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Can someone please explain what the rationale is for including a battle or campaign in this particular template. For example I personally would not consider the Crimean War as a "colonial" war, similarly some of the campaigns in Africa during the First World War would seem to be part of the whole Great War, not a specifically colonial war or campaign. Thanks Dabbler ( talk) 23:36, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
I think you have made an error in your Edit Summary at this diff [1]. Please note the following Wikipedia:Ownership of articles and the text at the bottom of every Wikipedia Edit page "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. All text that you did not write yourself, except brief excerpts, must be available under terms consistent with Wikipedia's Terms of Use before you submit it." So it is not your page and neither do you "make the rules". Like everyone else you have to follow Wikipedia policy as you have already agreed to by editing. If you have a reason for including non-colonial wars and campaigns then discuss it above do not claim ownership Dabbler ( talk) 02:43, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
While I understand the rationale for this page, it seems to me a bit unwieldy. For instance, might a section be split off for British colonial wars with the Native Americas in North America? That would be smaller and more focused around what were often inter-related conflicts that are as much part of American and Canadian history as British.-- Dudeman5685 ( talk) 17:19, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
I just saw The Troubles in Northern Ireland included here following this edit (restored following reversion here) by User:Gerrynobody. I think it violates WP:NPOV to define this as a "colonial" conflict. Per Gerry's point that it is inconsistent to include other Irish conflicts while excluding the Troubles—true, since the rest of Ireland was also an integral part of the UK from 1801 to 1922, and was an effective client state of GB/England before then—I've removed prior Irish conflicts from the box too. (I've left the Fenian raids in Canada in.) Cheers, — Cliftonian (talk) 13:32, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Sorry I am just seeing this now. I seem to only get notifications when the page itself, as opposed to the talk page, is modified. To be honest I am surprised that this is even considered controversial but how and ever, I will cite some sources.
Can I assume there is no argument about Ireland being described as a colony in the early modern period? Especially from the time of the plantations in Munster and Ulster onwards (‘plantation’ was a synonym for ‘colony’ then-the words were used interchangeably to refer to both Ulster, Munster, Virginia, Barbados etc.). These were state-sponsored projects with the explicit objective of replacing much of the indigenous Gaelic population with English and Scots; you can’t get much more ‘colonial’ than that. This has been firmly established in the work of D.B.Quinn and Nicholas Canny (see practically anything they published on the subject), and more recently the foremost academics in the field (Raymond Gillespie, one of whose many books is entitled ‘Colonial Ulster’).
Even the doyen of anti-Republicanism, Roy Foster, writes on the first page of his widely-read ‘Modern Ireland’ survey: ‘the English colonial presence in Ireland remained superimposed upon an ancient identity, alien and bizarre.’ It is true that there has been a debate about the uefulness of comparisons to English colonies in North America, but even the most critical of these comparisons have accepted that ‘colonisation became the preferred option in Ireland’. (Hiram Morgan, ‘Mid-Atlantic Blues’, The Irish Review, No. 11, p.51) Can we agree that this holds for the eighteenth century? Certainly the editors of the Oxford History of the British Empire volume on the eighteenth century deems Ireland worthy of a chapter. This was a society in which a colonial settler class, usually termed the Protestant or Anglo-Irish ascendancy, a minority but legally, militarily and economically privileged, differed in language, religion and social origins to the native population of disenfranchised Catholic Irish, who constituted about 70% of the population in the middle of the century, and who were excluded from any role in administering the country.
Perhaps the best proof that Ireland was regarded as a colony at the time is the indignant protests by this Anglo-Irish class that Ireland was being treated as a colony from London. As many unionists continue to argue, they wanted to be treated as if they lived in any other part of Britain. Works like Molyneux’s ‘The Case of Ireland...Stated’ (1698), however, would not have been necessary if Ireland had not been, in fact, a colony. The widespread use in the scholarship of the term ‘colonial nationalism’ to describe this movement again attests to the fact that Ireland is considered a colony by researchers in the field. See for example the standard work on the period: ‘A New History of Ireland, Volume IV’. So this leaves us with the period after 1801 that the term ‘colony’ is being disputed I guess.
