Talk:Presidencies and provinces of British India/Archive 4

message: I have asked the question in several other articles about the nature of the "Agency" (e.g. the Gilgit agency) under British rule. No one has really adressed the topic adequately, so I would add the suggestion to this article to deal with this topic.Vontrotta (talk) 10:44, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agencies 

message: We would like to move this page to British India, and to then expand it and shoot for a featured list.  See discussion on Talk:British India#Final proposal.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:21, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal

message: I should like to suggest that it would be a good idea to have a specific section of the article called something like Extent and population, with the aim of summarizing the growth of British India in size and population over the centuries.</br> 
In the mean time, the information in the article seems to have changed. What was here before had online citations to detailed figures, which I believe I transferred myself from the Talk page. The lead now says "British India constituted a significant portion of India both in area and population; in 1910, for example, it covered approximately 54% of the area and included over 77% of the population." I am doubtful about the 54% figure, and the citation for it is to pp. 59-61 of volume 4 of the Imperial Gazetteer, but after checking that source what I can find there is "Information with respect to the area, population... regarding the Native States will be found in the Appendix... The area outside British dominion is enormous (more than 824,000 square miles), but the population (68,000,000) is vastly inferior to that of British India." I do not think that supports "...in 1910, for example, it covered approximately 54% of the area and included over 77% of the population". (By the way, it is not quite clear to me what comparison is intended in "of the area" and "of the population", which perhaps mean the area and population of the whole of India, either including or excluding Burma?)</br> I should prefer it if the previous information and citations could be reinstated, or else other citations to figures provided. Part of what we had before was "In 1925, the Literary Digest's 1925 Atlas of the World and Gazetteer reported under 'India': "The term British India includes the districts subject to British law, the area of which is 1,093,074 square miles. The Indian States or Agencies having political relations with the Indian Government have an area of 709,555 square miles, thus making the total area of India and Dependencies 1,802,629 square miles."1925 World Atlas and Gazetteer published by Funk & Wagnalls, online at scribd.com, accessed 4 September 2008 Strawless (talk) 17:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What is \dfrac{1800000-824000}{18000000}\times 100? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:55, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you very much, Fowler&fowler. I am sure you intended only five zeros at the bottom of that fraction, so the sum comes to 54%. I believe the total of 1,800,000 square miles includes Burma? I think perhaps it would be helpful for us to say so at that point, by explaining in a footnote how the 54% figure is arrived at. Strawless (talk) 01:44, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I made my correction long before you made your post here. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:03, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That is quite odd, the edit linked above is to the talk page attached to the archive, which I wasn't aware of, and not to this Talk page, but in any event it's a very trivial point which I think it was discourteous of me to mention, so apologies. Strawless (talk) 02:10, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Strawless that this would be a worthwhile section on the page. Xn4 (talk) 01:12, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, Nichalp mentioned that last month (see talk archives) and we discussed showing the changes graphically in gif images.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:27, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Extent of British India at various times

message: I am a little confused by the technical side of PBS's move of Provinces of India to British India. No deletion of the useful article at British India is agreed (and, indeed, the merger seems to be sudden and without a regular merger process). As I have no objection to a genuine merger, I am not greatly troubled, but where now is the text which was at British India, and its page history, please? I see that the Talk page which is now here appears to be the Talk page (and its archives) of British India, and not Provinces of India. Was there a talk page of Provinces of India]], and can that still be found somewhere? Strawless (talk) 00:48, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: See above Talk:British India#Proposal and also British India/Article during the second half of 2008 --PBS (talk) 00:50, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

text: This is the version of Talk:Provinces of India that I moved here, (as can be seen there was not a lot of talk on it). I then copied some of the more recent text from the previous Talk:British India which is now at /Archive 3. Hope that makes it clear but if not comment here and I will reply here. --PBS (talk) 00:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you very much for your answer, PBS. Now that the main text of the pre-existing article which is under discussion is merged in, with the Further Reading section which we have built up for the British India title, I believe this is a successful outcome. Strawless (talk) 01:34, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: British India

