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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the British Empire article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
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Kyle Keeler (May 24, 2024). "Wikipedia's Indian problem: settler colonial erasure of native American knowledge and history on the world's largest encyclopedia". Settler Colonial Studies. Retrieved May 26, 2024. Native peoples are only mentioned briefly on the 'British Empire' page, which states, 'Tensions remain between the white settler populations … and their indigenous minorities … '.Footnote124 The page notes that there have been critiques of British treatment of Native peoples, however, 'the economic and institutional development that the British Empire brought resulted in a net benefit to its colonies' according to imperial apologist Niall Ferguson.
New article: British Empire from subjects' POV
Does anyone want to write an article on the history of the British Empire, from the perspective of its subjects? This is really lacking in Wikipedia's coverage imo. I can create a new page with that premise and page link to relevant pages, however there's going to be a lot of empty sections, and I have too much on my to do list as of now. I'd really appreciate if people could write about it Alexanderkowal (talk) 10:27, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[2] is from a world history perspective, with perspectives from local and world history
[3] discusses problems in British historiography to do with the imperial perspective
[4] "both the British perspective and that of the colonies is considered"
I think it's right that this article focuses on the imperial perspective, and I think it's very well written and fair, however it's very difficult to insert subject's perspectives when that'll mostly take the form of social history in an article about political history. In summary, I don't really want to mess with this article as it's quite the masterpiece, and I don't have any issues with it. Alexanderkowal (talk) 12:47, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously the page created will try to be fair and not have its sole purpose to villianise with the superficiality of some post-colonial literature Alexanderkowal (talk) 12:51, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay that makes sense, I just thought this article could focus on the internal composites of the British Empire whilst ignoring the wider context Alexanderkowal (talk) 15:08, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes Governance of the British Empire could be really good, could cover the governance of the different parts of the empire (with sections probably regional and in order of when they became part of the empire) and also include perspectives from the governed.
I think this article should have a former country infobox like the other colonial empires, and have all of this under the history section? Then have a section on governance, economy, demographics, and legacy (with summaries of their main articles) Alexanderkowal (talk) 17:36, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The reason there aren't articles on those things is not because they're "missing", it's because they're not viable subjects or the content exists already under different headings which more accurately reflects the weighting in reliable sources. E.g. there was no 'governance of the British Empire' article because that's covered by existing articles on the Government of the United Kingdom or the government of (insert country). Asserting or suggesting - through article naming - that there were separate centralised structures and processes is misleading. Wiki-Ed (talk) 20:12, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I said you need a source that discusses the topic, I meant a book or article with a title like "British Empire from subjects' POV". You can't get one source about the Empire from a Canadian's perspective and similar sources from the perspectives of people living in the empire in different places and different times and create an article. TFD (talk) 21:13, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[5]: The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire
[6]: The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume II: The Eighteenth Century: C5 The Anointed, the Appointed, and the Elected: Governance of the British Empire, 1689–1784
[7]: The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume III: The Nineteenth Century: C9 Imperial Institutions and the Government of Empire
The subject is certainly notable, but a looong discussion on this some time back (I've looked in the archives but can't find it) argued pursuasively that since (perhaps compared to say the French), the British arrangements were somewhat ad hoc, differing very widely by place, and then by time, the article would be very bitty, and the wood hard to find for the trees. One might do a shortish summary, but getting into too much detail for individual areas would be fatal, I think. Whether the subject is adequately covered in all the individual by-territory articles, I rather doubt. Johnbod (talk) 23:12, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The wood would be covering the history behind it, the impacts, and the historiography. There are decades of people asking "Was there a British Empire?" so its a topic with direct sourcing, and it would help answer the questions we have sometimes had here as to why the opening sentence of this article is structured the way it is. The risk is as you mention that it degrades into a list, as articles are wont to do. It is definitely not covered in the individual articles well, Gold Coast (British colony) mentioned above has a similar situation of being a summary of history rather than covering anything else, so there's easy room for improvements. CMD (talk) 04:05, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Article misrepresents the reason for the puritan fleeing a known misrepresentation in science