Necrothesp has pointed out that Ireland was a constituent part of the United Kingdom with seats in the British parliament. This is true in a formal, legal sense, although this was only the case from 1801 onwards. Was it a colony before that? Again, formally-speaking, it was a separate kingdom, but it would be seriously misleading to take this legal status on face value, and few historians do so. (I should also add the fact that most Irish weren’t allowed to vote until the mid-19th century, rendering the fact that Ireland had seats in the London parliament somewhat meaningless from their point of view). I am getting to Northern Ireland, but seeing as all the Irish conflicts have been removed from the template list now, I feel I have to make some kind of extended justification to cover their inclusion and therefore the last 500 years of history! So...in the nineteenth-century Ireland, despite its formal incorporation into the UK in 1801, is still widely referred to in academic texts as a colony.
I would be the first to admit that this description is not without its caveats and detractors. David Fitzpatrick (not known for his sympathies towards republican or nationalist interpretations either) writes in the ‘Oxford history of the British empire vol 3’, (p.494): ‘The formal Union of the kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain masked a hybrid administration with manifest colonial elements, allowing variant interpretations of the character of Ireland's dependency. Was Ireland an integral part of the United Kingdom, a peripheral, backward sub-region, or a colony in all but name?’ There were, therefore, some anomalous features about Ireland that made it unique among Britain’s colonies. The fact that it is included in Oxford’s standard reference work on the empire, however, suggests to me that there is a considerable body (notwithstanding dissenting voices) of opinion in academia that views Ireland as a colony up to independence, and by extension, the conflict in Northern Ireland as rooted in the tensions inherent in settler colonial situations. Despite formal incorporation into the UK, Ireland’s status as a colony is most often argued in terms of its actual treatment by the ‘mother country’ as oppposed to legal status or avowed intentions.
The retardation of southern Irish industry, the disdain for the native population and the social engineering that exacerbated the famine-these are all things that bespeak a colonial form of rule over a subject people who are widely deemed by the metropole to be inferior. From everything I’ve read on the subject, Michael Hechter’s book, ‘Internal Colonialism’ (1975) describe best the way Ireland was economically ‘condemned to an instrumental role by the metropolis’ which, Hechter argues, is the ‘pattern of development characterising the colonial situation’. (p.30) I can provide a raft of further citations to support this if necessary, but this post is getting long enough already. Terrence McDonough (ed.), ‘Was Ireland a colony?: economics, politics, and culture in nineteenth-century Ireland’ (2005) is an excellent introduction, and includes critique of this colonial analysis as well as support.
Finally, to the part of Ireland that remained a constituent part of the UK after 1922, Northern Ireland. Once again, it has to be stressed that to argue simply from the area’s de jure status that Northern Ireland is not a colony but a constituent part of the UK is insufficient and not reflective of academic discourse on the subject. To take the same logic would be to argue that Algeria was not a colony from 1848 onwards when, technically, the area consisted of three départements, legally-speaking as integral to the French state as Paris was. The same is still true today of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte and Réunion. Are these places not colonies? As for Northern Ireland, I would again acknowledge a description of the Troubles as a colonial conflict is far from universally-accepted, but it is widespread in the scholarship. David Miller, a professor of sociology at the University of Bath, has written extensively on Northern Ireland and the Troubles, and his work consistently argues for a colonial paradigm in understanding the conflict. A bibliography of his work is here: http://www.dmiller.info/ Pamela Clayton’s essay ‘Religion, Ethnicity and Colonialism as Explanation of Northern Ireland’ in Miller, ‘Rethinking Northern Ireland’ (1993), pp.40-54 is a sustained argument for the colonial context. Lustick, ‘Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria’ (1993), passim, also discusses Northern Ireland (and Ireland as a whole before 1922) as a colonial conflict, as does MacDonald, ‘Children of Wrath: Political Violence in Northern Ireland’, (1986).
In my experience, the argument that Ireland/Northern Ireland was/is not a colony is often based on nothing more than the geographic proximity of the two countries. This once again suggetss comparisons with French Algeria, which the French also displayed a reluctance to refer to as a colony, even in the fifties when they were fighting tooth and nail to hold on to it, see: Lustick, Ibid., p.113. Other books that make the comparison with Algeria are : Hugh Roberts, ‘Northern Ireland and the Algerian Question’ (1986) and Frank Wright, ‘Northern Ireland: A comparative analysis’ (1987). Given that this template is about British colonial campaigns, I think it is most telling that, in the seventies especially, the British army itself approached their operation in Northern Ireland as a colonial insurgency, see: William Beattie Smith, ‘The British State and the Northern Ireland Crisis’, 1969-73, pp.153-4, 197, 307. Smith on p.377 describes direct rule after 1972 as a ‘colonial system’.
