proletarian focus, with the workers and their unions occupying centre stage. The Entrepreneurial Society of the Rhondda Valleys, 1840–1920 takes a different approach, examining the industry’s boom years from the perspective of the mine owners rather than the miners, and as such is a major departure for Richard Griffiths, who is better known for his work on the British Right in the twentieth century.

The book, which is more social than economic in focus, explores “the close and almost claustrophobic middle-class society” of the Rhondda Valleys through three generations of an extended family who were important in the region: James “Siamps” Thomas, his son-in-law William Henry Mathias, and Thomas’s grandson, William James Thomas (viii). It consists of five parts. The first, and lengthiest, is biographical in nature, giving the histories of the super-rich Siamps, who died leaving £500,000; his equally successful son-in-law; and other notable figures from the period. The second part focuses on aspects of Mathias’s business and political dealings, while the third and fourth parts cover two mining disasters and two strikes respectively. The final part resumes the biographical thread, detailing Thomas’s career in the early years of the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on his extensive philanthropic activities.

This family history has implications for many important themes in Victorian studies, such as the social mobility of the earlier nineteenth century (Siamps was the son of a poor farmer and first went down the mine at the age of six), the impact of the rise of limited liability companies on business practice, and the supposed decline of the industrial spirit in the later years of the century. But one major limitation of the book is its tight and unrelenting regional focus, and its consequent failure to engage with wider historiographical debates. For example, entrepreneurship, business networks, social capital, and trust are key themes raised by this family history, yet the names which come to mind when we think of these themes—such as Mark Casson, Andrew Godley, Robin Pearson, Andrew Popp, David Richardson, Mary Rose, David Sunderland, and John Wilson—are nowhere to be seen in the footnotes. Even more remarkable, given that the book concludes with Thomas’s withdrawal from business and long retirement in Cardiff, is Martin Wiener’s absence. Griffiths’s claim that “female entrepreneurs were a rare breed in the nineteenth century” would also perhaps be contested by scholars like Alison C. Kay, who has convincingly argued that the extent of women’s entrepreneurialism has been seriously underestimated (91). But this work too is absent from the bibliography. The final chapter contains one of the few instances in which Griffiths breaks out of his self-imposed historiographical straitjacket, using work by Peter Shapely and Alan J. Kidd to contextualize and evaluate Thomas’s charitable giving.

The book’s appeal is consequently limited to scholars researching the social and economic history of the Rhondda Valleys. This is a pity, as the material is sufficiently rich to be of potential interest to wider constituencies of historians. This is particularly true of the middle sections of the book, which are based on case studies illuminating various aspects of business culture and the legal framework within which coal mining operated. Chapters 7 and 8, focusing on some of Mathias’s railway and water dealings, provide a valuable reminder that business in late Victorian Britain, though coming to be dominated by joint-stock companies, was far from impersonal or anonymous. Local connections, local knowledge—and sometimes local grievances—remained all-important. The next two chapters, which document the legal fallout following two mining disasters in 1877 and 1894, raise fascinating issues to do with individual and corporate liability for industrial accidents. The cases, which both...