Welsh "Herodotus" and the birth of historical science in Wales at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries

The article is devoted to the historical views and academic heritage of the Welsh historian John Edward Lloyd (1861-1947). The research is based on the methodological approaches of historical theory, memory studies and intellectual history. The author distinguishes the factors that influenced the scientist's views and describes Lloyd's research in the context of the Welsh national revival. The article focuses on the historian's views on the problem of preserving Welsh national identity. He considered the language and strict poetic meter its main elements formed in the Middle Ages. The historian reflected the heroic struggle of the Welsh people against the Norman and English invaders in “A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest”, which was full of the spirit of nationalism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The author concludes that, firstly, the views of Welsh liberals on the past of the western Celtic region of Britain were reflected in Lloyd's “History”; secondly, the work itself, created in the period of the birth of nationalism of the Celtic peoples, contributed to the actualization of medieval images in the historical memory of Wales; thirdly, the research works of modern Welsh medievalists are a continuation of Lloyd's research.