British Empire is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history
This article is within the scope of WikiProject British Empire, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of British Empire on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.British EmpireWikipedia:WikiProject British EmpireTemplate:WikiProject British EmpireBritish Empire
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Commonwealth, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Commonwealth of Nations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CommonwealthWikipedia:WikiProject CommonwealthTemplate:WikiProject CommonwealthCommonwealth
This article is within the scope of WikiProject British Overseas Territories, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of British Overseas Territories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.British Overseas TerritoriesWikipedia:WikiProject British Overseas TerritoriesTemplate:WikiProject British Overseas TerritoriesBritish Overseas Territories
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Former countries, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.Former countriesWikipedia:WikiProject Former countriesTemplate:WikiProject Former countriesFormer countries
This article is within the scope of WikiProject International relations, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of International relations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.International relationsWikipedia:WikiProject International relationsTemplate:WikiProject International relationsInternational relations
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Politics of the United Kingdom on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Politics of the United KingdomWikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United KingdomTemplate:WikiProject Politics of the United KingdomPolitics of the United Kingdom
This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory
This article is within the scope of WikiProject European history, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the history of Europe on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.European historyWikipedia:WikiProject European historyTemplate:WikiProject European historyEuropean history
I recently added a subsection about the entry of New Zealand into the empire. Before then it received scant and misleading mention linked to Cook and Australia. user:Celia Homeford has removed a relevant paragraph claiming it is off topic, about NZ history. This is odd, seeing that this whole article is about the history of current lands that are or were part of the empire. What I had added is very specifically about what the Colonial Office was involved with in NZ and NSW in the 1830s - it is directly related to the empire, not just NZ, or NSW. My additions are all sourced. It is hard to fatham this long standing editor's reasoning, beyond just being peeved. I made the initial change with intent to return to iron out typos and add more sources, which I have now partly done. user:Celia Homeford, your cavalier removal of sourced detail about how a later dominion entered the empire looks somewhat uncalled for. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 12:34, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This new subsection was a bold addition, but it is clearly disproportionate to the rest of the article. Following the addition, the time devoted to New Zealand comes second only to India. I would go further than Celia Homeford, and leave the added detail to a more dedicated article. CMD (talk) 12:54, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good to see your comments. Where is the present tense being used?? The part removed {"General..") is all in the past. Being second only to India is not a reason to shorten, but to improve/expand elsewhere I would think. Taking a step backwards, what was there about NZ was not ideal and at best misleading, hence my 'bold' edits. The reluctant creation of the colony of nz in 1840 is inextricably linked to the way it was being treated by the colonial office (ie the officials of the empire) before 1840, which is why the disorder resulting from NZ not being officially in the empire is mentioned. Is that what you think is 'off-topic' or too much? To just say sovereignty was claimed in May 1840 without any background is misleading and not informative. I have intentionally kept meantion of Maori to a minimum in order to keep this to the topic of the empire, not nz history. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 13:29, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Being second is a reason to shorten; article length has previously come up in quality reviews. I have not stated that the detail is off-topic, but that it is undue. Multiple paragraphs for each British colony would be unwieldly, at this level there is going to be a lot of missing background. CMD (talk) 13:53, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, it's disproportionate, badly-written (e.g. "esconded sailors ... missianaries"), and unnecessarily repetitive (e.g. we are already told that "an assortment of Europeans and Americans which including [sic] whalers, sealers, escaped convicts from New South Wales, missionaries and adventurers" arrived in the country it is not necessary to repeat that "escaped convicts ... were freely roaming the country"; we have been told that already). Celia Homeford (talk) 13:31, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I'm fond of New Zealand, I don't think we can give it more space than India (500 words vs 420 words). And that doesn't mean we need to expand all the other countries: as others have noted, there are already concerns about article length. In addition, I agree it wasn't well written and some of it was not encyclopedic language (e.g. "land speculators of dubious content"). I resisted the urge to revert earlier in the week because the editor had indicated in the comments that they intended to tidy it up. But this hasn't happened.
I couldn't follow the logic, but if there are specific points in the original text which somehow make the historical narrative misleading then please spell them out here. We can help with drafting quality, if necessary. Wiki-Ed (talk) 20:06, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I see the collective point/s being made. I probably rushed the changes, copying and pasting sentences from other articles and adding non-referenced text that I knew I could reference later, but didn't do it immediately which I should have done. I also should have dealt with the typos more quickly. If there is no objection I will re-write this subsection, making it shorter, and see what the feedback is. On the broader topic, the main point I was trying to deal with was the way NZ entered the empire, which wasn't clearly explained. Despite connections in the process with Australia, NZ's path was distinct and IMO deserves a section of its own. It was a later dominion after all, not just one of several Caribbean Islands. I will probably put my new version hear first for comment. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 21:54, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's excessive. Newfoundland, Massachusetts, Virginia, Quebec, Barbados, India, Australia, and South Africa were all more significant to the history of the empire, and there are probably more. TFD (talk) 03:34, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comments please...
