Talk:British Empire/Archive 21

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Restructure of "Americas, Africa and the slave trade", and future changes

Over the last day or so I've restructured and partially rewritten the section "Americas, Africa and the slave trade". I've tried to minimise the listing of acquisitions and dates, and give more space to a narrative summary of the most important developments, including social and economic aspects which are under-represented. I'm starting this thread because I've made these changes with future restructuring of other sections in mind, and would like to invite feedback from others. The changes are encompassed by this diff range. It may be easier to look at the former text and then compare it with the current one, as I moved several paragraphs around, which makes the diff hard to read.

The section contains the overview of England/Britain's involvement in the slave trade, which was both under-developed (for example, it failed to note that England was the largest slave trading nation in late 18th century) and also simplistic (for example, it unhelpfully stated that "from the outset, slavery was the basis of the Empire in the West Indies", whereas in reality slavery became more important in the Caribbean after the mid-17th century). This required an increase in the section size overall, and to compensate I cut several extraneous details (for example, I believe the London and Bristol Company, and the exchange of Suriname after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, are too minor to warrant inclusion in an overview article of the empire). I'm acutely aware of the need to avoid lengthening the article considerably in further rewrites, and the possible need to claw back gained bytes elsewhere. I think the section post-restucture conveys more information, more succinctly.

Broadly, I think most other sections, if given a similar rewrite, while more briefly summarising territorial changes and political history, could stay a similar size. A criticism which resurfaced several times during the FA review was that the article's scope was too focused on political history. In most sections, this will necessitate more cutting of dates, acquisitions and treaties than I've done here, and shortening of places with too much detail. I'm keen to discuss each possible case, and will put together a list for others to discuss. Toying with ideas here, but perhaps this can be done at the same time as creating WP:SPINOFF articles to ensure no work is lost; for example History of the British Empire (1707–1783) etc. might be suitable homes for detailed political history. Your thoughts would be appreciated, particularly on the specific edits I've made here as they reflect the type of changes I think the article would benefit from. Any help from others in working on the article would also be appreciated. Best, Jr8825 • Talk 18:21, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Although I don't have any substantive objections to the changes you've made this week, I slightly worry at the logic you've set out for your proposed future edits. I don't think we should be using anything said at the FAR as a guideline. From my perspective many of the comments there were ill-informed and specious, largely conflicting with the approach used by historians to tackle this topic. When confronted with this most of the loud voices faltered and faded away. I respect the fact that you've stepped up to the challenge, but I think you need to gain consensus for the overall approach you think this article should follow (not the detail of individual edits).

In particular, whether deliberately or otherwise, I think you picked a poor example for spinoffs: The only idea from the FAR that found its way over here was a move request last May. This was nearly identical to your "History of the British Empire" proposal. You'll note it was shot down 13:2. My take on this is that the community feels that this topic should be orientated more towards political history, so it would be unwise to embark on a campaign to change the focus. It is, instead, the place of spinoffs to tackle social and economic history. I think we've naturally come to this place anyway. As a political history we can cover the wide-angle in line with WP policies: the events, ideas and movements that matter to the entity itself - the British Empire - the suject of the article. If we are trying to write a social history - i.e. societal structural changes and effects on ordinary people - then we would need to zoom in: local areas within limited time periods... and (a) that's often contentious and liable to conflict with WP:N and (b) it is not the British Empire. Happy to discuss further, but I think there would be general unhappiness if major changes were made without consensus on the kind of historical method we're attempting to use.

As an aside, on the specifics: you claim one of the reasons you've updated the slavery section is to emphasise Britain's role, but you left in a (referenced) line pointing out that British ships only carried a third of the slaves. Not sure how this tallies with headlines like "Britain dominated global slave trade" and "England held 74% of the trade in 1683". Who was transporting the other two thirds? You've also amended a sentence which implies slavery was a mainstay of London's economy. On close checking of the punctuation I see it doesn't actually say this, but I think the sentence needs splitting. It was confusing enough that I went looking for evidence to support it. Wiki-Ed (talk) 22:20, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I've got similar concerns, whilst I haven't objected so far I would also echo that the comments at the FAR were contradictory and I've already outlined my reasoning in previous discussion. I also have similar concerns that the numbers quoted don't match. For example, Portugal significantly exceeded the number of slave transported [1], so the statement that the British were dominant needs to be questioned; they were certainly dominant in stamping it out. Mortality rates were also around 12% in transportation. One thing you haven't mentioned is that disease low birth rates meant the population in the West Indies was never self-sustaining, forcing the continued import of fresh slaves [2]. WCM_email 07:14, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm personally not opposed to a restructure into something more thematic avoiding political history, but I don't think tweaking within the sections will achieve that. (This is not to say that the sections cannot be tweaked, just that it won't assuage the FAR comments.) Subarticles are definitely needed, but I'm not sure History focused ones make sense given the current structure of this article. I've just discovered that the Territorial evolution of the British Empire article is very confused and includes a governance section. That could be split into its own article, and if that article shapes up alternatives to the current article structure may be more tangible. CMD (talk) 07:39, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing up that article, I wasn't aware of it but again it could be a good destination for some content here. I'll take a look at it shortly. I have no preference or fixed mindset on the best way to approach content forking/splitting content from this article into sub-articles (although ideally, they should be linked from hatnotes at the top of sections here). I'm happy to build on what we have, or discuss others' ideas on this. Jr8825 • Talk 17:19, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

@Wiki-Ed: "[giving greater attention to social history] largely conflict[s] with the approach used by historians to tackle this topic ... when confronted with this most of the loud voices faltered and faded away" this assertion is incorrect - modern academic approaches to the British Empire are multi-disciplinary, integrating both the "old" imperial history (constitutional, political, economic) with "new" imperial history (social/cultural). "New" imperial history has been essential to academic writing on the empire since the 1990s. I can provide more sources for this if requested. Both new and old approaches have their limitations, but neglecting either results in a poorer article. Our article is incomplete because it minimises the shift within academia over the last 40 years. That does not mean political history should be removed entirely, simply that it should be summarised so that it is better balanced with other aspects and linkages are touched upon. I contend that we also poorly cover economic and constitutional aspects too, by over-examining political (i.e. territorial) changes.

"you claim one of the reasons you've updated the slavery section is to emphasise Britain's role, but you left in a (referenced) line pointing out that British ships only carried a third of the slaves. Not sure how this tallies with headlines like "Britain dominated global slave trade" and "England held 74% of the trade in 1683". Who was transporting the other two thirds?" The two statements (Britain carried a third of all slaves across the Atlantic, and dominated the global slave trade in the last decades of the 17th century & up to abolition) are both factually correct and entirely compatible. Portugal, Spain and the Dutch Republic transported slaves in larger quantities than the English in earlier periods (particularly to Brazil), and they, along with other European countries, continued to transport slaves long after abolition. However, Britain was the largest slave trading country by a large margin in the 25 years before abolition, at the time when the scale of the trade was at its greatest. The purpose of my rewrite was not to emphasise Britain's role, but correctly place it in context.

@Wee Curry Monster: in response to your uncertainty about the quoted facts and their compatibility, I point to my explanation above. Please feel free to verify the sources I've used as well. Multiple sources state that England/Britain controlled the majority of the slave market in the time frame mentioned. Regarding transportation mortality rates, that sentence was already present prior to the restructure and I didn't closely look at it; please correct it if you believe it's incorrect. I can look into this too if you'd like. Thanks for identifying the importance of low birth rates (and, in particular, high morality rates among the both the indigenous population and slaves) in the West Indies to the continued importation of slaves - this is a point I'm aware is missing and planned to come back to. I'm thinking about adding a short sentence on this following the discussion of the sugar revolution on Barbados, and can do this either today or tomorrow. If you could supply a source regarding the low birth rates it would be much appreciated and make adding this quicker. Jr8825 • Talk 11:12, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

@Wiki-Ed: I've made adjustments to the sentence on the economic impact following your suggestion, splitting it from the sentence on the largest cities in terms of registered ships in order to avoid confusion. I've also provided a new source, and replaced the (difficult to determine based on extant data) claim that slavery was always extremely profitable (which was present before my rewrite) with its more nuanced assessment that slavery played a pervasive role in economic life. Jr8825 • Talk 17:49, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

References

Thank you for making the changes to the sentence on cities. On the proportions question: I think you've proved my point? You've had to use a few caveats to explain the use of language. Britain was the cause of acute harm with the space of several decades; other countries (mainly Portugal) were the cause of chronic harm over the space of several centuries. While you might be able to justify the two clauses ('one third of all slaves' and 'dominated up to 1807') I don't think they belong in the same sentence. Separately, should there be a line pointing out that slavery was never legal in Britain (in contrast to other countries)? There's an odd sort of hypocrisy in that - benefitting from it overseas but not permitting it at home.