Likewise Weitzer, ‘Transforming Settler States: Communal Conflict and Internal Security in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe’ (1990), who analyses Northern Ireland throughout his work as a colony, states: ‘Direct rule in effect installed a system of colonial rule [which] has no roots in civil society and has precarious authority at best. As in other colonial states, the British administration is superimposed on society and institutionally detached from local social forces.’ (pp.197-8) O'Leary and McGarry, ‘The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland’ (1993) argue extensively about the colonial nature of the conflict.
McGarry and O’Leary are about as authoritative you can get on the subject of Northern Ireland. In their volume ‘Comparing Northern Ireland’ (1995), p.141, they write: ‘The international community largely accepts the colonial analogy’. I must say this is my impression as well. I have only ever encountered resistance to the idea from British unionists. I have my own ideas about why that is but let’s not get into that. They are of course entitled to their opinion, but that does not mean that this exclusion of Northern Ireland from the ranks of Britain’s colonies should take precedence on wikipedia. One of its principles is that it should reflect a global POV, after all Wikipedia:Systemic_bias. It has been suggested that to regard N.Ireland as a colony is not NPOV; I would suggest that to exclude it is not NPOV, given that NPOV means ‘representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic’. Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view I would argue, therefore, that the Troubles be included in this list of British colonial templates, notwithstanding dissenting views. Certainly to exclude the other Irish conflicts in the list would seem to me to constitute OR. 21:49, 10 March 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gerrynobody ( talk • contribs)
I already have provided a quotation showing ‘the international community largely accepts the colonial analogy’, and have already pointed out that I already have. You have not accepted this, as I suspect you will probably find reasons to not accept any quotation I provide. As I have indicated, it is not up to individual editors to unilaterally decide what does and does not constitute the grounds for inclusion in these templates. Simply googling around looking for quotations that say ‘most people do/do not accept Northern Ireland is a colony’ or words to that effect, is not really a decent basis on which to determine the issue.
Truth be told, we are not going to determine it, because it has been, and no doubt will continue to be, a subject of debate among academics for some time to come. My argument is that it should be included in the template because a significant body of scholarly opinion exists that says the Troubles were a colonial conflict. I have argued this and provided extensive quotations to support my contention.
There is more to acadmic debate than digging around on the internet for decontextualised quotations that appear to support the point you are trying to make. I could, after all, present another quote from the same chapter in Miller’s book: ‘Ulster is British in the sense that it is a colonial possession which the British state has tried to present as an integral part of the state’ which, in isolation, appears to support my case. Does this prove anything conclusive on its own? Not really.
In fact, Miller puts that statement in at the start of his book for dramatic effect, to argue that the ‘vast bulk of literature’ is mistaken at the time he was writing (1998). It’s an exaggeration, and clearly an exaggeration, because he goes on to quote many writers who do regard the conflict as colonial. He follows it by arguing that such a failure to acknowledge the colonial nature of the Northern Ireland conflict is ‘at best, curious’, and goes on to argue (fairly convincingly I seem to remember) why it should be regarded as a colonial conflict. Arguing that something is the ‘majority’ view is ill-advised actually. How does someone prove this? By making a survey of everything ever published on a subject, taking a census of opinions and toting up the score? No-one can (or should) do this. Claiming something is the majority view is merely impressionistic and, in practice, unverifiable. Can you prove to me that a view of Northern Ireland as ‘not a colony’ is the majority view? I mean, actually prove it in the sense that you are asking me to prove the opposite? The best you can do in these matters is convey an impression of the academic consensus (or lack thereof) on an issue.
