Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of countries by date of last occupation


 * 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. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 15:50, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

List of countries by date of last occupation

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Unmaintainable and, in many cases, the product of original research. I strongly doubt that His Majesty's Australian, Canadian and New Zealand subjects considered themselves "occupied" by the United Kingdom or even that the UK was a "foreign power" until their countries adopted the Statute of Westminster. I rather doubt that Croats think of the Second Yugoslavia as having been an "occupation" or "foreign" (if anything, Serbs were the disadvantaged group there) or that nostalgic Kyrgyz and Kazakhs think of the Soviet period as having constituted an "occupation". In any case, there's no documentation for any of these claims. Biruitorul Talk 16:50, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete--nom is right; this list is OR, and a soapboxy fight waiting to happen. Drmies (talk) 17:33, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete As Drmies says, soapbox fight waiting to happen. Sceptre (talk) 17:56, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. In addition to the nom's concern with regard to Australia, there are those who would say that Australia is still under occupation, from the Aborigines' point of view. As for Canada before 1931, those who would regard the rule of the UK as an "occupation" regime are few and far between. --  Blanchardb - Me•MyEars•MyMouth - timed 18:16, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. "Occupation" is far too wide a term, and this is a magnet for every editor who wants to rake over political issues regarding their country - see Macedonia, Ireland (state), Liancourt Rocks, etc etc ad nauseam.  And the _UK_ has been under occupation since 1066?  Surely _England_ has been?  And some would argue that Scotland has been under occupation since 1688, and the UK since the Maastricht Treaty, and...  I hope the point has been made. :) Tevildo (talk) 18:37, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - This is not a list of countries now under occupation, it is a list of ALL sovereign states with their history of previous occupation (or external control). Scotland, Liancourt Rocks, etc. are not on the list because they are not sovereign states. I understand your point about UK vs. England, but the UK is the successor state to England, and most historians would agree that 1066 was the last time it suffered a foreign occupation. Some might argue that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was a foreign occupation, but I think the mainstream view is that it was a civil war. Goustien (talk) 19:38, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep but rename I admit that the terms I chose when creating this article have unfortunate connotations. As mentioned above, many of these circumstances should not be described as "occupation"; my intended meaning was something more like "government from outside the current country's borders." In some cases this relates to the birth of a country from a friendly "mother country" (as Australia from the UK), in others to the liberation of a country from a hostile foreign occupier (as Poland from Nazi Germany). However, despite the different circumstances, I think a sortable list such as this is useful for comparative purposes, to show which countries have a long, uninterrupted history of independence compared with others which are younger creations or which have re-emerged from outside dominance. Sorting by the third column allows one to group countries in ways which I don't think are available in other Wikipedia articles. Nor is this article the product of original research: most dates can be found in the infoboxes of the various country articles, or in the country history articles. If there are any controversial dates, these should be footnoted. I will edit the article to tone down the use of objectionable terms. Can anyone suggest a better overall name for this article, e.g., List of countries by date of last external government? Goustien (talk) 18:44, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - "External" isn't very much better. Is Westminster "external" to Scotland or Northern Ireland?  Much blood has been spilt over the question... Tevildo (talk) 18:50, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - What about List of countries by length of continuous independence or List of countries by duration of undisturbed sovereignty or List of countries by date of independence or liberation? Goustien (talk)
 * "Independence" is really redundant against the existing "formation date", and "liberation" has the same problems as "occupation"; when was the Slovak Republic last "liberated"? 1918? 1948? 1989? 1993? Insofar as this information is relevant, it would probably be better in List of countries by formation date instead of its own article. Tevildo (talk) 21:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete In the present state, the article is not much more than a list of countries without any dates, save the years. Besides, occupation is not well defined, as pointed above. --Tone 19:16, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Aside that this is just a place for stacking up POVs removed from elsewhere, it really abuses the notion of what a list is supposed to be providing. Dahn (talk) 19:21, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - Contributors to this list should avoid POVs and merely compile dates established elsewhere in Wikipedia. The existing articles on "independence," "formation," and "achieving statehood" (see links in See also section) are inadequate for this purpose. Could I ask people to please suggest changes to make this article acceptable? Goustien (talk)
 * Contributors should NOT compile data from elsewhere in WP but from a reliable source! Otherwise it is OR. --Tone 20:53, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, theoretically all data in Wikipedia is supposed to be based on a reliable source; but one should not probably not copy information from other articles without at least making a reasonable attempt at verifying it. DHowell (talk) 03:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Can't this information be merged into the List of sovereign states by formation date somehow? DHowell (talk) 03:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - I originally thought of adding this information as additional columns in that article, but could find no way to turn that list into a sortable table. Goustien (talk) 06:39, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete original research, and the fights over "occupation" would be awful.Bali ultimate (talk) 20:54, 24 April 2009 (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.