Talk:History of the foreign relations of the United Kingdom

This article began as a spinoff of the history sections from "Foreign relations of the United Kingdom" -- see the history section of that article for previous edit history. Rjensen (talk) 13:48, 15 August 2016 (UTC)
 * new material is steadily being added here that never appeared in the former parent article Foreign relations of the United Kingdom. Rjensen (talk) 01:24, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

text was copied from "Margaret Thatcher" article and is credited to that article
the edit of Oct is explicitly credited to the Thatcher article. Since 1945: copy ex "Margaret Thatcher") see edit history here  Rjensen (talk) 16:19, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Useless refs
There are a number of useless references in this article: These all use the sfnp tempalte and whoever has inserted them has forgotten to actually define the references. I do not propose fixing them, perhaps whoever lazily copied-and-pasted from other articles without bothering to check that they had defined their refs could do it? DuncanHill (talk) 19:59, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Marr (2007)
 * Campbell (2011)
 * Reitan (2003)
 * Thatcher (1993)
 * Smith (1989)
 * Jackling (2005)
 * Hstings & Jenkins (1983)
 * Howe (1994)
 * Senden (2004)
 * Aitken (2013)
 * Görtemaker (2006)


 * Nearly three years later and these have not been fixed. I have tagged them all. DuncanHill (talk) 02:08, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Thatcher section
Quite apart from the shoddy referencing in the Thatcher section (see "Useless refs" above), to give those 11 years more space and prominence than say Palmerston or the Seven Years war seems ludicrously unbalanced. The size and placement of the section also makes it look as though the UK had no foreign relations after 1990. DuncanHill (talk) 20:08, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It's much easier to be concise about what the RS agree on Palmerston with 150 years perspective and LOTS of scholarship.  It's much harder to be concise about recent events with gigantic amounts of online news reporting & commentary and far fewer scholarly studies--or archives.  Long term perspective is still ???? about UK and Europe so what happens in Brexit in 2019+ may well re-shape historians' views of Thatcher. .  As for the gaps, don't be shy--please help out here.  Rjensen (talk) 04:52, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

Article scope
"The history of the foreign relations of the United Kingdom covers British foreign policy from about 1500 to 2000. " The United Kingdom came into existence in 1801, a fact curiously unmentioned in the article. I suggest that the article either actually restricts itself to the period from 1801 on, or is somehow retitled. DuncanHill (talk) 20:10, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
 * In terms of foreign policy 1801 was a meaningless change, with the same foreign office & same policies continuing. It misleads the readers to suggest a discontinuity. Rjensen (talk) 19:03, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Brown, The Royal Navy's Fuel Supplies ...
In this edit I added this PhD source per this in the archive at WP:RSN. This PhD is well-sourced and uses quotations from official records. I note that the WP:RSN discussion, while seeming to favour PhDs as reliable sources, is inconclusive. If you object to the use of this source here, do please take this opportunity to say so and, please, explain why. In the meantime I'm looking for a more obvious source, which I'll add if I find one, and unless someone beats me to it. Nortonius (talk) 15:46, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Ok, Rjensen, you're evidently familiar with a better range of better sources than the ones I've found! So Brown is gone for now, with this edit. But the ships themselves were significantly cheaper to build, according to Brown. If you know of or find a better source for that, I'd be grateful. Otherwise I'll keep looking. Nortonius (talk) 16:27, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

✅ Found it. I knew I'd seen it somewhere. Nortonius (talk) 17:24, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I like PhD dissertations when they are online & easily available. In this case it was a matter of multiple cites for the same simple noncontroversial fact --one RS is enough and extra footnotes make the article hard to use. Rjensen (talk) 19:00, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Good. Just to be clear, though, when Brown went in the edit indicated above there was no longer a cite for oil-powered warships being cheaper to build. These days I'm usually quite careful only to supply multiple refs when required by the information presented. Although, if you were to look back through my contributions, you'd certainly find multiple cites for the same thing. But surely it can never be a good idea to remove citations without checking what they are, and what they're for. Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 00:21, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
 * the topics needing cites is foreign policy & not ships--the key issue  = naval superiority and 2) foreign policy of oil supplies. Ship technology has own articles. Rjensen (talk) 04:42, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
 * An interesting approach. Happy Christmas. Nortonius (talk) 10:58, 24 December 2018 (UTC)