Once again, please try to engage more constructively in the discussion instead of simply placing a disproportionate burden of evidence on others. For example, you might address my point about Algeria? Is it not a colony? If it is, how does it differ from Northern Ireland? If Ireland was once a colony, when did it cease to be? If a significant proportion of Northern Ireland’s population regard the territory as a colony, why is this viewpoint simply to be disregarded? Gerrynobody ( talk) 11:38, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
I have set up this sub-section Wikipedia:Third_opinion#Instructions. — Cliftonian (talk) 13:06, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Since there has been no activity here for about two weeks I have requested an uninvolved administrator to close this RfC here—hope this is okay with everyone. Cheers — Cliftonian (talk) 07:44, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Am I wrong? This seems a rather major oversight, 1803-1815... but don't know if it should be included as one long war or the several that started and ended until Waterloo. Hmm... seems someone is deleting things that aren't colonial... but the Crimean War was how I found this, what, is that colonial? It shows just "Russian conflicts" and this... rather incongruous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chadnibal ( talk • contribs) 14:32, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
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Can someone please explain what the rationale is for including a battle or campaign in this particular template. For example I personally would not consider the Crimean War as a "colonial" war, similarly some of the campaigns in Africa during the First World War would seem to be part of the whole Great War, not a specifically colonial war or campaign. Thanks Dabbler ( talk) 23:36, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
I think you have made an error in your Edit Summary at this diff [1]. Please note the following Wikipedia:Ownership of articles and the text at the bottom of every Wikipedia Edit page "If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. All text that you did not write yourself, except brief excerpts, must be available under terms consistent with Wikipedia's Terms of Use before you submit it." So it is not your page and neither do you "make the rules". Like everyone else you have to follow Wikipedia policy as you have already agreed to by editing. If you have a reason for including non-colonial wars and campaigns then discuss it above do not claim ownership Dabbler ( talk) 02:43, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
While I understand the rationale for this page, it seems to me a bit unwieldy. For instance, might a section be split off for British colonial wars with the Native Americas in North America? That would be smaller and more focused around what were often inter-related conflicts that are as much part of American and Canadian history as British.-- Dudeman5685 ( talk) 17:19, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
I just saw The Troubles in Northern Ireland included here following this edit (restored following reversion here) by User:Gerrynobody. I think it violates WP:NPOV to define this as a "colonial" conflict. Per Gerry's point that it is inconsistent to include other Irish conflicts while excluding the Troubles—true, since the rest of Ireland was also an integral part of the UK from 1801 to 1922, and was an effective client state of GB/England before then—I've removed prior Irish conflicts from the box too. (I've left the Fenian raids in Canada in.) Cheers, — Cliftonian (talk) 13:32, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Sorry I am just seeing this now. I seem to only get notifications when the page itself, as opposed to the talk page, is modified. To be honest I am surprised that this is even considered controversial but how and ever, I will cite some sources.
Can I assume there is no argument about Ireland being described as a colony in the early modern period? Especially from the time of the plantations in Munster and Ulster onwards (‘plantation’ was a synonym for ‘colony’ then-the words were used interchangeably to refer to both Ulster, Munster, Virginia, Barbados etc.). These were state-sponsored projects with the explicit objective of replacing much of the indigenous Gaelic population with English and Scots; you can’t get much more ‘colonial’ than that. This has been firmly established in the work of D.B.Quinn and Nicholas Canny (see practically anything they published on the subject), and more recently the foremost academics in the field (Raymond Gillespie, one of whose many books is entitled ‘Colonial Ulster’).
Even the doyen of anti-Republicanism, Roy Foster, writes on the first page of his widely-read ‘Modern Ireland’ survey: ‘the English colonial presence in Ireland remained superimposed upon an ancient identity, alien and bizarre.’ It is true that there has been a debate about the uefulness of comparisons to English colonies in North America, but even the most critical of these comparisons have accepted that ‘colonisation became the preferred option in Ireland’. (Hiram Morgan, ‘Mid-Atlantic Blues’, The Irish Review, No. 11, p.51) Can we agree that this holds for the eighteenth century? Certainly the editors of the Oxford History of the British Empire volume on the eighteenth century deems Ireland worthy of a chapter. This was a society in which a colonial settler class, usually termed the Protestant or Anglo-Irish ascendancy, a minority but legally, militarily and economically privileged, differed in language, religion and social origins to the native population of disenfranchised Catholic Irish, who constituted about 70% of the population in the middle of the century, and who were excluded from any role in administering the country.
Perhaps the best proof that Ireland was regarded as a colony at the time is the indignant protests by this Anglo-Irish class that Ireland was being treated as a colony from London. As many unionists continue to argue, they wanted to be treated as if they lived in any other part of Britain. Works like Molyneux’s ‘The Case of Ireland...Stated’ (1698), however, would not have been necessary if Ireland had not been, in fact, a colony. The widespread use in the scholarship of the term ‘colonial nationalism’ to describe this movement again attests to the fact that Ireland is considered a colony by researchers in the field. See for example the standard work on the period: ‘A New History of Ireland, Volume IV’. So this leaves us with the period after 1801 that the term ‘colony’ is being disputed I guess.
