"This is a brilliantly original analysis of the formation of the modern Welsh nation during the long nineteenth century. Okey presents this process in a sustained comparison with another small ethnic group, the Slovenes, and vindicates that choice by illumination of a series of similarities based on his intimate acquaintance with the history of that South Slav people. There are differences too – above all the Welsh national project, expressed through religious Nonconformity and political Liberalism as the willing associate of a hegemonic and officially monoglot Great Britain, contrasting with the Slovene equivalent which maneuvered within the troubled multilingual polity of the Habsburgs. Enhanced by Okey’s jargon-free style, this book is equally revealing in its unusual perspective on the two incongruent empires, British and Austrian, within which his story unfolds." 

Emeritus Regius Professor Robert Evans, University of Oxford