"After Cook’s visits to New Zealand in the 1770s, Britain took no formal steps to take possession. Church of England missionaries began arriving from 1814; the few other Europeans who were there, such as whalers and adventurers, co-existed with the indigenous Maori and were not subject to British law or administration. From 1788 when the colony of NSW was established, its governor in Sydney became the closest form of official British authority. By the 1830s, general disorder within of the minimal European population had taken hold in New Zealand and, for this and other reasons, the need for Britain to intervene more formally became unavoidable. The Colonial Office reluctantly sent out Captain William Hobson with instructions to establish British sovereignty after first getting native consent. After he arrived, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed with Maori chiefs in stages, initially on 6 February 1840. On 21 May 1840, on two documents, Hobson proclaimed sovereignty over all New Zealand. Initially, New Zealand was a dependency within the jurisdiction of New South Wales, whose border had been temporarily extended eastwards: Hobson was its lieutenant-governor below Governor Sir George Gibbs in Sydney. This transitional arrangement ended on 3 May 1841 when New Zealand became a separate Crown Colony with Hobson as its governor." (Sources not included here) This image could be used
This is less than half the size of my previous addition and with some text removed from Oceania it amounts to around 200 more words. It is a better summary of NZ's entry into the empire than what was there before.
The next issue is where to put it. It does have a connection with early NSW but that link is overstated. Despite that, it makes sense to keep them in the same section. Against that idea is that nothing significant was done about NZ until decades later than NSW which means NZ would better fit in the 19thC section. IMO, other factors also make NZ fit better in the 19thC than the 18thC but they are beyond the scope of this article so they won't be considered here. NZ as a colony developed largely by itself, not connected with the rest of the empire so I agree with TFD's comments, its effect on the empire was less than other similar sized territories. However, it was a significant settler colony and wasn't a small island somewhere, so it should get more than a passing mention. It's relevance to the empire can also be gauged by its connection with certain Pacific Islands and Antarctica. On reflection, I am now leaning towards keeping my suggested changes of NZ 1769-1841 in the pre-1815 section to maintain a continuity of flow from Cook onwards. Anyway, comments welcome please. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 07:27, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with other editors that this might be WP:UNDUE in this article. I've added a hatnote linking to Colony of New Zealand. That article might benefit more from your scene-setting about the situation in New Zealand prior to the formal establishment of the colony. That would allow the summary here to remain brief.
On Spanish Empire, the map was changed because the old one was anachronistic. Out of consistency, we should change this map here, because the USA and Australia were not under contrôle at the same time, we should change it to a map of the greatest extent, and if the infobox's numbers are based on the anachronistic map, we should change that too. Cordially, 80.187.80.76 (talk) 10:36, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is no need to maintain "consistency" between articles unless there's an actual compelling reason that applies in both cases. Why's it a problem for this article? I don't see it as potentially misleading in the slightest. Remsense ‥ 论10:37, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because anachronistic maps are a problem. I was only using that article of an example were anachronistic maps were clearly rejected. Of course here we are going to have to start the discussion from the beginning. Let me start my comment a little differently: I think that anachronistic maps are not as good as maps of the greatest extent, because they are misleading to those who do not read the description, since the Empire never controlled all of these territories at once. They are also misleading for knowing the total territory of the Empire, because the USA and Australia were never controlled simultaneously, the USA was independent when Australia was British. It would be better to just take a historically accurate map, instead of an anachronistic one. 80.187.120.121 (talk) 12:28, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a useful, compact illustration, and if one reads the caption it is not at all confusing or deceptive. If our readers truly cannot be trusted to read image captions, then I don't know what else we expect them to do on here. Reading is important. I'm personally not interested in throwing away any remotely abstract representation of information. Remsense ‥ 论12:38, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is not historically accurate though. It is anachronistic, it is our current view on the Empire. What's wrong with a historically accurate map with the maximum extent to accurately portray what the British Empire was? There is no argument for not just adding a historically accurate map, and that's the end of it. 80.187.74.184 (talk) 13:19, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Anachronistic does not mean historically inaccurate. In this case, the anachronism means it encompasses more of history than a snapshot does. CMD (talk) 14:59, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Historically inaccurate because it is how the Empire looks to us today, even though those territories were not controlled simultaneously, the empire did not control all of these territories at once, by definition an anachronistic map is less historically accurate than a historically accurate one capturing the extent of the Empire at a specific point in History. Why not just add a map like that instead? There is literally no difference between this article and the other articles with accurate maps (The Roman Empire [Map of the end of Trajan's reign, traditionally considered to be the maximal extent], the Spanish Empire [Greatest extent map], the French Colonial empire [In that last case the two colonial empires are shown in different colours]), there is no reason to keep an anachronistic map here specifically. 