| Summary: | This study traces the history of the Western Mail from 1869 to 1914, and provides an explanation of the newspaper's survival and commercial success in Wales. Based on the records of Western Mail and Echo Limited at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, the thesis adopts economic, social and political perspectives. From an analysis of the financial records of the Western Mail and its parent companies, the research reconstructs the history of the Western Mail's management and ownership, within the context of the late nineteenth century newspaper industry. It details the competitive environment within which the Mail and its rivals were produced, and assesses the broader effect that changes within Welsh and British journalism had on the form and design of the paper, and on the style of its approach to its readership. Finally, the study examines the role of the Western Mail editors and journalists in the political communities of Wales in general and Cardiff in particular. Setting the activities of the Western Mail's editors and journalists, and the impact of the newspaper's opinions against the canvass of Welsh industrial and political life reveals the origins of the Western Mail's confident perception of its own role in an essentially hostile political environment. However, the key to the Mail's success in Wales lies not in politics but in newspaper economics, and the concluding assessment presents the reasons and motives for the eventual amalgamation of the Western Mail with its rival, the South Wales Daily News, in 1928. This early history of the Western Mail explains why a Conservative newspaper, rather than a title more sympathetic to the Welsh political tradition, eventually became Wales' major national daily newspaper, the self styled papur cenedlaethol Cymru.
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