THE LABYRINTH OF FLAMES:

Work and Social Conflict in Early Industrial Merthyr Tydfil

Christopher Evans

The Labyrinth of Flames examines the impact of the iron industry on the parish of Merthyr Tydfil between the 1760s and the end of the Napoleonic wars, the period in which Merthyr emerged as the greatest centre of iron production in the world. This book looks at how labour was organised within the `flaming labyrinths' that made up the giant ironworks at Cyfarthfa and Dowlais: how the ironmasters struggled to assert their authority over their independently-minded workmen, and the means by which workmen thwarted attempts to subordinate them to an iron capitalism. The antagonism between masters and workmen was ingrained in the new industrial society at Merthyr, but it was not the only point of conflict. The indigenous hill farmers of the parish, many of whom had been reared in a tradition of radical religious dissent, resented the ecological devastation which the ironmasters visited upon the district. Not least, the ironmasters were fiercely divided amongst themselves, as each strove to snap up the mineral resources upon which their enrichment depended. Together, these different tendencies contributed towards a distinctively fractured urban-industrial society. The Labyrinth of flames traces Merthyr's troubled emergence, providing an unusually detailed and vivid picture of work in one of the key industries of the Industrial Revolution, in the setting of its most important centre.