On the social vs political history question: Not sure I agree. Your explanation focuses on changes in historiography and I'd also worry about recentism bias. There may be a recent trend towards social history, but it can never fill gaps where no records were written. For many civilisations we only have the 'political' history - the names of leaders engraved in statues etc. And for some we don't even have that. For better or for worse, the invaders generally didn't write about the social impact on the invaded, and the invaded didn't have the opportunity to write their own history. So where is the material coming from that we should have so much 'new' historical analysis? I appreciate WP:V favours modern sources, but we shouldn't jettison older sources because they focus on 'old' facts; they provide a logical framework which we wouldn't get from writing about this topic as a social history. Wiki-Ed (talk) 22:51, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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Semi-protected edit request on 10 July 2022

This official article states that Argentina invaded Islas Malvinas. Islas Malvinas is a territory that belongs to the Argentinean sea, and that has always been and will always be an Argentinean territory. On 2/02/1825, the UK recognised the Argentinean sovereignity of Islas Malvinas by signing - the still valid - agreement of friensdhip and commerce. In 1829 the Argentinean government designated Luis Vernet as governor of Malvinas, position that he held up until in 1833 the UK illegally occupied the Islands. This occupation has been recognized by the UN in its several articles of UK decolonization, https://www.un.org/dppa/decolonization/es/nsgt/falkland-islands-malvinas. I demand the correction of these terms, because they do nothing but express a colonialist, biased and untruthful version of historical facts. 181.99.177.8 (talk) 17:09, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Given that plenty of sources disagree, and it will take up a huge amount of discussion to get done, this is not really something an edit request can do. You need to get a consensus first. Slatersteven (talk) 17:17, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 17:18, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

History

Burmese invasion of Assam When they come to India 2409:4065:E0B:4816:0:0:EAC8:7408 (talk) 15:14, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

When who came to India? Slatersteven (talk) 15:21, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Birtish imper — Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.71.7.10 (talk) 13:30, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

What edit do you want us to make, as I am not getting any idea what it is you are trying to say. Slatersteven (talk) 13:47, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Biased Phrasing?

I was reading through this article, and I noticed this line in the Decolonization and Decline segment, at the end of the first paragraph;

"Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies. In reality, this was rarely peaceable or altruistic."

No citation or source is provide for the claim in the last sentence, neither is any detail given to what "rarely peaceable or altruistic" means. It seems more like an injection of the writer's personal view on the decision to dismantle the connections between Britain and the colonies than it does a factual statement on the nation's public and governmental stance at the time. If this is true then at the very least it needs examples of how the transition was not peaceful, or well meaning. 2A00:23C7:3D82:E901:CD04:9C69:9983:EFD5 (talk) 14:09, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. The text was half-supported by the sources in the surrounding sentences. Both nearby sources, Abernethy and Roger Louis in Brown (ed.), discuss how Britain's policy wasn't altruistic but motivated by self-interest. However, they don't say it was rarely peaceful: in fact the Abernethy says British decolonisation was in most cases relatively peaceful, with the exceptions of post-independence violence in India and Pakistan and conflicts in Kenya, Malaya and Palestine. I've adjusted the text to reflect these sources and improve the source-text adhesion. Jr8825 • Talk 15:53, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Abernathy says, "Labour had historically been more critical of Britain's imperial role than the Conservatives....On strictly pragmatic political and economic grounds it was preferable to leave than stay." It doesn't question the government's altruism, but merely points out that it was also the pragmatic thing to do. In fact, the Labour Party and their trade union allies worked closely with the political parties and trade unions in the colonies seeking independence. TFD (talk) 21:39, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I think the sentences you emit are also important: "any attempt to hold on [to India] would require more troops to repress rebellion or more funds to placate Indians through new social welfare programs-or both. Any imagined scenario was bound to be expensive, leaving fewer resources for Labour's ambitious domestic programs"

WM Roger Louis' chapter in Brown (our cite simply says Brown, someone needs to go through and add chapter authors for uses of this source at some point) is slightly more explicit about the self-interest: "[Indian withdrawal] would be presented to the public as the result of British policy. To the world at large, the British would be seen as remaining in control of events" and "[in the late 1940s and 1950s] the British would secure the collaboration of moderate nationalists by yielding control before the initiative passed to irreconcilables [in the hope that] British imperialism would be sustained by means other than domination" and "[The archives show] a consistent thread. Ultimately the aim of the post-war practitioners of British imperialism remained the same as that of their Victorian predecessors. The goal was not that Britain should sustain the Empire but that the Empire, in a new form, should continue to sustain Britain."

Together I think these sources reject the idea that altruism was a motivation for decolonisation, I've summarised their points in our article as: "This was driven by pragmatic rather than altruistic concerns: British policymakers sought to appear in control of events and exploit the remaining colonies for Britain's benefit where possible." Jr8825 • Talk 23:12, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

I think this needs a rewrite, it seems to be contrived to include the word altruistic, when throughout the establishment of the British Empire, the actions of the government were led by pragmatism. Scholars agree that disengagement from Empire was largely peaceful and that Britain by and large avoided the costly wars of independence by which other european empires tried to hold onto their empires. In some respects, it does reflect the anti-colonial agenda of the Labour party but by and large by the 1960s Britain had realised the Empire was over and chose to disengage in a pragmatic way. When that decision had effectively been made the British government began to openly communicate that it would grant independence to any former colony that wanted it. WC M_email 08:34, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I think are text already covers the points you make: "by and large by the 1960s Britain had realised the Empire was over" --> "At first British politicians believed it would be possible to maintain Britain's role as a world power at the head of a re-imagined Commonwealth, but by 1960 they were forced to recognise that there was an irresistible "wind of change" blowing."

I don't think it's contrived to use the word altruism in this context at all. We explain that "while other European powers such as France and Portugal waged costly and unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact, Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies". Roger Louis (pp 329--330, in The Oxford History of the British Empire) explicitly says this policy of "mutual accommodation based on self-interest" wasn't driven by a concern for the welfare of the colonies. He says that hopes British imperialism could be sustained without domination didn't conform to actuality, and although "the Whiggish idea of progress towards a goal [of equality between Britain and the colonies]" won over parts of the "the general public, and later some historians", the idea this motivation actually drove policy is contradicted by the documentary evidence: "The archives now reveal an infinitely more complicated story, though with a consistent thread [the continued aim of using the empire to benefit Britain rather than its colonies]." (I already provided the rest of the quote above). Jr8825 • Talk 10:38, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

In "Colonial Policy of the British Labour Party" (Peter C. Spears, Social Research, 1948, Johns Hopkins Univerity Press), it says, "This socialist sentiment [the welfare of the colonial peoples, coupled with a sense of guilt for the past wrongs done by Great Britain] is perhaps the strongest motivation underlying the Labour government's colonial policies....Labour's generally benevolent attitude toward the colonies and colonial peoples, however, was until the mid-1930's split by dispute between those who held that Britain should rid herself of all her colonial possessions by granting them immediate freedom and those who held that Britain should retain her colonies while doing everything possible to improve conditions colonial policies."[3]

So while decolonization might have been the pragmatic thing to do, that does not mean that was the reason for it, at least during the 1945-1951 Labour administration. Labour in fact had committed to decolonization before it became pragmatic. Pragmatism of course might have been a reason why the Conservatives continued the process.

TFD (talk) 10:43, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't think a contemporary 1948 publication is comparable in quality to a major academic work from 1999, particularly as WP:AGE MATTERS. I seriously considered WCM's position and looked at whether we could potentially replace "pragmatic rather than altruistic" with "pragmatic self-interest", but having re-read Ox Hist source again I came to the view this would result in a less accurate summary of its main points. Admittedly, I was working on the presumption that the chief editor of Ox Hist remains a well-regarded expert voice that can be taken as authoritative. If other editors think it's likely there's an equally accepted counter-argument, I think we should be looking for similar modern scholarship for it. I'll take a look at what my own books say shortly. Jr8825 • Talk 10:55, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Abernethy (2000, pp. 149--150, 152, 159) contradicts the claim that the Labour administration's motivation for the policy of disengagement in India was primarily idealistic, calling it pragmatic. "Labour's electoral platform focused popular expectations and public finance on the home front. The government's future was staked not on what it did in far-off colonies but on what it could deliver [domestically]. Moreover, Labour had historically been more critical of Britain's imperial role than the Conservatives. Loss of India need not badly damage Prime Minister Attlee's government". Another quote above says staying in India would reduce resources for Labour's domestic programs. Abernethy describes Labour as being "moderately anti-imperial" and says "Labour Party qualms about imperialism ... predisposed [Britain] to treat decolonization as unfortunate but not calamitous", which I take to mean that although the Labour government was more willing to accept the need for decolonisation, it did not engage in an ideological campaign of it. Jr8825 • Talk 11:13, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

My reading of your sources is that it was both consistent with ideology and pragmatic. I don't see how Abernethy supports your claim. He says that Labour's platform paid little attention to the colonies because voters were not interested. In fact, the platform merely says, "the Labour Party will seek to promote mutual understanding and cordial co-operation between the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, the advancement of India to responsible self-government, and the planned progress of our Colonial Dependencies." Greater detail was however provided in the party's papers.

I provided a 1948 source, because that was the only one I could find that discussed Labour's motivation. It could well be that the government was only paying lip service to party policy and had no intention of carrying it out, but was forced to. Do you know if anyone has written about that? Usually it only becomes of interest when governments introduce policies that they have long opposed.

