Wikipedia:Peer review/British Empire/archive1

British Empire

This is really a request for references: this article look pretty good to me, and I would send it to WP:FAC, but it needs references. Any peer review comments are also welcome, of course. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:35, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How about...

• The Rise and Fall of British Empire, Lawrence James
• Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, Niall Ferguson
• The Oxford History of the British Empire, Robin W. Winks, Wm. Roger Louis, and Alaine Low.

— RJH 19:15, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Excellent - do they support the contents of the article? -- ALoan (Talk) 20:05, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You might take a look in your local library. That's what I usually end up doing. — RJH 21:44, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Having just read through the article, I think it's an excellently concise treatment of a pretty enormous subject. A few points occur to me:

• The intro section is a bit huge - could be reduced a bit, and some of the info worked into the main text.
• The bottom third of the article is all lists. Perhaps the lists could be spun off into sub-articles, or some other way of presenting them worked out?
• I really like the anachronous map, it really illustrates the article excellently. I wonder if it could be placed more prominently?
• There's no mention of Harold McMillan's 'winds of change' speech - quite an important landmarking indicating that rapid decolonisation was to be pursued.
• Ethnic tensions created by the empire are alluded to in the intro but not really mentioned elsewhere. Perhaps it's outside the scope of the article, but the Fijian situation and the various African repressions of Asian populations are both results of imperial policy.
• No mention of the effect the Empire has had on the UK, in terms of mass immigration after the war. Some sort of 'Legacy of the Empire' section could cover the last two points.

As far as references go I've only read the James book. I think it broadly supports the contents of the article, although he makes a stronger distinction between the American-based 'first' empire and later 'second' empire. Worldtraveller 15:19, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I usually use Amazon to expand the list of references. You may also message ppl who did major edits and ask what sources did they use. PR comments 1) too many short (1 sentence/line ) paragraphs, merge them 2) the extensive lists near the end are, well, extensive - consider moving them to separate articles 3) see also is very large, consider deleting terms linked from body and/or writing paragraphs about relevant see alsos 4) add references, although you have this covered, I think. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:23, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Erm - shouldn't "References" be used as sources from which an article is written, or to confirm the existing content of an article? I would not add a reference taken from Amazon without reading it first, although I would have less compunction about adding an unread book as bibilography or further reading. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:24, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, one can always differentiate between references and further reading, but unless we link references directly from the relevant part of the sentence, as is done in the scientific publications, I find the entire matter rahter pointless. Adding as many sources as possible gives the reader a bigger choice and availabilty of material. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 14:03, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Some suggestions: There's little information on India which was supposed to be the crown of the BE. Robert Clive can be added, British-French wars in India (and Canada), fight for supremacy in the seas between UK and Portugal. I would prefer if the article was a summary and detail moved to other pages. Nichalp 20:19, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

I did not see this discussion thread back in March. I wrote the bulk of the text in this article a couple of years ago (though there have been many changes since then, especially the images), so I can draft a list of references and reading materials, if people are still interested. 172 | Talk 00:49, 24 October 2005 (UTC)