Necrothesp has pointed out that Ireland was a constituent part of the United Kingdom with seats in the British parliament. This is true in a formal, legal sense, although this was only the case from 1801 onwards. Was it a colony before that? Again, formally-speaking, it was a separate kingdom, but it would be seriously misleading to take this legal status on face value, and few historians do so. (I should also add the fact that most Irish weren’t allowed to vote until the mid-19th century, rendering the fact that Ireland had seats in the London parliament somewhat meaningless from their point of view). I am getting to Northern Ireland, but seeing as all the Irish conflicts have been removed from the template list now, I feel I have to make some kind of extended justification to cover their inclusion and therefore the last 500 years of history! So...in the nineteenth-century Ireland, despite its formal incorporation into the UK in 1801, is still widely referred to in academic texts as a colony.
I would be the first to admit that this description is not without its caveats and detractors. David Fitzpatrick (not known for his sympathies towards republican or nationalist interpretations either) writes in the ‘Oxford history of the British empire vol 3’, (p.494): ‘The formal Union of the kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain masked a hybrid administration with manifest colonial elements, allowing variant interpretations of the character of Ireland's dependency. Was Ireland an integral part of the United Kingdom, a peripheral, backward sub-region, or a colony in all but name?’ There were, therefore, some anomalous features about Ireland that made it unique among Britain’s colonies. The fact that it is included in Oxford’s standard reference work on the empire, however, suggests to me that there is a considerable body (notwithstanding dissenting voices) of opinion in academia that views Ireland as a colony up to independence, and by extension, the conflict in Northern Ireland as rooted in the tensions inherent in settler colonial situations. Despite formal incorporation into the UK, Ireland’s status as a colony is most often argued in terms of its actual treatment by the ‘mother country’ as oppposed to legal status or avowed intentions.
The retardation of southern Irish industry, the disdain for the native population and the social engineering that exacerbated the famine-these are all things that bespeak a colonial form of rule over a subject people who are widely deemed by the metropole to be inferior. From everything I’ve read on the subject, Michael Hechter’s book, ‘Internal Colonialism’ (1975) describe best the way Ireland was economically ‘condemned to an instrumental role by the metropolis’ which, Hechter argues, is the ‘pattern of development characterising the colonial situation’. (p.30) I can provide a raft of further citations to support this if necessary, but this post is getting long enough already. Terrence McDonough (ed.), ‘Was Ireland a colony?: economics, politics, and culture in nineteenth-century Ireland’ (2005) is an excellent introduction, and includes critique of this colonial analysis as well as support.
Finally, to the part of Ireland that remained a constituent part of the UK after 1922, Northern Ireland. Once again, it has to be stressed that to argue simply from the area’s de jure status that Northern Ireland is not a colony but a constituent part of the UK is insufficient and not reflective of academic discourse on the subject. To take the same logic would be to argue that Algeria was not a colony from 1848 onwards when, technically, the area consisted of three départements, legally-speaking as integral to the French state as Paris was. The same is still true today of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte and Réunion. Are these places not colonies? As for Northern Ireland, I would again acknowledge a description of the Troubles as a colonial conflict is far from universally-accepted, but it is widespread in the scholarship. David Miller, a professor of sociology at the University of Bath, has written extensively on Northern Ireland and the Troubles, and his work consistently argues for a colonial paradigm in understanding the conflict. A bibliography of his work is here: http://www.dmiller.info/ Pamela Clayton’s essay ‘Religion, Ethnicity and Colonialism as Explanation of Northern Ireland’ in Miller, ‘Rethinking Northern Ireland’ (1993), pp.40-54 is a sustained argument for the colonial context. Lustick, ‘Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria’ (1993), passim, also discusses Northern Ireland (and Ireland as a whole before 1922) as a colonial conflict, as does MacDonald, ‘Children of Wrath: Political Violence in Northern Ireland’, (1986).
In my experience, the argument that Ireland/Northern Ireland was/is not a colony is often based on nothing more than the geographic proximity of the two countries. This once again suggetss comparisons with French Algeria, which the French also displayed a reluctance to refer to as a colony, even in the fifties when they were fighting tooth and nail to hold on to it, see: Lustick, Ibid., p.113. Other books that make the comparison with Algeria are : Hugh Roberts, ‘Northern Ireland and the Algerian Question’ (1986) and Frank Wright, ‘Northern Ireland: A comparative analysis’ (1987). Given that this template is about British colonial campaigns, I think it is most telling that, in the seventies especially, the British army itself approached their operation in Northern Ireland as a colonial insurgency, see: William Beattie Smith, ‘The British State and the Northern Ireland Crisis’, 1969-73, pp.153-4, 197, 307. Smith on p.377 describes direct rule after 1972 as a ‘colonial system’.