message: :see Talk:British India/Archive 3#Final proposal
I would like to propose that if this page begins to be edited in the future, as it has been in its past, for demographics, administration, public works, culture and other topics belonging to British Raj, Company rule in India or British Empire in India, then we consider this move to have been a failure and go back to option 2: 
*redirecting British India to Provinces of British India and locking down the redirect (unless changed by consensus).  
As I have said before, and I believe RegentsPark has said so too, I am going along with this move, but I remain less than sanguine about its prospects.  Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:29, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not think we could all agree that "demographics, administration, public works, culture and other topics belong... to British Raj, Company rule in India or British Empire in India" – at least, nothing in that is self-evident, and I thought British Empire in India was intended to be little more than a disambiguation page. Clearly, there are some topics and matters which belong at British Raj, and some which belong at British India, and we can always discuss where the boundaries lie in a sensible way. There is no more need for British Raj to seek to swallow up British India than there is for British India to threaten British Raj, and I have never seen any need for them to conflict with each other at all. Strawless (talk) 02:48, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you like to go for a Wikipedia mediation about what the content of British India should be?  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 08:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: If ...

message: #The "British India" page has been the domain of many disputes on Wikipedia since it was first created in 2004.  (And, it is not certain which was created first, the page or Wikipedia.)
#(Sociological Aside) I might add that, in my view, the parties to the dispute have generally consisted of 
##editors who are chagrined that the word "British" should be applied to India or the Raj, in the first place; these editors would prefer, "India during its colonial nightmare" or "India during its darkest hour" for the page name, 
## editors, who think "British India" is another name for India during its British colonial years.  As an aside to the aside, these editors favor "British East India Company" over "English East India Company" in an allied dispute on Wikipedia.
##editors, who, be it from nostalgia, pride, or a vestigial sense of ownership, the last only secretively acknowledged, would like the British contribution to India—by way of roads, canals, railways, telegraph, universities, and creative land-tax—to be stamped on any page name for 18th-19th-early-20th century India.  (This group, however, paradoxically favors, "English East India Company" to "British East India Company" in the allied dispute.)  
##editors who examine the secondary and tertiary sources for usage (and also, newspapers, such as the New York Times, but discount lesser vetted evidence from the tabloids such as the Chicago Tribune, The Times, London or The Guardian). 
#Some proportion, permutation or combination of the above-mentioned sociology, had, for years, tried unsuccessfully to redirect British Raj to "British India."  
#In mid-August 2008, however, an editor, user:Xn4, appeared on the British Raj page and took the novel tack of 
##ignoring the dispute entirely, 
##declaring British Raj, the page, to be "British Raj," a term, and deeming the latter to be colloquial, and
##editing "British India" as a standalone page involving content that he said would develop in time.  
#Consequently, in late August 2008, The RfC was held 
#In the RfC, user:Fowler&fowler made a statement with more details than a phonebook (and some details from the phonebook).  Newton's Third Law now came into play.  user:Xn4's subsequent response statement was more distilled than the best travelbooks by Baedeker, which, it soon turned out, user:Xn4 would have use for.  
#For, in a time-honored tradition established by other Wikipedians user:Fowler&fowler has disputed with in a mediation, user:Xn4 stopped posting to the RfC.  Indeed he stopped editing Wikipedia altogether.  When he was heard from again in late October, he traveling in France, with "no internet access," he said, using the widely used French short hand for "better things to do." 
#Soon, user:Strawless, who had not been entirely unsympathetic to user:Xn4, and who, had been firing a supportive salvo every now and then, also disappeared from the RfC discussion,  
#The RfC was abandoned in October, after user:Nichalp appeared on the page and provided his input.
#After some back and forth, it was decided, in early November, to create a short page "British India," which 
##would serve as an introductory page for a new template "Colonial India, 
## wouldn't go into the nitty-gritty as the "Provinces of India" page did, and 
##could be stabilized by shooting for an FA.  
#Later that month, such a short page was created, which, incidentally, could also have served as the lead for the (then still separate) "Provinces of India" page.  
#However, at this point, outside expert, user:Casliber, who had been invited to evaluate the page's FA prospects, appeared on the page, and suggested that the page needed more heft by way of culture or legacy in order to be even considered for such prospects.
#Since the term "British India," however, had a delimited usage in the scholarly sources, it was felt by user:Fowler&fowler, who claimed to have read them all, that the page could not include culture and legacy.  It was proposed therefore that the page "British India" be redirected to "Provinces of India."  It was also proposed that the latter page be developed as a candidate for a Featured List, in order to gain that still elusive stability.  This proposal received the approval of the few people such as user:Nichalp and user:RegentsPark who were still keeping track of the post RfC discussion.  And presumably also the approval of user:Fowler&fowler who had proposed it.
#At this point user:Nichalp took a week's Wikileave.  His return, however, was delayed by the tragic events in Mumbai.  
#During this time, user:Fowler&fowler's approval of his own proposal began to fade away.  Furthermore, left to his devices, user:Fowler&fowler commenced creating ever finer distinctions in the proposal, and soon began to flip-flop.  
#One of these changes—a redirect "Provinces of India" to "Provinces of British India" and then redirect "Provinces of British India" to British India— was turned by user:Fowler&fowler into his Final Proposal; the others changes, which were discarded, consisted of the remaining five permutations of 3 objects taken two at a time.   
#The Final Proposal too was deemed reasonable by user:Nichalp.  However user:RegentsPark thought that any page with title "British India" would bring out the kooks from their hideouts.  
#At this point user:Philip Baird Shearer, the benign administrative presence in the background, suggested that, another possibility would be to redirect "British India" to "Provinces of India" and lock-down the redirect.  user:Fowler&fowler, latched on to this with alacrity; presumably this had user:RegentsPark's approval as well. 
#Then, user:Strawless, referred to above somewhere in the single digits—who had been given up for missing-in-action, but who in fact had been sharpening his quills to commemorate, on this page, the upcoming 41th anniversary of the Tet Offensive—now fired the first feathered fusillade. 
#This immediately created fear, among anyone with a long memory, of a return to stage 1, 2, 3, ... or, indeed, any single digit.  
#Somewhere in this discussion, user:Philip Baird Shearer, seeing that the lock-down redirect might be going nowhere, suggested a return to the "Final Proposal."  
#This too was accepted by user:Fowler&fowler, this time not only with alacrity, but also with dispatch.
The rest, as they say, is history. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:14, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: May I offer my friendly congratulations on all that, Fowler&fowler? You would not expect me to agree with every word, but the sense of humour is very welcome. Now, I am afraid, I need an early night, after the weary aftermath of last night's marathon. Strawless (talk) 22:46, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I agree with the above. If we can avoid taking things too seriously, then it's a lot better. Xn4 (talk) 01:38, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

