Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Countries that Britain has attacked


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:08, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Countries that Britain has attacked

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I don't quite think this list is encyclopedic in scope, due to the very elastic (and POV-fraught) definition of "attack" and, to a lesser extent, "Britain". How, for instance, are the following "attacks" by "Britain"?


 * 155. The Romans begin to abandon Hadrian's Wall.
 * 866. The Danes conquer the Kingdom of Northumbria.
 * 1605. English explorers visit New Hampshire.
 * 1620. The English abandon Run to the Dutch.
 * 1639. Connecticut's first constitution, the Fundamental Orders, is adopted.
 * 1795. Mungo Park [a private individual with peaceful intentions] enters Mali from Senegal.
 * 1915. During the First World War Britain through the Treaty of London awards Italy the protectorate of Albania [without any British troops setting foot there].
 * 2009. Rwanda joins the British Commonwealth.

Second, what are the sources? I have a sneaking suspicion this is based on All the Countries We've Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To. Of course, that's a work of entertainment and has not been peer-reviewed by academics. It isn't serious history. Due to the media buzz it's generated, the book may deserve an article of its own, but let's not present its conclusions as somehow authoritative.

We have a List of wars involving England and a List of wars involving Great Britain, and that is as it should be, but this starts to veer distinctly into original research territory. - Biruitorul Talk 16:09, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment This article was begun long before I had heard of the book you mention see User:Davroche for dates. I have not seen the book.

I am happy to discuss the the use of the word "attack" please suggest a better word or phrase as a heading for the article. The purpose of the article is to list by country all the military effects that Britain has had on the world - the wars, armed conflicts, skirmishes fought and lands occupied or administered by or within the sphere of influence of Britain.

I agree that it needs a lot of tightening but that does not mean that it should be deleted. I can remove the attacks on Britain - especially those not directly in response to or causing an attack by Britain itself.

Your second point is about sources. Every reference has been taken from Wikipedia itself. I plan to iteratively improve the references to more specific pages. For example, instead of Britain I would moved to History of the United Kingdom or more specifically War_in_Vietnam_(1945%E2%80%931946). When I began this in January 2012, I did not consider the importance of very specific links but the later entries are linked directly to a page section.

The two articles that I linked to run by time and war whereas my article runs by country first. Both approaches are useful. Davroche (talk) 18:42, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete - the name of the article is quite frankly incorrect, just for starters - secondly, this is a totally unnecessary article due to the two articles the nominator linked to. Thirdly, a lot of things simply don't fit in the article. Lukeno94 (talk) 17:56, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment I am happy to discuss the the use of the word "attack" please suggest a better word or phrase as a heading for the article. I can remove the attacks on Britain - especially those not directly in response to or causing an attack by Britain itself.Davroche (talk) 18:52, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete Material better covered in other articles. Plus many items were not attacks by British forces, but peaceful visits or in some cases other nations were attacking Britain. Besides the island Britain never attacked anybody, it was people living there under many different governments. Kitfoxxe (talk) 18:36, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment I can modify the article to take on board your observations. Please indicate what articles show the military impact that Britain has had on the world country by country?  I thought I had defined "Britain" in the opening paragraph is that not sufficient?Davroche (talk) 18:52, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete Concur on basis of other articles dedicated to serious study of this topic. Book may warrant own page, but not this "spin-off".