Likewise Weitzer, ‘Transforming Settler States: Communal Conflict and Internal Security in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe’ (1990), who analyses Northern Ireland throughout his work as a colony, states: ‘Direct rule in effect installed a system of colonial rule [which] has no roots in civil society and has precarious authority at best. As in other colonial states, the British administration is superimposed on society and institutionally detached from local social forces.’ (pp.197-8) O'Leary and McGarry, ‘The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland’ (1993) argue extensively about the colonial nature of the conflict.
McGarry and O’Leary are about as authoritative you can get on the subject of Northern Ireland. In their volume ‘Comparing Northern Ireland’ (1995), p.141, they write: ‘The international community largely accepts the colonial analogy’. I must say this is my impression as well. I have only ever encountered resistance to the idea from British unionists. I have my own ideas about why that is but let’s not get into that. They are of course entitled to their opinion, but that does not mean that this exclusion of Northern Ireland from the ranks of Britain’s colonies should take precedence on wikipedia. One of its principles is that it should reflect a global POV, after all Wikipedia:Systemic_bias. It has been suggested that to regard N.Ireland as a colony is not NPOV; I would suggest that to exclude it is not NPOV, given that NPOV means ‘representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic’. Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view I would argue, therefore, that the Troubles be included in this list of British colonial templates, notwithstanding dissenting views. Certainly to exclude the other Irish conflicts in the list would seem to me to constitute OR. 21:49, 10 March 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gerrynobody ( talk • contribs)
I already have provided a quotation showing ‘the international community largely accepts the colonial analogy’, and have already pointed out that I already have. You have not accepted this, as I suspect you will probably find reasons to not accept any quotation I provide. As I have indicated, it is not up to individual editors to unilaterally decide what does and does not constitute the grounds for inclusion in these templates. Simply googling around looking for quotations that say ‘most people do/do not accept Northern Ireland is a colony’ or words to that effect, is not really a decent basis on which to determine the issue.
Truth be told, we are not going to determine it, because it has been, and no doubt will continue to be, a subject of debate among academics for some time to come. My argument is that it should be included in the template because a significant body of scholarly opinion exists that says the Troubles were a colonial conflict. I have argued this and provided extensive quotations to support my contention.
There is more to acadmic debate than digging around on the internet for decontextualised quotations that appear to support the point you are trying to make. I could, after all, present another quote from the same chapter in Miller’s book: ‘Ulster is British in the sense that it is a colonial possession which the British state has tried to present as an integral part of the state’ which, in isolation, appears to support my case. Does this prove anything conclusive on its own? Not really.
In fact, Miller puts that statement in at the start of his book for dramatic effect, to argue that the ‘vast bulk of literature’ is mistaken at the time he was writing (1998). It’s an exaggeration, and clearly an exaggeration, because he goes on to quote many writers who do regard the conflict as colonial. He follows it by arguing that such a failure to acknowledge the colonial nature of the Northern Ireland conflict is ‘at best, curious’, and goes on to argue (fairly convincingly I seem to remember) why it should be regarded as a colonial conflict. Arguing that something is the ‘majority’ view is ill-advised actually. How does someone prove this? By making a survey of everything ever published on a subject, taking a census of opinions and toting up the score? No-one can (or should) do this. Claiming something is the majority view is merely impressionistic and, in practice, unverifiable. Can you prove to me that a view of Northern Ireland as ‘not a colony’ is the majority view? I mean, actually prove it in the sense that you are asking me to prove the opposite? The best you can do in these matters is convey an impression of the academic consensus (or lack thereof) on an issue.
Once again, please try to engage more constructively in the discussion instead of simply placing a disproportionate burden of evidence on others. For example, you might address my point about Algeria? Is it not a colony? If it is, how does it differ from Northern Ireland? If Ireland was once a colony, when did it cease to be? If a significant proportion of Northern Ireland’s population regard the territory as a colony, why is this viewpoint simply to be disregarded? Gerrynobody ( talk) 11:38, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
I have set up this sub-section Wikipedia:Third_opinion#Instructions. — Cliftonian (talk) 13:06, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Since there has been no activity here for about two weeks I have requested an uninvolved administrator to close this RfC here—hope this is okay with everyone. Cheers — Cliftonian (talk) 07:44, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Am I wrong? This seems a rather major oversight, 1803-1815... but don't know if it should be included as one long war or the several that started and ended until Waterloo. Hmm... seems someone is deleting things that aren't colonial... but the Crimean War was how I found this, what, is that colonial? It shows just "Russian conflicts" and this... rather incongruous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chadnibal ( talk • contribs) 14:32, 8 March 2017 (UTC)