Silk roads and salt routes – succeeding where Glyndŵr failed

Let’s picture the late 1390s and early 1400s, the years when Owain Glyndŵr was transformed from loyal subject of the English crown to rebel Prince of Wales. People travelled. In Glyndŵr’s time knights, yeomen, and peasants joined crusades against the Baltic pagans, or the Turks threatening Hungary’s borders. Others may have visited the Muslim Emirate of Granada, or the imperial Roman capital of Constantinople.

The world then was far more connected than we often realise – and the centre of wealth and power was Asia. Europe was in decline. By Glyndŵr’s time, the crusader kingdoms in the Holy Land had long since fallen. The thousand-year reign of Constantinople’s Christian emperors would soon be ended by the Ottoman Turks.

In our time, we may succeed where Glyndŵr failed: we may see Cymru become an independent sovereign state. If we do, we will join an international system with parallels to that of his time.