 * Comment This article was begun long before I had heard of the book you mention see User:Davroche for dates. I have not seen the book.  Please indicate an article in Wikipedia that summarises the dominion of Britain better than this article.  I cannot find one.  Davroche (talk) 18:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete - topic is already (much) better covered by existing articles. An obvious delete. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:45, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment Which articles address this issue better - please name one Davroche (talk) 18:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete List of wars involving England might be modified to include a list sorted by opposing country in addition to a list sorted by date but the current article does not do this - it conflates modern countries with the states that existed on the same territory hundreds of years ago and it stretches the meaning of the word "attack" to the point of absurdity. GabrielF (talk) 20:52, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment Thank you for your more constructive criticism. I am interested in your suggestion to have more than one list.  I think the word "attack" should be changed but what to? Davroche (talk) 18:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * SNOW Delete POV and nonencyclopedic --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 21:06, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment What aspect is POV? Is it the principle, choice of events, or descriptions of specific events? I have no intention of falling foul of POV guidelines and I would welcome rephrasing as necessary.Davroche (talk) 23:52, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment This list appears inspired by or drawn from British author Stuart Laycock's recent book All the Countries We've Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To. That book might be notable based on the controversy it created; but the list isn't. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:28, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment This article was begun long before I had heard of the book you mention (10 January 2012) see User:Davroche for dates. I have not seen the book.  Davroche (talk) 18:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge with List of wars involving England, leaving a redirect behind. Automatic  Strikeout  ( Evidence) 17:45, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment This is not a list of wars - it is a list of countries that have had a war with Britain Davroche (talk) 18:53, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete clearly an ill defined article better covered in other articles, certainly uses a different definition of attack then used by everybody else for example  A group of English settlers arrive on Roanoke Island off of North Carolina to re-establish the deserted colony.! MilborneOne (talk) 18:59, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment Let me put it this way. If the Iroquois arrived in Britain in the sixteenth century to construct their own settlement under their laws and culture the English would regard it as an attack. If the following year another expedition of Iroquois arrived, the English would regard them as hostile reinforcements.  This settlement of Virginia might not seem as aggressive as the invasion of Normandy in 1944 but the intention was similar - to gain land supremacy. Davroche (talk) 20:27, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep Needs a better title such as 'Countries the British have invaded or fought'. Currently there are lots of gaps in the list such as the wars with Iran.  Adding a sorted list to say List of wars involving England would produce a very big article. Andrew Swallow (talk) 03:17, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment There are many gaps. The gaps do not invalidate the principle of the article.  I am filing them as fast as I can.  I have combed every year until 1660 and every war until 1805 and every country.Davroche (talk) 09:18, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * At the moment there are no sources, none at all. The article does not have "many gaps", it is currently one enormous gap totally lacking sources, reliable or otherwise. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:34, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Every line is sourced from an entry in another Wikipedia article - you find one that isn't I'll mend it - as I have said above.Davroche (talk) 13:33, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Au contraire, notability is WP:NOTINHERITED: it is not transmitted invisibly through bluelinks. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:50, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. Under Poland: "1015. Denmark with Polish allies invades England and capture half.". Either a hoax, or somebody's knowledge of history is very, very poor (i.e a plain error). If this is representative of the rest of this, trash it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 22:35, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:20, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:20, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment No the event 1015 under Britain, Denmark and Poland not a hoax - I have have added links and citation. Everything in this article has been gleaned from other articles in Wikipedia.Davroche (talk) 23:34, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * King Cnut is one of England's most famous kings. I did not know about his Polish allies.