TFD (talk) 12:02, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

While Abernethy doesn't exclude the role ideology, he's saying that the primary driving force behind Labour's decision to abandon India was pragmatic: it helped achieved domestic policy while limited public attention lowed the political cost. A later historian's analysis of policy is more informative than a party's stated position: Abernethy is describing what actually happened. His view is consistent with Roger Louis' statement that the main persistent motivation for the British policy of (usually) peaceful disengagement over the period (which includes other governments as well) was the British aim of maintaining prestige and power/influence. I don't think this is a particularly controversial assertion, and it's also supported by Stockwell below. Stockwell says differences of principle between Labour and the Conservatives on colonial policy "sharpened in the late 1950s. Labour, its approach to empire radicalized by continued evidence of colonial nationalism, pressurized the Conservatives in ways which Kenneth Morgan claims contributed both impetus and content to Macmillan's "wind of change" policy after 1960." Jr8825 • Talk 15:10, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Some key quotes from Sarah Stockwell in The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives (2008, pp. 269--289): "first-generation scholarship focused on the 1930s and 1940s, when there seemed sufficient evidence of reform and accommodation to suggest a British "way" in decolonization contrasting with that of other European powers ... this may partly have been so ... but perhaps Britain's late colonial wars have been perceived as different to those of the French or the Portuguese partly because they did not have the same contemporary domestic political impact"; "If Britain's record on decolonization looks increasingly sullied, it remains very difficult to reach global judgements [due to the variety of forms of decolonization across the British Empire]"; "as records open up for the later 1950s and the 1960s, it emerges that even where colonies followed a largely peaceful transition to independence London was pushed by reports of nationalist politics and the fear that local politics would spiral out of British control"; "[historians' analyses of policy-making show that] even at the end of empire, British officials and statesmen had not necessarily become less "imperial". Jr8825 • Talk 11:58, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I think you're dismissing all too lightly a source documenting the antipathy towards colonialism of one of the main political parties in the UK, which is still present today. You also appear to be giving selective credence to sources that support your own viewpoint rather than giving a balanced view of the literature. I'd concur with TFD it was a combination of basic pragmatism that the Empire was ending and not wishing to see it spiral into nationalist violence, combined with the anti-colonial ideology that emerged in the UK. Your own sources would support that view and it can be written in a more neutral manner than you've done so far. Other European empires fought to retain their colonies, the British didn't, which I don't put down to altruism but then article has never said it was. WCM_email 12:25, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Thinking about even further, why do we even need this sentence? You could fill multiple articles with the different opinions academics have put forth on the motivations for ending the Empire. Sometimes less is more and simply removing it seems a more elegant solution. WCM_email 12:32, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

The 1948 source isn't useful for a high-level overview article. The archives upon which modern historians rely in the analysis of decolonisation were not open (or even written, decolonisation had hardly started to take place). It's inappropriate to use it to overrule over a historian writing after events with access to documentary evidence. The point about self-interest isn't just the opinion of some random academic, it's the view of the editor of a major respected reference work (which is used uncritically elsewhere in the article) and further supported by the other two sources that have been discussed here. It seems like cherry-picking to use the Ox Hist as an authority in some places but not here. Jr8825 • Talk 14:07, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Kenneth O. Morgan wrote that there is a debate "as to whether decolonization was an abject scuttle, a pragmatic Anglo-American realignment, or the product of a vision of a multiracial commonwealth of partners." "Imperialists at Bay: British Labour and Decolonization," in The Statecraft of British Imperialism: Essays in Honour of Wm. Roger Louis, pp. 233-234.

I am well aware that Labour governments frequently ignore Labour ideology and policies, for better or for worse. But it seems that at best any claim that they wanted to stop decolonization but couldn't is contentious. In fact it's probably contentious for Conservative administrations as well, although there was certainly an imperialist sentiment among many if not most in the party.

TFD (talk) 16:11, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Responding to Jr8825. Again I agree with what TFD is putting forward, its contentious to claim that the UK sought to stop decolonisation and particularly that it was opposed by members of the Labour party who ideologically favoured decolonisation. The 1948 source demonstrates this was a consistent approach. It was a pragmatic realisation that it was inevitable and a route was chosen to avoid the costly decolonisation wars of other European empires. Which as a point is supported by the same sources you're claiming makes your edit "bullet proof" Jr8825. Recognising decolonisation to be inevitable and putting in place the structures to ensure a smooth transition of power was a sensible and pragmatic way forward. However, the way you are currently choosing to phrase this is not neutral and it is clear that you don't have consensus for your current proposal, which you have now edit warred to push back into the article. Removing text whilst a content discussion is happening is a relatively common process in Wikipedia, particularly where there is concern over a content proposal. It allows the text to be worked on and a consensus formed, whereas edit warring leads to unhelpful and unproductive discussion. That one might characterise the process that Britain followed as self-interest is to my mind a non-neutral way of framing it, avoiding conflict is in one's self-interest (just as I might add provoking conflict by edit warring is not in your self-interest). A more neutral way to phrase it is a pragmatic realisation that decolonisation was inevitable and sought to establish local government structures to ensure a smooth transfer of power to a stable government. It was certainly cheaper in terms of human lives and treasure so a cynic might call that self-interest but a cynic is not exactly neutral. I have tagged that section to highlight my concerns as I will not indulge you in an edit war and am rather disappointed you've chosen that route. WCM_email 17:20, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Now it is clear to me there are sources that directly contradict this view, I've self-rev'd while the discussion & source review continues (see below). The sentence originally contested by the IP (which I replaced) has not been restored, so I took the liberty of also removing your tag as it appears to relate to this specific sentence. Please re-add if I've gotten this wrong. Jr8825 • Talk 17:45, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for providing that essay, it does provide a direct counter-argument to the sources above. Morgan says, in the context of Labour's influence on decolonization in the 1950s, "[the end of empire] was a triumph for all that was best in British life. The civilized acceptance of a post-imperial role was the great enduring triumph of British history since 1945" (p.253). If this view has equal prominence among historians to Roger Louis', I agree it'd be inappropriate to say decolonisation was driven by self-interest in wikivoice. I am, admittedly, quite sceptical about such a rosy picture in the face of the other sources I've read so far, and think it's worth noting it's a niche essay with relatively few citations. It does however show academic contestation, so until it's clearer what they academic consensus is (if one exists at all) I'm going to restore WCM's removal. I'm going to do some wider reading and see how other major works treat decolonisation; ideally I'm looking to find a literature review/ historiographical overview summing up the major views and any prevailing consensus/or shifts among historians. Jr8825 • Talk 17:33, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

• @Wee Curry Monster and The Four Deuces: I've read the chapters on decolonisation in another three texts over the last couple of days (The British Empire, Sunrise to Sunset by Philippa Levine, The British Empire: A History and a Debate by Jeremy Black & The British Empire: A Very Short Introduction by Ashley Jackson. Although there are common themes between them, they each have different emphases and I'm finding the idea of summarising them into a single narrative quite daunting, especially as I don't feel confident weighting these different arguments until I've read an even wider range of sources for comparison. I'm increasingly thinking a good approach would be a new WP:SPINOFF entitled Decolonisation of the British Empire (or similar), where there'd be sufficient space to properly cover the nuances of the arguments, and to do a more systematic review of the literature. I'm confident there's more historical discussion than enough to fill up a whole article, and hopefully it'd be easier to come back here and scrutinise the existing summary once this larger task is done. I'd envision the new spinoff being written largely from scratch (so it would have no impact on this article immediately) and, if others are cautious about the idea, I could prepare an initial version in the draftspace. What are your thoughts on the idea of a such a spinoff? Jr8825 • Talk 03:35, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

• There's no reason not to have an article, although I would use the term British instead of British Empire because it's not clear when the British Empire ended and British imperialism included countries that were not considered to be part of the empire. There's still the problem however of assigning weight to the various interpretations of motivation, without review articles that have already done this. It could be that there is more information about the reasons for each country's decolonization.

  Motivation will probably never be clear cut. For example, it might explain why Thatcher embraced neoliberalism (it was consistent with her ideology), but doesn't explain why Labour had already begun these policies and continued them after they returned to power. It could be that when a country decides to or has to change direction, it choses leaders who are enthusiastic about the change, such as Labour was about bringing in an expanded welfare state after the war.

  TFD (talk) 08:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

• No objections to British decolonisation as a title, I'd be happy to work with that. I'll wait to hear WCM's thoughts before starting on a such a spin-off, though. Regarding motivation, I acknowledge that the initial sources already in our text led me to conclude academic consensus was stronger than it now appears to be after reading a bit further, although there may be a handful of widely accepted key points. British motivations are important, but also need to be presented alongside factors such as the Cold War and nationalist movements which are discussed as limiting/shaping the options available to the British (some of these factors fed into each other; e.g. greater British economic development/resource exploitation in its African colonies, in order to modernise them and improve Britain's dire financial situation, increased the visibility of British rule and accelerated the growth of nationalist movements).

  Your point about different reasons/experienced with decolonisation at different times and in different places absolutely seems to be a common theme in the literature (with commonalities contained within "waves" of decolonisation, e.g. African decolonisation in from 1957 to the mid-60s, or late Caribbean decolonisation in the 70s and 80s).