under "Americas, Africa and the slave trade" the article states ", Plymouth was founded as a haven by Puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution..." the puritan's were not "fleeing from religious persecution" [9]https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html under heading Crossing the Ocean to Keep the Faith: The Puritan, they left to try and recreate the church of England. and very much wanted to persecute none believers in there way. Also Wikipedia actually coveres this in the article about the Puritans 62.31.61.202 (talk) 15:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Shouldn't the map include the Emirate of Afghanistan? From 1879 to 1919 as per the Treaty of Gandamak, the emirate was a protected state of the British Empire, a similar relationship and agreement to the one between Sultanate of Zanzibar and the British Empire. Anvib (talk) 23:11, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. You've partly answered your own question: this article does not include protected states - as per the first line of the article. More importantly, reliable sources don't treat Afghanistan as part of the British Empire. Wiki-Ed (talk) 19:00, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
as I stated in my original message; the Sultanate of Zanzibar and the Emirate of Afghanistan had a similar arrangement and status when it came to their relationship to the United Kingdom: Zanzibar is included in the map, hence the contradiction here. Anvib (talk) 00:21, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is a good point. The people were considered British protected subjects rather than British subjects, which is still a distinction in British nationality law. TFD (talk) 06:39, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why Haida Gwaii isn't included - presumably an oversight by the map author (and which no-one else noticed until now). You could ping them and see if they could correct it.
However, regarding Columbia District: I think that is deliberate - the sources used for the map don't seem to treat company holdings as British territory. Also notable that when the British Government did get involved it didn't really contest the line (or seemingly pay much attention to where it was drawn - presumably hence Point Roberts?), which is something we could reasonably assume it would have done if it felt it truly 'owned' that land. Wiki-Ed (talk) 19:51, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since the Empire was not a legal entity with defined borders, what belonged to it is solely determined by what sources said. TFD (talk) 23:24, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"First" and "Second" British Empire
The concept of "first" and "second" (and third and fourth) is not one that is universally agreed by historians. The dates are contested, the reasons are debated, the goalposts move with each successive generation of historians. Even Marshall, seemingly the current flag bearer of this concept, can't seem to decide whether it is demarcated by the American Revolution or repeal of the Navigation Laws nearly 75 years later. Adding labels to periods might be useful if everyone agreed that they signified something, but that is not the case.
Using this terminology at all suggests is widely accepted and well used. A brief play around with Google Scholar suggests "Second" or "First British Empire" only appears in (at most) 0.45% of the corpus of 871,000 "British Empire" sources.
Using this terminology for specific dates is coming down in favour of a certain perspective: it is not clear that historians agree on dates, so we don't know that this represents the majority position.
Either way this is not neutral, so in violation of core policy. It cannot be given undue prominence in the article's structure without qualification (which is what the quotation marks were for). And I'm not sure the brief reference in the text is appropriate either, but perhaps it could be retained given it already carries a caveat ("some historians" is weasel wording which demonstrates this is not a majority view). Wiki-Ed (talk) 20:35, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
if we waited until things were "universally agreed by historians" we would never get anywhere. That "this is not a majority view" is no reason to omit it completely, so long as this is made clear, and "some historians" is not weasel wording at all, so long as examples are given (in the refs is enough). Johnbod (talk) 02:58, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure about that. If this were a historiography article and other perspectives were presented then I'd agree it could be covered. But it's the main article and we don't present other views. So this is not compliant with Wikipedia content policy on weighting and due prominence. If I was being particularly pedantic I'd even suggest 0.45% of sources is an extremely small minority and therefore doesn't belong on Wikipedia (but I don't place that much credence in Google's search results so I'm not going to push that). Through trial and error we've navigated around most of the historiographical debates - so we're making compromises and therefore pleasing no-one - but with the benefit that the article is relatively stable. The place for historiographical debates is the historiography article, although the contradictory writing style is a bit odd ("this is clear" followed by multiple examples of why it is not at all clear). Wiki-Ed (talk) 09:39, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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