Still keep. After being advertised on the delete threads I suspect that half the historians will want to add a mention of their favourite war. Andrew Swallow (talk) 00:33, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - at no point has any real reason for this article being kept - and this page still merely duplicates information held elsewhere. Lukeno94 (talk) 09:05, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge it with List of wars involving England because a lot info is given here. This article has info before 11th century which is not the case for list of wars involving England. List of wars involving Great Britain has only record of last three centuries. I would advise not to delete it. May be need a clean up but certainly not a deletion. Thank you.--Vyom25 (talk) 10:34, 29 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Rebuttal I'm afraid that "has information" is not a cause for keeping a (basically unsourced and WP:POV) article - that's tending to the inadmissible WP:ITSUSEFUL non-defence. It's fundamentally unencyclopedic because it's based on the word "attack" in the title, i.e. it's founded on a point of view, and from that disastrous point upwards the entire building is flawed and indefensible. This article therefore needs to be deleted, without redirect. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:28, 1 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. It's basically a chart of Britain's historic foreign relations, with an absurdly inflammatory title and duplicated information from the relevant places.  Some of the stuff isn't particularly accurate, attributing old, old events to places that didn't exist as a separate country at the time (ie Crusaders in the medieval kingdom of Croatia; then referring to events post-World War I).  It's not notable, not effectively sourced, and the bad title shouldn't be floating around as a redirect.   dci  &#124;  TALK   03:55, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note that I don't mean duplicated as in "copied", but as in needlessly reiterated.  dci  &#124;  TALK   03:57, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. This list has no clear (or possible) inclusion criteria, and is based around a pretty POV concept. Nick-D (talk) 07:26, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. Nick-D (talk) 07:28, 1 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom and Nick-D. Too unclear in scope and definition(s). Buckshot06 (talk) 07:49, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete The title and content do not match, and that sums up the problems inherent in this article. If it is meant to be a list of present day countries, inhabitants of which have been on the opposing side to people from what is now Britain, it is still highly problematic as well as incomplete, because it relies on a concept of nation that is quite unhistorical. The argument that it could be rescued by changing both title and content is not sufficient to save this one from deletion. --AJHingston (talk) 10:08, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Purge -- I suspect that this article is partly a spin-off from a book by Stuart Laycock. The list of countries that Britain has attacked is surprisingly long, but not every country in the world should be included.  British overseas territories should not be included, at least not colonies by settlement, particularly those that were essentially uninhabited before the British arrived.  I would prefer to see a short description of the date and circumstances of the attack or better still a cross-reference to the war in question.  The object should be to convert it into little more than a list article.  Peterkingiron (talk) 18:16, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It is not a spin-off of the recent book (see here). It was begun in January this year but published earlier than anticipated because of the book.  I'd been thinking of writing this from the early days of Wikipedia but did not get around to it. The list did not include British overseas territories when I first started but I begun to include them because I thought it odd including some Caribbean islands but not others (just because they were still British). I agree that some islands, for example, the Falklands or Gough Island where not inhabited beforehand but British presence stopped others inhabiting them. I began with the intention of a short list - rather the like the  List of British Wars - but soon discovered that many events occurred outside formal wars. The title is unfortunate - could you suggest a better one "Countries in which Britain has fought" perhaps?  It have purged the countries that I have no information forDavroche (talk) 19:57, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'm not convinced the topic's encyclopedic. The title/content issues aside, the basis for this article hasn't been duplicated anywhere else on WP, as far as I know; though that doesn't disqualify the list in and of itself, it really isn't necessary.  And, to reiterate what others have said, even changing the title to "Countries in which Britain has fought" wouldn't address things like the Mungo Park problem mentioned by the nom.  The list is basically "Countries with which Britain or Britons have interacted", often militarily or as imperialists.  It's safe to presume that Britain has interacted with all currently existent nations, and it really isn't necessary to list small examples of such interactions.   dci  &#124;  TALK   23:47, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Mungo Park is no longer a problem. If the article appears to be "interacted" rather than "fought" then that is too broad because nearly every country has had some interaction with others.  It is not overly difficult to distinguish tourism, trade, cultural exchanges from annexation, invasion and colonization. Davroche (talk) 10:53, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, the comment that most info on the article has been "gleaned off" other Wikipedia articles seems to violate WP isn't a reliable source.  dci  &#124;  TALK   02:01, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That's right, but the situation for the article is worse than that: the whole thing is fundamentally a WP:POV WP:ESSAY, supporting an idea of the editor's, rather than being built on sources, reliable or otherwise. Anyone can fill an article with bluelinks by asserting that mutations are caused by eating chocolate in hot weather without crinolines, but the blue appearance does nothing at all to make the article notable. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:25, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I understand that bluelinks, of themselves, do not make the article notable. As I have said already, I have learnt so much from this discussion and I am going through every entry, line by line, to ensure there are citations, references and more appropriate links.  I will also remove entries that are, on reflection, outwith the underlying premise.Davroche (talk) 10:53, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, but a major concern here is that the underlying premise itself isn't notable; I don't think you're doing POV-pushing necessarily, but the article does insinuate an assumption that Britain instigated negative actions against every country on the list, in every provided example. At any rate, the only source that describes the topic as a whole, to prove that it's encyclopedic (Manual of Style/Stand-alone lists) appears to be the controversial book.   dci  &#124;  TALK   17:42, 2 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete: Ambiguous at best. For example, there was no nation-state known as "Albania" in 1192 CE (it was part of the Byzantine Empire at the time). The knowledge may be useful presented in another manner, but I don't see any salvage in this article. Faustus37 (talk) 08:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC) Addendum: There wasn't any "Britain" in 1192 either. Faustus37 (talk) 10:04, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete 'Britain' isn't and hasn't been a nation - it's an island. There was a short period of 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain', but it is officially now 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Previous to the Acts of Union, there was England, and Scotland, and various principalities in Wales until they were absorbed into England. Before that, the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, and the Celtic states, and the Roman province of Britannia - which didn't include much of Scotland. Also, how is "First recorded attack by barbary pirates on the English coast" an attack BY Britain anyway? Christmas Island? "Christmas Island is first sighted...". The damn place was uninhabited, and seemingly never had been inhabited. "English forces travel through Austria" - but not Scottish ones... They didn't fight through (OK, probably some fights outside alehouses...). 'Britain' has never attacked Jersey. Etc, etc. This isn't a list of attacks made by 'Britain', it's a mish-mash of military and friendly interactions, exploring, piracy, treaties, colonisation of uninhabited territory, and more. Sorry, I know there's a lot of hard work gone into this, but it doesn't fit the title, and I can't think of a new title that would fit. I considered WP:POINT as a reason for the listings, but can't see a point. Peridon (talk) 15:37, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.