  What has struck me so far is that historians mostly tend to place different emphases on factors, rather than reject the accuracy each others' analyses, which is why I think I fuller exploration will make it easier to come back here and make informed evaluations of how well the existing summary style manages to reflect the major views while being sensitive to space constraints and the needs to cover factual ground. Jr8825 • Talk 12:30, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I honestly think you're setting yourself an impossible task to complete that even in a dedicated article. Motivations vary by country, time, government of the day, the cold war, resources, sunk costs etc. It's a topic that would fill several volumes never mind a wikipedia article. It is such a vast subject and I think you're seriously underestimating what is required. WCM_email 12:47, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree it's a large task. Perhaps something I will be unable to complete myself. But then again Wikipedia itself is an impractical task! My main motivation is simply that after doing the reading, I think there's a large topic we don't currently cover and it makes sense to. Added ease of summary in this article would be a by-product, although hopefully a significant one as it'll help organise research better. Can I just check you don't have any particular objection to such an article? Jr8825 • Talk 12:58, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

And members of a government may disagree with one another, as for example Thatcher and Lord Carrington. Also, governments themselves are pressured from the civil service, public opinion, and party supporters. TFD (talk) 13:00, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

It sounds a very good idea to me. This type of article is exactly the sort of area where WP is weakest. As WCM says, it is a large task, but it's not impossible, and well worth attempting. Johnbod (talk) 15:31, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't have an objection as such but there are a lot of authors out there with POV agendas, I fear that any article may fall prey to fringe opinions. It would take a broad church to write it and having a single author is a bad idea IMHO. WCM_email 15:26, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Great. Will make a start on a draft and publicise it here once I've got something to show. If anyone would like to give a hand, it would be greatly appreciated. Jr8825 • Talk 04:41, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Proposed changes to first section re Ireland

I tried raising this issue on here a few days ago, but unfortunately no one has shown any interest in wanting to confront this problem in a serious and objective way, at least as of yet. So, as a last-ditch talk page effort, I want to propose that the following lines be reworded, for several reasons that I will briefly outline:

"Although England tended to trail behind Portugal, Spain, and France in establishing overseas colonies, it carried out its first modern colonisation, referred to as the Ulster Plantation, in 16th century Ireland by settling English Protestants in Ulster. England had already colonised part of the country following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169."

• First, there is an issue of timeline. The Ulster Plantation began in the early 17th Century, not the 16th. That needs to be corrected.

• Secondly, the statement that this was England's "first modern colonization attempt" is factually incorrect as a matter of basic chronology. The failed Roanoke colony was established in 1585, 24 years before the Ulster Plantation (and still in the Elizabethan Era). The planting of Protestants in Ulster began in earnest in 1609, two years after the founding of Jamestown. A lot of the argument that frames Ireland as a "laboratory" for British "colonialism" or "empire" is undercut by this (and other realities, which I won't get into now).

• Describing Ireland as "colonial" or "postcolonial" is controversial, according to a number of reliable sources (this falls under the whole "revisionist vs anti-revisionist" debate that's suffocated a large section of Irish scholarship over the last few decades). Audrey Horning has specifically challenged the colonialist view of 17th Century Ulster, and can be cited to balance the opposition[4]. Describing Ireland in 'colonial' terms should always be prefaced with "Some scholars have proposed," or something to that effect, and ended with "although this view remains controversial," citing the appropriate sources. This is fairly straightforward in terms of npov.

• Finally, it is entirely inappropriate to imply any connection between the "Norman" (partial) conquest of Ireland in the 12th Century and later colonization attempts. Scholars generally separate the expansion of feudalism in Medieval Western Europe from European colonialism in the Early Modern and Modern periods as fundamentally different phenomena.

One last point -while a lot of what we're dealing with here falls under the category of "Early Modern Ireland", Modern Irish scholarship is much clearer on this point: "colonial" and "postcolonial" analogies for 19th and 20th Century Ireland are not the dominant view of historians (nor is it appropriate to apply this analytical framework to 18th Century Ireland). I can cite sources on request, although this may be a separate issue. Jonathan f1 (talk) 18:58, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

You have a better understanding (a) of the history and (b) of the historiography than me and - I venture - probably several other editors who frequent this page. No-one has challenged what you've said, but you've offered an argument for change rather than the change itself. If you can offer an alternative form of words (ie. that is not going to provoke massive edit warring from one or other side of a debate) then please go ahead and suggest something. However, if you are proposing removing references to Ireland altogether I don't think that's tenable - the terminology might be awkward, but Ireland was involved from the beginning and we can't gloss over that. Wiki-Ed (talk) 10:14, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay (completely forgot about this page). In any event, Ireland can be glossed over as easily as Wales has been glossed over. Wales was annexed by England well before Ireland, and it was the annexation of Wales that was the English Crown's first real attempt to expand the kingdom. And yet editors (rightly) concluded that readers can understand British colonialism overseas just fine without bringing Wales into the picture. As a general rule on the encyclopedia, I would recommend a clear separation between 'external colonisation' (European colonial projects overseas) and 'internal' colonies (Europeans colonising other Europeans) in articles. Both were fundamentally different phenomena in nature, objective, extent and long-term consequences, and conflating the two only confuses readers. Jonathan f1 (talk) 22:01, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

It is not "entirely inappropriate" to explain how what most scholars of the period are quite happy to refer to as the mediaeval colony in Ireland (e.g. Katharine Simms in "The Political Recovery of Gaelic Ireland", J. A. Watt "The Anglo-Irish colony under strain", Art Cosgrave in the introduction to A New History of Ireland Volume II where he describes "the influx of a large ... number of settlers to form an English colony") evolved into Ireland being a colony within the British Empire. The Tudor change in approach to Ireland was a change in policy from devolving governance to the colonial aristocratic elite led by the Kildare Fitzgeralds to direct rule from Dublin by New English administrators—not a later and distinct "colonization attempt". This change in approach included establishing a garrison controlled by the administrators to end reliance on traditional aristocratic defences and this created tension which culminated in the conquest of Gaelic-held regions from 1590. It is hard to make the case for a clear rupture between two unrelated colonies. Following the establishment of the Ascendancy in the 1690s, Brendan Bradshaw and Peter Roberts are comfortable asserting that "in practice, Ireland had been reduced, uniquely within the amalgam of territories that comprised the United British Kingdom, to the status of a colony". The rigid conceptual separation you seem to desire between mediaeval legacies and colonial realities is simply not viable in relation to Ireland. —Kilopylae (talk) 17:36, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Why revert my edits?

Why are you reverting my edits. Wikipedia is no place for nationalism 178.139.163.107 (talk) 18:34, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm guessing from the timing of your edit that you are User:Valyssr. If so, ironic that you should accuse others of nationalism given your pattern of editing recently - especially tub-thumping insertions (or removal) of text without sourcing. Putting that aside, on this page you've made nine edits in the last week, only two of which had edit summaries. You've been reverted by four separate users, which ought to clue you in that there's something wrong. You should have started this discussion after the first revert, not the last. There are three reasons for the reversion, which I included in an edit summary yesterday and which you've ignored:

First, the claim is wrong. The rulers of the Spanish Empire were not the first people to use this phrase. There's even have a hyperlink to an article on the history of the phrase which would have set you straight.

Second, the quote you've used doesn't support the text you inserted. That you chose to synthesise in a particular way could be read to suggest a rather nationalistic POV on your part.

Third, it's an irrelevant factoid that has no place in this article. It adds nothing to the reader's understanding of this topic. Wiki-Ed (talk) 19:17, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Oh, what is this link? Who claimed it previously? You should be more careful about throwing accusations about. I certainly don't agree it's an "irrelevant factoid that has no place in this article" at least in a note. Johnbod (talk) 19:54, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I note this edit summary too. Johnbod (talk) 20:19, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

I think maybe you need to be more careful: (a) the "nationalist" accusations came from User:Valyssr, here and on their talk page (for which they have been warned) and (b) the little blue line under the phrase "the empire on which the sun never sets" is a wiki link. Not sure how you expect it to be made any more obvious. As for whether you agree or not: the point is that four editors disagree with you, Valyssr and JR8825. It's supposed to be bold-revert-discuss, not bold-revert-revert-revert-snide comment in edit summary-revert etc. And the onus is on you, as one of the proponents, to explain why this insertion is relevant and factually accurate. NB Usually most editors use edit summaries, but even that seems to be too difficult for some. Wiki-Ed (talk) 23:05, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I have no strong view either way. Please don't tally me as either firmly supporting or opposing a change, I only sought to tidy whatever version was live. Jr8825 • Talk 03:54, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

• If the note about the Spanish Empire is going to be concluded in the lead, it should be a footnote. I'm against stating it in the text itself and have reverted it for now because of this. Jr8825 • Talk 14:33, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

It's not going to be included in the text or in a footnote for the reasons set out above. Valyssr's false claims, duplicitous edit summaries (and hat notes), edit warring and repeated refusal to engage in discussion are behaviours one would normally associate with vandalism. I would propose we treat them as such. Wiki-Ed (talk) 19:58, 14 October 2022 (UTC) PS. Here and everywhere else. Having checked, I see that every single edit this user has made in the last few weeks has been reverted for similar reasons. Wikipedia's immune system in action.

Biased language in the section about early overseas possessions?

I've been reading the article and encountered a few odd phrases:

That year, Gilbert sailed for the Caribbean with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. - was it really piracy and not privateering?

Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures... - makes it sound like an arbitrary "attention" shift, but I thought it was a part of the peace deal?

these territories had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates - I'm sure people didn't risk their lives in search of a better climate per se; it's a very strange way to say that the climate there was more suitable for farming. Also, the climate doesn't seem to be discussed in the referenced pages 72-73 of the source.

rising costs soon led English traders to embrace the use of imported African slaves - "embrace" is a strange editorialisation; also, would be good to mention what costs - presumably transport? The article on Indentured servitude lists different primary reasons for the shift to slavery. (No idea which is the correct one.) PaulT2022 (talk) 09:58, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 December 2022

Add a lifespan of the British Empire in the infobox 202.93.153.239 (talk) 10:18, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

That will be hard as there is no official end or start date.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Slatersteven (talk • contribs)

How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years

In case of interest Between 1880 to 1920, British colonial policies in India claimed more lives than all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea combined. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.214.100.107 (talk) 15:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Information Literacy and Scholarly Discourse

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 August 2022 and 7 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NoelleSeniorTrotter (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Mclegend17, Ravinuno.

— Assignment last updated by Dsackey (talk) 18:13, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Good luck! I'm not entirely sure of the expectations of your course, but making changes to this page tends to be... challenging, given the diversity of views on how to present the conflicting and changing historiography. Please be bold, and remember you can always discuss things here on the talk page if you make changes that are undone by other editors. Best, Jr8825 • Talk 04:10, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

No single mention of the word "genocide" in this article

What is next, Mr. Bean is going to tell us how the empire was a good colonizer ? This is so ridiculous in the name of neutral POV there must be some content about this. I added some reputable sourced material, and it was reverted. Magonz (talk) 07:14, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Most sources on this topic do not use the word genocide, so at best it's a minority view, at worst a fringe view. Wiki-Ed (talk) 21:07, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

A topic related to an island that brought racist ideology to the level of a pseudoscience, there is much to be done. More to come... Magonz (talk) 05:54, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

"In one of the most shocking of all the chapters in the history of the British Empire, the Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land were hunted down, confined and ultimately exterminated: an event which truly merits the now overused term ‘genocide’. " Niall Ferguson, historian & empire chearleader. Magonz (talk) 07:07, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm trying to translate this article into Basque for the Basque Wikipedia and it is quite shocking that there is no mention to any critic to the Empire itself. Theklan (talk) 08:13, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree 100% Magonz (talk) 09:03, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

How far down have you got? Keep reading. It's not like there is any praise either. This is very largely a neutral account of events. Johnbod (talk) 19:06, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I have looked at other Empires and I could find the word and/or concept genocide at Spanish Empire, French colonial empire, German Empire, Ottoman Empire and Belgian colonial empire. Also, the article Genocides_in_history mentions the British Empire. Theklan (talk) 18:58, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Both Magonz and Theklan: Bag the references to other WP articles, tell me in your own words which form of British iniquity matches the common genocides of history such as the Holocaust, Armenian genocide, Khmer genocide, ... or for that matter the missing 75 million females in India, the result of Hinduism's preference for walling out females from the right to property by all means possible, including female infanticide, and now feticide, not to mention Sati (practice). Even the famines, whether in Ireland or South Asia, come nowhere near in deliberate preplanned culpability. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:40, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello. I'm not an expert on this topic, that's why I'm translating it and not editing. When I start translating articles, I normally look up for the 3 main languages I understand (English, Spanish and French) and try to decide which of the sections are better in which language. I was simply trying to figure out why the only critics to the British Empire are in the last paragraph and balanced with other good critics, while there are [IMHO, well deserved] claims of genocide for other Empires. I found this topic and wanted to contribute.

About the question itself, there is plenty of bibliography and references, and the debate is alive currently in the UK. Armenian genocide caused (looking at the article, I don't really know) between 0.6 and 1.5 million deaths. The Bengal famine of 1943 caused (not entirely by political causes) between 0.8 and 3.8 million deaths. It was one of the famines that British rule helped (I repeat, they were not the only cause) that killed 12-29 millions in India. The Mau Mau rebellion response between 20.000 and 100.000. The Spanish Empire contributed to the death of millions of Amrican natives, but was not alone: the British Empire killed millions in North America. Also, Slave trade was a good standing business for the British Empire and its colonies. Half of the Australian and Torres Islands aboriginal population died in a generation because of diseases carried by the British (this also happened in the Americas for all the colonizers). There were concentration camps in South Africa for boers. The imprisoned thousands of peasents in Malaysia. It also introduced massive opium consumption in China and fought two wars against them... the list can be too long, and that's why a section about criticism and current debates should be good in the article. Theklan (talk) 21:04, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

What you're describing is not genocide though. I don't think anyone is disputing that these things happened, although there might be debate in the sources about the details in seach of the examples you've cited. However, the term "genocide" is quite specific - at least according to the UN - and implies "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Where large institutional groups - e.g. Nazi Germany - have had a clear intent to destroy then there's usually some evidence of that. I've not seen any evidence in reliable sources that the government of the British Empire had any such general policy, although some regional administrations / militias / individuals clearly did come up with their own - often at odds with the more liberal view in London. The most obvious example is, of course, North America, where the British government's policy in the mid-1700s not to encroach further into native American lands was at odds with that of the settlers, which was a major reason for the revolution there.

On your point about other articles: I'm not an expert on those empires. Either the sources have found evidence of a genocidal policy - in which case it's fair to say so - or the editors of those articles have been less assiduous about describing what those sources say and have allowed anachronistic characterisation to creep into their writing. On your point about a criticism/legacy section: We've taken the view that something inherently subjective should be covered, in detail, in the individual articles on those topics, where there is more space to provide a balanced view. This is an overview article which adopts a historical narrative approach in order to remain as neutral as possible about a topic that remains controversial. Wiki-Ed (talk) 11:18, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not claiming that those were genocides. I'm only asking the question made. If there are good sources claiming that certain actions were genocide (there are, actually), then we should reflect it. Wikipedia can't claim that anything was, indeed, a genocide. Only that there are sources claiming it. Theklan (talk) 21:11, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Great point, must be a case of English exceptionalism ! Magonz (talk) 11:09, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Just found this article, too List of massacres of Indigenous Australians Theklan (talk) 19:10, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I think (as long as we have RS (properly) wp:cited) we can have a line saying something like "some commentators have accused it of genocide". Slatersteven (talk) 11:37, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Shaw, Martin. “Britain and genocide: historical and contemporary parameters of national responsibility.” Review of International Studies 37 (2011): 2417 - 2438.

[5] Magonz (talk) 22:14, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

That paper is quite a good example of the complexity of the topic, and why it is difficult to tackle at this level of summary style. It takes great pains to define a specific view on genocide (and picks quite a broad one) and also to define a specific view on how you can identify perpetrators. "British agencies and people have sometimes been perpetrators, as well as implicated in the genocides of others, the British state has not practised large-scale, centrally coordinated genocide...by national responsibility I mean the direct and indirect responsibility of particular national leaders, institutions or groups in society, for particular policies, actions and outcomes...I cannot avoid the vexed question of the meaning of genocide". It is a paper that sets out a particular theory of genocide stretching back to the Harrying of the North. Regarding the Empire, it goes into some historiographical detail "If the growing literature on empire and genocide has a dominant theme, it is that settler colonialism is the main problem...converse of the case that settler colonialism is particularly prone to genocide is that empire without large-scale settlement is less so", and concludes on the Empire like so: "genocidal moments seem to be mainly the direct responsibility of settlers, local administrations and military commanders. But it does suggest that genocide was a repeated problem of British – as of most other – imperial and colonial expansions, in which the imperial centre was often, if usually indirectly, implicated." I note Australia was brought up above. I'd have to crack open the book again for exact quotes, but when we were discussing the lack of indigenous mention in the Australian coverage here, I added some text sourcing Aboriginal Australians by Richard Broome. This is a very comprehensive text, which goes deeply into many instances of both institutional and individual violence, and which nonetheless hesitates to apply the term genocide. CMD (talk) 06:20, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

That could be used for something like "and whilst it has not engaged in "large-scale, centrally coordinated genocide" some commentators have stated that it has sometimes been the perpetrator of genocide". Slatersteven (talk) 11:09, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I have given 15+ sources in this page, see below. Magonz (talk) 15:33, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Which is Some. Slatersteven (talk) 15:40, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Talk:British Empire#Removal of page cited, not primary source, and genocide is a word commonly used by notable historians of British empire's colonialism. Magonz (talk) 15:45, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes? it is still only some. Slatersteven (talk) 15:49, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

In fact some might say a very small number or, perhaps, a fringe minority. Wiki-Ed (talk) 21:16, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Not too sure, but certainly not enough to want to say anything else. Slatersteven (talk) 21:28, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Let's not forget the Great Famine (Ireland). Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:25, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

• Having written a large number of the Indian famine articles (and I'm not claiming any special knowledge, only some experience in mulling over the complications of assigning blame), here is something impressionistic off the top of my head, but based in sources.

