Talk:British Empire/Olson

List of text which cites Oslon that needs to be changed. To ensure that we do not simply replace one source considered no good with another,perhaps its better if we just try to find some sources for each statement, list the sources here and then have them looked over by editors involved at the FAR page then the acceptable ones can be selected and added. Then if sources are still missing we can easily look for more or change the text to something that can be sourced.

25a - In 1620, Plymouth (colony) was founded as a haven for puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims.

25b / 43 - This changed in the 18th century as the Mughals declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the Compagnie française des Indes orientales, during the Carnatic Wars in the 1740s and 1750s. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, which saw the British, led by Robert Clive, defeat the Nawab of Bengal and hisFrench allies, left the Company in control of Bengal and as the major military and political power in India.[25] In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local puppet rulers under the threat of force from the British Indian Army, the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys.[43]

37 - The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philippe of Anjou, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other powers of Europe. pages=11-17

38 - In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714. At the concluding Treaty of Utrecht, Philip renounced his and his descendants' right to the French throne and Spain lost its empire in Europe. pages=11-17

39 - The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Minorca. Gibraltar, which is still a British territory to this day, became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Minorca was returned to Spain at theTreaty of Amiens in 1802, after changing hands twice. Spain also ceded the rights to the lucrative asiento (permission to sell slaves inSpanish America) to Britain.

40 - Spain ceded Florida to Britain.(Lloyd, p. 83 supports this) In India, the Carnatic War had left France still in control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, ending French hopes of controlling India. pp. 49-52

46 - Paragraph may be covered by cite 41 - Peoples and empires by Pagden

50 - Events in America influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had migrated from America following independence. p. 496 pp. 46-48

51 - The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. p. 43

54a - Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to the newly discovered lands of Australia.

54b - In 1770 James Cook discovered the eastern coast of Australia while on a scientificvoyage to the South Pacific Ocean, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales.

54c - In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788. pp. 20-23
 * Third or fourth. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:18, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

55a - The western coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch explorer Willem Jansz in 1606 and was later named by the Dutch East India Company New Holland, but there was no attempt to colonise it. pp. 5-23

55b - British territories in the Pacific acquired independence between 1970 (Fiji) and 1980 (Vanuatu), the latter's independence having been delayed due to political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France. pp. 171-191

56a - Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, at which time the colony's population numbered 56,000, the majority of whom were convicts, ex-convicts or their descendants. (Can find lots of sources for 1840 being the year transport of convicts stopped or   or. But the colony's population seems more complicated. This source for example says within its present boundaries it had a population of 113,200. This says 56,000 was the peak number of convicts undergoing punishment, but not that it was the whole colony's population. This one says 56,000 convicts in that year, but also says in 1821 they were just 43% of the population. and this says in 1840, 38,400 convicts remained and that the free population greatly outnumbered them already.) BritishWatcher (talk) 11:45, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Honestly, the exact number is not that important. We could reword to say Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840. p. 159 Nikkimaria (talk) 13:23, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

56b - The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold. ( or  or )
 * Again, third is the best, although the second would be adequate. pp. 145-149 Nikkimaria (talk) 00:10, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

57 - On 6 February 1840, Captain William Hobson and around 40 Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi. (The next source says over 500 Maori chiefs, includes the date but does not say William Hobson specifically)

70 - and a foreign policy of "splendid isolation"  ( or  or  )
 * First or third. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:23, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

75 - From its base in India, the Company had also been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by the Qing dynasty in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of more than 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong.

77 - The Indian Rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. Afterwards the British government assumed direct control over India, ushering in the period known as the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. The East India Company was dissolved the following year, in 1858.

84 - In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. The Canal was at first opposed by the British, but once open its strategic value was recognised quickly. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:45, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
 * First source for second sentence, but what's the original book that's being reproduced? Also, none of those sources support the first sentence directly. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:57, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Is this ok for the first sentence?
 * Yes, that's fine.

87a/b - As French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region threatened to undermine orderly penetration of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 sought to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the "Scramble for Africa" by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims. The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896, and rebuffed a French attempted invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was made an Anglo-Egyptian Condominium.

88 - British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich South.

90a/b - Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901. The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the Colonial Conference of 1907. p. 14
 * Based on my research, there seems to be a disagreement among scholars about which nations were granted dominion status when. Perhaps to simplify we should just include everything up to the first comma?

99 - The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations Mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togo, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves also acquired mandates of their own: South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) was given to the Union of South Africa, Australia gained German New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.

105 - Although the issue of the Empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, at the same time the Empire was vital to the British economy. (  has figures on imports / exports with the Empire although its different figures, perhaps its best to avoid specific figures in this paragraph too?) BritishWatcher (talk) 17:25, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not as desirable here, but we could just cut everything after the colon and use your source. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:18, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

107 - The Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown.

111 - In 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954.British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936, under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone

113 - Iraq, a British mandate since 1919, also gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932.

118a/b - This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster. The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent.

119 - Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression.

139 - Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Ceylon gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Ceylon became members of the Commonwealth, though Burma chose not to join.

150 - UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned. 
 * Both are good sources, and both must be used in tandem to support the complete sentence.

159a - Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent.

159b - To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast andMalaya—were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s.

161a - British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations, particularly in Rhodesia, where racial tensions had led Ian Smith, the Prime Minister, to a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the British Empire in 1965.

161b - In the Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriots ended (1960) in an independent Cyprus, with the UK retaining the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.

162 - Rhodesia remained in a state of civil war between its black and white population until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979. This agreement temporarily returned Rhodesia to British colonial rule until elections could be held under British supervision. The elections were held the following year and won by Robert Mugabe, who became the Prime Minister of the newly independent state of Zimbabwe

163 - Most of the UK's West Indies territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two by far largest members.

164/ 165/166/167 - Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence. The British Virgin Islands,[165] Cayman Islands[166] and Montserrat[167] opted to retain ties with Britain.

169 - In 1982, Britain's resolve to defend its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire.

174 - Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong Island itself had been ceded to Britain "in perpetuity", but the vast majority of the colony was constituted by the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99 year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997.

187 - Individual and team sports that were developed in Victorian Britain–particularly ball games including several codes of football, cricket, lawn tennis and golf–were exported. (dont know if any of these are ok, if someone can find better ones please do.  or  or  )
 * Definitely not the "For Dummies" book. The third source is probably the best of these. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:08, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Sadly this is going to take some time to deal with all of them and as of yet nobody has stated any specific statements they want alternative sources for, its just down to views on some of the guys other work. . BritishWatcher (talk) 12:35, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Incorporation
BritishWatcher, if you have no objections, I think I'll start incorporating these into the article. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:31, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Please go ahead, and thanks again for doing so much. You're great! =) BritishWatcher (talk) 07:43, 19 October 2010 (UTC)