80.187.74.27 (talk) 15:03, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reason presumably would be to show at a glance the areas that fell under the empire, at whatever point. There will be pros and cons vs a snapshot, but I find it hard to believe there's "no reason". CMD (talk) 15:32, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Did I say there is absolutely "no reason"? I just said that I think a historically accurate map at it's height would be better to the one there now, and that nothing speaks against this, since it's not that much of a change. Or at least a map which shows the different British colonial empires with different colours, like with the French Colonial Empire. The current map however makes the Empire look bigger than it ever was. 80.187.85.96 (talk) 16:40, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh sorry, I am Not a native English speaker, I wanted to say that there are more reasons to put a historically accurate map in the article than there are to put an anachronistic one in it, that there's no "real reason" or however this is said, to not just change the map, since it's not a huge change to the article. I didn't literally mean that people can not have absolutely any reason to keep the map. In my opinion it would be very reasonable to just change it. Regards. 80.187.70.117 (talk) 20:13, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How do we measure "height"? Largest population? Largest territorial extent? Largest number of non-self governing subordinate polities? Largest comparative 'power' relative to other empires? They'd all be different points in time. In any case, it would be misleading to use a snapshot: it would be read to imply that areas that were not covered - at whatever point in time - were never parts of the Empire. And no caption could ever cover account for that. I think we should leave as is - aside from a few tweaks to the design this approach has been stable / consensus view for over 15 years. Wiki-Ed (talk) 12:43, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Height means maximum extent, obviously. I mean, why does this argumentation work here and not for the Belgian Colonial Empire? In the article body, people will read about all the territories part of the British empire. The current map though makes it seem bigger than it ever was. 80.187.115.128 (talk) 16:06, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What description? the Belgian colonial empire map is a map of the maximum extent, and the description says so. 80.187.115.128 (talk) 16:15, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, you meant this description. Well, it would still, in my opinion, be more beneficial to have a historically accurate map. I might start an RFC. 80.187.115.128 (talk) 16:18, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because we are talking about a different article right now. Like I stated at the very beginning, every article is different and what elements are more or less useful needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Remsense ‥ 论16:08, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a link to an essay. It carries no weight whatsoever in policy and the author has no authority to assert that it does. Wiki-Ed (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Longevity is the weakest form of consensus, but the underlying point is there is greater consensus for this version, and we do not accept your reasons to change it. Per WP:ONUS, disputed changes must obtain consensus before they are added. Remsense ‥ 论16:11, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know, I just get the feeling some are dismissing having a discussion at all, based on Wp:Stable version. I want to have a discussion on this, maybe an RFC would be a solution, I don't know. I was mentioning Belgium because the same logic than for other colonial empires counts here: Anachronistic maps give the wrong image, and a historically accurate map would not. 80.187.115.128 (talk) 16:14, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You have proclaimed that maps of this kind are a priori misleading multiple times now, but we are not required to agree. Your reasoning so far seems to be based largely on misconceptions about English vocabulary that are rather particular to you, and not of our readership as a whole. If I can be frank, I do not think an RfC would be a productive use of anyone's time. Remsense ‥ 论16:23, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry if I come across as unpolite, again, English is not my first language. All I wanted to do is open a discussion about this subject, though most comments seem to dismiss the idea of a discussion. Maybe I should have expected this, I might open an RFC so that a consensus, for or against, emerges. At least there everyone for or against this will be able to express their opinion, and by the end a consensus based on vote will have emerged. Regards, 80.187.122.33 (talk) 16:40, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The consensus seems to be that we don't need to change the map to insert something misleading as you propose. Rather than waste people's time with an RfC, why don't you read through all the previous talk pages to see why we have landed where we have. There were many discussions on the map up until about 2008. Not so many recently. Wiki-Ed (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Diese Website benutzt Cookies. Wenn du die Website weiter nutzt, gehe Ich von Deinem Einverständnis aus.OKNeinDatenschutzerklärung
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
.jpg){kind=link}