• The British were technologically advanced. It was they who had arrived in India, not the other way around. Unlike Australia, Canada or South Africa, India was already densely populated, so a settler colony never came to pass. After 1858, with the exception of the domiciled British in India (in careers in the post office or the railways, ...), the administrative officials and the military men typically spent their working lives there but moved back to the UK after retirement. They were paid very well and received a hefty pension. They lived in exclusive British-only areas (the "Civil lines"); they had access to imported goods; they were usually able to escape the harshest Indian summer in hill stations. Their children were shipped off to boarding schools in Britain by the age of 10.
• The British tried to modernize India, economically, technologically, and even socially, and culturally, with mixed motivations (some selfish but some egalitarian) and mixed results. In this enterprise of modernization and exploitation of resources (a la Swiss Family Robinson), there was disruption. Commercialization of agriculture, and cash cropping, made the Indian farmer vulnerable to crop failure in a way that the earlier subsistence farmers were perhaps not. There were large-scale famines (in a historically famine-prone land) which killed millions of Indians and not a single Briton. But the British also tried to grapple with famine prevention, instituting Famine Commissions and publishing the Indian Famine codes that were eventually able to protect India against large-scale famines between 1900 and 1943. They built canals in India, the first of which, the Ganges Canal, was in response to the Agra famine of 1837–1838. Their other good works in India are well-documented so I won't bother listing them here.
• Were the British racist? Some were, from a contemporary perspective; some were not. Were they overwhelmed by India? Again some were and some were not (Joseph Dalton Hooker in Darjeeling#History was most certainly not.) Did they have blinders on? Some did and some did not. (James Prinsep and William Jones (philologist) did not.) Were they aloof in India? Yes and no. They passed social legislation in India (Female Infanticide Prevention Act, 1870 or the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856); some also founded the Indian National Congress which eventually won India its independence. Were they paternalistic? Yes.
• Was there a British master plan to kill off any section of India's population? Unequivocally, no. Was there violence against Indians? Yes, especially what the British saw was in reprisal, and the Indians did not. Had the British become inured, accustomed, to inequity and poverty in India? Perhaps yes. Was there less poverty in Indian-ruled states? No. Would the commonly authoritarian Indian rulers have prevented famine deaths? Very unlikely. Would the British have prevented famines had India been sparsely populated and they had settled there? Most likely. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:51, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

This applies mostly to any other Empire in the same epoch. The question here is there are reliable sources talking about genocide, and it seem that, indeed, there are. Theklan (talk) 19:17, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

There is no former colony that became independent in the mid-20th century that has India's relatively stable institutions of democracy, law, or education.

Narendra Modi is trying to destroy them, but by moving away from the British inherited model.

As for genocide, the question is not whether there are reliable sources in WP's definition that support it, but whether genocide the dominant narrative in the scholarly literature, i.e. WP:SCHOLARSHIP. It is most certainly not. Please see the tertiary sources I've been gathering in Talk:Bengal_famine_of_1943#F&f's_tertiary_sources If you don't have that level of scholarship and rigor in determining the dominant narrative (or due weight), then you are not writing a encyclopedic article about a vital topic.

There are always polemical books that sell. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:55, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree with Fowler&Fowler about reliable sources. User:Theklan might want to reread the NPOV policy in full - I quoted part of it in the second comment of this section. Wikipedia isn't a soapbox for fringe or minority views. Wiki-Ed (talk) 21:14, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Afghanistan , Nepal and Bhuthan

Each of these states has been a British protectorate at some point, shouldn't they be in pink on the map? 94.38.232.249 (talk) 22:48, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I often wondered why the southern half of Oregon Country isn't also included on the map. Masterhatch (talk) 23:16, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

The short answer is that the map only shows those territories that the majority of sources say were included in the British Empire. Presumably protectorates and places that were claimed, but not occupied/administered don't make the cut. Wiki-Ed (talk) 20:26, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

The map used here Territorial evolution of the British Empire has a lot more "red". Masterhatch (talk) 21:03, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

That map is hilariously bad and needs to be tagged. In fact I'll do that now. Wiki-Ed (talk) 15:51, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

None of these were ever officially protectorates, they were (as they have remained) independent states in the shadow of the BE and it successors. Would you say Afghanistan has ever been a Pakistani protectorate, or Nepal or Bhutan Indian ones? Johnbod (talk) 18:41, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

They were protected states not protectorates RedStorm1368 (talk) 05:24, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

In South Asia, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was a Crown Colony, the Maldives was a protectorate, Nepal and Bhutan were independent kingdoms (whose foreign affairs were handled by the British), and the Raj, or the Indian Empire, was the collection of directly-ruled provinces such as Bombay and indirectly ruled princely states such as Kashmir. (Nepal and Bhutan were not princely states).

Similarly around the world the classic divisions of the empire (reflected loftily in the regnal names of the monarch) were: (i) Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland, (ii) the Dominions (Canada, Australia), (iii) the crown colonies (Ceylon, Trinidad, ...) and (iv) India, ie. the Raj, or the Indian Empire.

There is nothing that complicated. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:08, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Some ideas to make the article better

Dear all. I have been translating this article into Basque language, so I have read from the top to the bottom more than once. The article makes a great effort to summarize all the history section, and it does it in a very competent way. As said before in this discussion, I'm not an expert on British history, so I can't say this and that specific situation is missing. But I can propose some things I think could make the article better:

• With the exception of Australia and New Zealand, there's barely no mention to who lived in the conquered places. There are lot of mentions to English stablishing in certain territory, as if the territory itself was empty. It should be interesting to make some comments about the relations with locals (I guess there's good documentation about American natives).
• Most of the historical mentions are about wars between Empires (which is logic, because this is an article about an Empire) but there are few comments to situations within the Empire borders.
• I know that four centuries is a vast amount of time, even more the last four centuries, but if we read the article about the Roman Empire, there are quite a few sections that may be interesting for us. There should be a section about Organization (territorial organization), or how it has changed over time. There's an article about this, so a small summarized section would be good to understand what was a domain, a territory, a colony, and so on. In the same way there should be a section about military, to understand how it was organized.
• There's also a mention about culture in the Legacy section, but I think this deserves a full section. Is not only about football and cricket, is also about language, customs, products (tea?)... the cultural shift in the last century has been great, but I'm sure it is possible, at least, till the Victorian era. A section about religion may be interesting, too. There's a mention down in the article about protestantism and anglicanism being expanded through the world, so this could be expanded to explain how (as I understand it, the monarch is also the highest religious authority, but I don't know to what extent this was also imposed in the Empire).

Thanks for reading. Theklan (talk) 08:50, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

There have to some editorial choices on some of these. Two in particular stand out for me: As you rightly noted, it's a long period of time across a wide geographical area. We can't cover everything here - it's an overview so it simply introduces the topic; it doesn't cover all the detail and it doesn't analyse. You've also spotted the tendency to focus on political history from the perspective of the Empire itself, as opposed to social history from the perspective of the people affected by the empire. Both factors shape the content, but the former can be flexed whereas addressing the latter would require a complete rewrite and would - probably - introduce controversial / less neutral language at the expense of historical facts / narrative. With that said, taking your points in order:

1. I think that's true to some extent: it acknowledges extant populations in Africa, India and the Pacific. It doesn't mention native American tribes. Not sure if it's always been like that, but that does need to be addressed.
2. Wars between empires: yes it does focus on that more - to my point about political history - but it does also mention conflict situations within the Empire's borders: the American revolution obviously; the Indian Rebellion in 1857; rebellions in Ireland, Canada, the Carribbean; the Boer War etc. You might need to be more specific if you think there's something missing.
3. Organisation: this has been discussed relatively recently as part of a FAR: unlike the Roman empire and others, there were no standard territorial organisational principles: no template forts every so many miles along a perfectly straight road leading to Rome. Every territory was different and it changed regularly so we couldn't make a blanket statement that such and such a place was a 'colony' or a 'domain' because it would need to be adjusted every few decades in the narrative flow - that's what the fork article is there (supposedly) to do. Also, often there weren't formal definitions of different types of territory - at least not until the end circa 1931 - and so to imply otherwise suggests a level of central organisation that wasn't present. Likewise, for the military organisation - very variable. If you're looking for a comparison with something (comparatively!) standardised like Roman legions that's not possible.
4. Culture/religion: for similar reasons we've opted not to try and include more on this - it varies so much between each territory. General consensus is that the articles on those geographic areas is the right place to cover that. Arguably there could be a better hook for that in the text - it doesn't provide a jumping off point - possibly at the end of the second paragraph of the legacy section. Wiki-Ed (talk) 12:44, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

@Theklan and Magonz: If you are now asking a different question, i.e. how the article can be improved, there is a lot to say. I hadn't really read the article in a while, but the first thing that strikes me now is that it is sanitized. Typically, a well-written and well-sourced article should have broad statements which described the dominant narrative in the literature, but interspersed with vignettes, especially those that describe the counter-narrative. In the Indian rebellion of 1857 for example, the article says, "The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides." I don't think most historians would agree with this if the implication by what is not said is equally heavy.

Here is Douglas Peers in India under Colonial Rule 1700–1885, (Seminar Studies in History), Pearson, Longman, 2006, that we use in quite a few Indian history articles including the FA India:

"The actual cost in human lives will never be known with any certainty. It has been roughly estimated that 6,000 of the approximately 40,000 Europeans then in India were killed. The number of Indians who died during the mutiny and the famines and epidemics that followed in its wake is far more difficult to compute. Attempts to do so based on comparisons between the very sketchy demographic data that we have for the period before 1857 with the census results for 1871 have suggested that the number of deaths might be around 800,000. It could well be higher than that."

When Ulysses S. Grant after retirement as US President, and embarked on a world tour in the 1870s, stopped in Delhi, he was dismayed by the extent of British destruction of the old Mughal city after the rebellion. The Americans had little interest in the ceremonial welcome given by the Chief Commissioner in Delhi, escaping the pomp and circumstance the next day to see the decaying historic monuments around Delhi, whose neglect also dismayed them.

It was the same with the American GIs in Calcutta during the Second World War. They were shocked by the poverty in India and also by British unconcern, especially during the Bengal famine of 1943. I don't have any doubts that reports sent by the US army had something to do with Roosevelt's insistence that decolonization in India be one of the preconditions of continued US aid to Britain during the war.

The article is overly focused on the White settler colonies and on British concerns and POV. How the Great Game takes up more space that Company rule in India and the British Raj combined is anyone's guess. The first half of the Indian empire section is not even about India; it focuses more on the Company and its antecedents in southeast Asia and China.

I don't have more time for this article, but if you are looking to improve the article, you should stop worrying about genocide and focus on the garden-variety issues: improved coverage of racism, less focus on the White settler colonies and on British concerns, more on empire's mismanagement, economic exploitation, environmental damage, deforestation, famines, ... that is where this article needs to be improved. It won't be a band-aid fix. All the best Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:20, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

It was very likely what the GIs told upon their return after the war that began the parental retort much heard in this geographically insulated land in the 1950s and 60s, "Please finish your food Beaver and Wally. There are children starving in India." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:39, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

As you can read, this is a completely different topic (while both thigs can be addressed). I only wanted to give some impressions after reading and translating the article. Theklan (talk) 16:47, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

The suggestions at FAR also suggested departing from the chronological structure into a more topical structure. Simultaneously however, Talk:British Empire/Archive 19#Requested move 10 May 2021 found a consensus against a move that would aid with this. The best way forward would be to create the appropriate subpage for the topic, eg. Governance of the British Empire to cover the organisation. A quite substantial task, but one that would provide a firm basis upon which a new consensus can be built. (On changes to the current text, I was like Fowler also surprised on a recent skim at the Indian rebellion of 1857 description. That was clearly missed when we did add some vignettes during the FAR.) CMD (talk) 01:45, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

I concur.....now this is just my personal opinion, not my editorial opinion> there is barely any mention of the colonized, as if the lands were empty.... as if the tens of millions of indigenous nations in British colonies just went "poof" and ceded their territories and vanished. As if they were just tribes, sitting around doing nothing, with no civilization of their own. The only worthy mention is right at the end, in the last paragraph, in the section of Legacy, a biased version of history that makes it seem as if the indigenous nations are gone and have no agency and no rights. An old source, a source behind a paywall, a couple of opinion article sources (op-ed), and one relatively good source. No indigenous sources. This is a perfect example of why there is need for diversity and representation in the editorial process and the decision making process. Magonz (talk) 16:59, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

OK, then lets see some sources, that we can use to improve the article. Slatersteven (talk) 17:03, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

The weight given to various aspects should be determined by WP:WEIGHT, specifically "Balancing aspects," rather than editorial discretion. It would be helpful therefore to find current tertiary sources to see how they balance the information. TFD (talk) 18:58, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Which sources would you consider are tertiary sources covering or not covering (if there is nothing to cover) crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in the British empire? Magonz (talk) 15:41, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Would you say the most detailed recent tertiary source is the Oxford History of the British Empire? Magonz (talk) 18:27, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Generally you would not use a five volume text as a basis for what material belongs in a short article. However, Volume 5 Historiography might be useful.

The series is actually a collection of secondary sources. What I would look for is articles approximately the same length as this one to see what emphasis they place on various aspects. These would appear in other encyclopedias and history textbooks. TFD (talk) 13:58, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

You mean an article with the topic British Empire that is roughly the same length as this one?

I still find it unbalanced to speak one paragraph of the colonized, about an empire that has been present in all but 22 of the world's countries.

https://www.statista.com/chart/3441/countries-never-invaded-by-britain/

For example, the talk about human cannibalism by Indigenous peoples is sourced by primary references (accounts of European explorers), but Wikipedia today has no problem with that. The article is there informing future generations that Indigenous peoples were cannibals on accounts of people that had a great interest in slandering the people they would then colonize and exterminate.

Whereas here, what is suggested, if anything, is to consult English sources with limited size as there is no space for talking about the colonized, in their POV, with their historians. Magonz (talk) 16:13, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

If you want to be taken seriously. then quoting that statistic from Laycock's book is a sure fire way to undermine it totally. Laycock used an exceptionally loose interpretation of “invaded,” to a degree that it includes cases of liberation from an enemy occupier (e.g. Vietnam), British protection at the explicit and voluntary request of the population (e.g. Malta), and even brief naval incursions into a country’s waters (I think this is how we supposedly “invaded” Sweden. It was originally supposed to be a fun bit of pseudo-history a la 1000 years of annoying the French but predictably seized upon and repeated by various lunatics with an anti-British agenda and no sense of humour. WCM_email 06:57, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the side story, however, you cannot deny that Britain colonized a large proportion of the world's territory. So the point holds. A point which you have sidestepped and avoided to address. Magonz (talk) 09:11, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Is 24% a "large proportion"? Did Britain colonise all of it? No. Your point doesn't hold. Wiki-Ed (talk) 11:33, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

There´s many types of colonialism, including exploitation colonialism.

List of largest empires

British empire number one in list of largest empires. Magonz (talk) 00:39, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Theklan's analysis. The article focuses too much on wars/territorial development and neglects social/economic/cultural overviews (each of which is an important field of study). It's an argument that's been made several times on this talk page and the previous FAR by myself and other editors. It's still an ambition of mine to draft sections that offer succinct overviews of these broad areas. I haven't had time to do so yet, but I have a mountain of books waiting on the corner of my desk. It's a big task as it would need to be balanced with careful reductions to existing content to keep the article size stable, and how to best integrate these topics into the chronological structure is a difficult question. It'd be fantastic if other editor(s) would be willing to work collaboratively with me to split the workload.

Fowler&fowler's point about the article being overly sanitised is concerning, and perhaps a by-product of the problem above (overdependence on traditional imperial historiography and the focus on territorial expansion). This has also been raised before. The one section I've reworked so far, Americas, Africa and the slave trade, was done with the intent of improving the balance between white settler history and the slave trade. However, I agree with F&F that there's no easy fix. Adding a simplistic sentence to the effect of "some scholars say the empire committed genocide" won't address balance problems throughout. The recent burst of rigorous critical scholarship, such as Elkins' excellent recent book Legacy of Violence (Wiki-Ed has pointed out above that some (conservative) historians were critical of Elkins' book, but nonetheless it was broadly praised by the majority of scholars [6][7][8][9] and reviewers [10][11]) can help to rebalance our article, although it's important to emphasise it shouldn't replace or overrule existing scholarship (as Elkins acknowledges in her introduction they offer only a history (interpretation) of the empire). Jr8825 • Talk 15:10, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

If this weren't a talk page your comment "praised by the majority of scholars" would attract a 'Dubious-discuss' tag. Could you point to which of those book reviews makes that claim? I couldn't find it, nor could I find much praise. More generally, the problem with what you're proposing is that it is contrary to Wikipedia's core guidance policies. You are even acknowledging it is not neutral and disputed. The small changes you made on slavery didn't significantly change the content, but they did introduce what reads like contradictory claims, reflecting - seemingly - the confused nature of the scholarship. I don't think we need more of that. Wiki-Ed (talk)

Elkins' book was in the NYT top-100 books of the year and a top 20 from BBC History.. It's obviously a notable book, and we cite it only once for a sentence of critique buried at the end of the legacy section. It would be reasonable to balance the article by integrating more content from this book. Thanks Jr8826 for your attention to this article! Larataguera (talk) 20:19, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

If anything it is already unduly weighted and should be removed. Tens of thousands of historians have written about this topic and - over time - many of them have found their way into top-100 lists-of-the-year because they happened to appeal to the unashamedly biased agenda of the publisher of said list. Unless I've missed some, the article mentions just four historians by name; I'm not sure that Elkins (or for that matter Ferguson) need to be given special treatment. And this goes to my main point: this is not a historiography article. As soon as we start saying "X said this, but Y said that, and Z disagrees" we're into historiography and non-neutral synthesis. Wiki-Ed (talk) 10:16, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm not talking about "special treatment" for Elkins. Her work is, however, a useful high quality source that can be used where appropriate, and it should be given equal weight to conservative historians Niall Ferguson, who we already cite extensively. Our article isn't outrageously biased, but it does rely on traditional historiography, which coincidentally tends to be written by white British men, a source of bias we need to account for when writing a global encyclopedia, given that modern scholarship (over the last 2-3 decades) is far more diverse. I'm also not saying Elkins's work needs to be (or should be) used throughout the entire article, as her view is obviously not a universal one and she has a narrow focus on violence. The broader problem is that the resistance to treating her as a subject-matter expert is symptomatic of the wider exclusion of cultural/social history in this article. Jr8825 • Talk 16:45, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

This topic has extensive sources covering different aspects and different views of the British Empire. That's not surprising since it was the dominant power for most of the past 400 years, controlling one quarter of the world at its peak, and was the parent to today's sole remaining superpower. Thousands of writers on the topic have covered numerous aspects with a diversity of interpretations and opinions.

Since there is no evidence that Elkins' book has received any attention from historians, other than in a few book reviews, there is no reason why this article should give it any weight.

Her central thesis is that the UK was able to maintain its empire through violence or the threat of violence, which she compared to fascism. While there is some truth to this, in reality violence was only part of how the empire was kept together, just as it is in any jurisdiction. TFD (talk) 15:32, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: I've already provided a list of positive reviews by historians in academic journals in reply to Wiki-Ed, which they don't seem to have read. In response to their question could you point to which of those book reviews makes that claim? I couldn't find it, nor could I find much praise, here are a few quotes from the academic reviews I provided above (the journalistic reviews in the Financial Times and New York Times were equally full of praise):

• Elkins’ project performs the laudable volte-face of liberal traditions, to hold power to account through meticulous evidence gathering and use of judicial process. We can use Elkins’ book as an archive to build fruitful frameworks that widen and re-balance the empire debate. [12]
• a well-researched and ambitious book ... This is an important book for several reasons ... Legacy of Violence is an important addition to political science and history, and a must-read for anybody interested in the history of the Empire, globalization and history-making. It is destined to become a classic. [13]
• As professor of history and of African and African American studies at Harvard University, Caroline Elkins established her reputation for her work on Kenya’s Mau Mau insurgency and her patient examination of Britain’s secret Hanslope Park archives, where many unknown unknowns were stored until they came to light in 2011. Her methodology scrutinises the intersections of history, law, secrecy and transparency and the role of the archive in managing perceptions ... In almost seven hundred pages of densely footnoted text, this study raises new questions about the role of the archive and, indeed, historical practice generally, in sustaining distortions. [14]
• Legacy of Violence is the result and it is a tremendous book. ... Elkins goes on to provide a superb account of the brutal suppression of the great Palestinian revolt of the 1930s ... The ‘imperial history wars’, as she calls them, go relentlessly on and Elkins has made a magnificent contribution to the fight. This book deserves to be, indeed must be, as widely read as possible. It is a tremendous achievement. [15]

Jr8825 • Talk 17:03, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Ah I see. I don't think I read all of those as "praise", but there you go. Just to clarify my position: I am not averse to using a valid, reliable source in appropriate places to substantiate the text. What I am wary of - for the reasons TFD summarised and which you yourself have touched on - would be making a focus on violence unduly prominent. I don't think that's what you're proposing, so fine, but other editors seemed like they might have been keen to expand the legacy section. Wiki-Ed (talk) 19:19, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

You left out negative reviews such as those by Jeremy Black, [16] Niall Ferguson, and Barnaby Crowcroft.[17]

Elkins is a good writer and has written an interesting book that was published by a Knopf and got good reviews. But that's not how perceptions in academic disciplines change. Scholars write articles and books that are published by academic publishers. The academic community comments on them in peer-reviewed articles and a new consensus develops. If someone does not submit their views to academic criticism, they are usually ignored.

Despite Elkins' laudible work on researching and exposing British atrocities, this is really a niche perspective on a very broad topic. Her background in African American studies prepared her for researching British counter-insurgency methods against the Mau Mau in the mid-20th century. But going from that to formulate an overall definition of an empire that lasted hundreds of years is a leap.

While I do not want to denigrate her, some of her conclusions on other topics appear to be simplistic, that Hillary Clinton was extremely qualified to be president but lost because of misogyny, that Meghan Markle faced racism from the royal family, that Brexit succeeded because most British people are racist or that the Commonwealth is a racist institution. Her opinions are valuable, and she has shed light on overlooked areas, but there is no reason we should throw out our history books and accept her redefinition of history. TFD (talk) 22:43, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Dismissing Elkins as having written an "interesting" book that should not be given equal treatment to the work of other scholars, when she's a Harvard professor of history who's written a well received book, isn't balanced. I've linked recognition of the book in peer-reviewed journals. The loudest exception to the mostly positive reception is a small and notably non-diverse circle of conservative British historians and commentators (writing in right-wing magazines rather than peer reviewed journals, judging by the links shared above). We cite Ferguson extensively in this article, probably too extensively. There are negative reviews of Black and Ferguson's books, just as there are positive ones. That doesn't automatically mean Black or Ferguson should be excluded from this article. Elkins has political views you don't agree with. I disagree with the views of Jeremy Black and Niall Ferguson (who described himself, perhaps ironically, as a "neo-imperialist"). The views of Elkins, Black and Ferguson on current politics, and whether you or I agree or disagree with them, aren't relevant criteria for judging their appropriateness as sources here. Jr8825 • Talk 04:19, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

I only included them to show that not all reviews are positive. I have not suggested that their views be added to the article, While they are cited in the article, it is for facts not opinions. For example, the first sentence of the lead defining the British Empire is sourced to Ferguson. If you want to change the citation to Elkins, go ahead. But neither would be my first choice for a source because their books are from nonfiction rather than academic publishers.

None of the book reviews you provided are peer-reviewed. Before a radically new interpretation of history becomes the consensus, its proponents publish academic papers, other scholars publish papers confirming or refuting their views and finally everyone agrees. Then these views get incorporated into standard textbooks. Einstein for example didn't write a New York Times bestseller about special relativity and hope for good book reviews. If you want to know the weight of facts and opinions, a good source is a tertiary work such as The British Empire 1558-1995, Second edition, T. O. Lloyd, OUP 1999. You can expect the author is familiar with the weight provided in the literature and isn't trying to present his own original views. It's the type of book that is used as a textbook for courses on the British Empire. If Elkins' views become the consensus, then books of this nature will reflect it. If they don't, they might receive a mention or be ignored altogether, depending on the degree of acceptance they have. Unfortunately, this book is 25 years out of date, but you can certainly find similar books published more recently.

I am not dismissing Elkins' book, I am merely pointing out that books published outside academic publishers rarely have much influence on academic literature, because that is not their purpose. Their audience is the general public.

My view on this has nothing to do with my political views. The article is supposed to be written with due weight based on the body of reliable sources on the topic.

TFD (talk) 06:01, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

"Other scholars publish papers confirming or refuting their views and finally everyone agrees": often there is no single agreed history, especially within an open site of academic debate, such as imperial history. "None of the book reviews you provided are peer-reviewed": as is standard for book reviews in quality journals, all of the reviews I listed will have been reviewed by the journal's editorial team, who are typically professors with relevant expertise (e.g. [18] [19]); no different to reviews of Lloyd's book. It is incorrect to claim that Elkins' book has received less scrutiny than other academic texts. Full blind peer review is generally used for papers, not book reviews; what matters is that the editors and contributors to peer reviewed journals think highly of the book, and the reviews linked have been scrutinised by experts. "Books published outside academic publishers rarely have much influence on academic literature" and yet I have shown that multiple historians have said it is an important contribution to the field. Jr8825 • Talk 14:28, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

If the opinions expressed in this book have revolutionized the way historians view the British Empire then any history of the enpire published after its release will refer to them. Similarly, any book about light published since Einstein's special theory of relativity came into general acceptance will mention it. My guess is that the book reviewers don't actually mean that.

Similarly, if it has had an impact significant enough to include in the article, then we would expect that every brief article about the British Empire would mention it.

Instead, Elkins has drawn light on a neglected aspect of the empire. This may influence future historians to expand its coverage in textbooks. We shall have to be patient. TFD (talk) 19:30, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 May 2023

ADD SOURCES

199.180.150.164 (talk) 18:48, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. DDMS123 (talk) 19:17, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Extractive Nature of Colonial Empires

This article does not explain how the Indian subcontinent went from

• 27% of Global GDP in 1760 to less than 2% in 1900.

• Why 26 major famines in the Victorian era with up to 60 million deaths when in the previous 500 years famines had been small local occurrences.

• What are the mechanisms of colonial exploitation?

It reads like Imperial propaganda and there are many apologists who do not want to see a balanced representation.

Germsteel (talk

09:19, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

There are some highly dubious (though often seen on the internet) propositions here - "27% of Global GDP in 1760" especially, and "in the previous 500 years famines had been small local occurrences" - both are numbers that just don't exist, based on very speculative and rather biased estimates. By the 19th century the British made determined efforts to compile such statistics, which nobody had ever done before. The "previous 500 years" in India also saw huge population growth too (no, we don't have proper figures for that either), which is also true over nearly all the Empire. Johnbod (talk) 14:16, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

You need to show us a source for that information that explains its relevance to the British Empire. TFD (talk) 16:03, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

If anyone has good sources and time, Economy of the British Empire is more or less a stub. CMD (talk) 16:54, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

British colonized what

The british has it fare to colonize land but it some times has its consequences like rebellions so with so much land tons of rebellions. Some rebellion nations make there own maps with out them under control of an empire. so what am I saying to much land for the british empire so rebellions made it fall 172.58.242.18 (talk) 17:19, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

What do you want us to say? Slatersteven (talk) 17:21, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Want you to learn it so you can say what I say. 172.58.242.18 (talk) 14:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

You are making no sense, what ae you talking about? Slatersteven (talk) 14:43, 29 May 2023 (UTC)