text: Sorry to hear that Nichalp.  Thanks for helping out.  Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I echo what Fowler&fowler says, and I shall also miss your input, Nichalp. Thank you for your contributions, and I hope you will return to the page in the future. Strawless (talk) 21:01, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: The Pre-History of British India &ndash; a Foundling (with apologies to Henry Fielding)

message: I do not think it is very helpful (or encyclopaedic) for five or six book titles to be linked to amazon.com and similar sites. These links seem to be contrary to the policy on external links, and if no one minds I should like to take them out. Strawless (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sure that's the right approach, and as no one has objected I'll make those changes. Xn4 (talk) 10:28, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, this page accidentally went off my watchlist for the last week or two or three(?), so I didn't see your post.  Yes, I do agree with you.  Amazon shouldn't be there.  Really, the ISBN is enough because its link provides many ways of accessing the book, including ultimately Amazon (through Google books).  So, thanks!  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:44, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Further reading

message: I have added 13 maps of India from 1700 to 1947.  I had been meaning to do this for the Provinces of India page for over a year, and have done so now on British India.  I hope these maps will soon become the best collection of maps (of India under British rule) anywhere on the web, that is, if they aren't already.  :) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:27, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This is very helpful and partly overcomes the difficulty raised above about the changing meaning of 'British India'. Evidently, Joppen liked to use the term 'British Territory' on a map headed 'India', and it seems that the maps selected all use this term, while other maps using the term 'British India' (such as the one now in the infobox at British Raj) are no longer exemplified on the page. However, one such, Political Divisions of the Indian Empire (1909), with its caption, was deleted from the page earlier today, and partly for the sake of illustrating an example of this use, I shall reinstate this map (pictured right). Strawless (talk) 21:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I feel that you imputing all kinds of motives to me, none of which are based in reality.  I wasn't even aware that all the maps now refer to the pink regions as "British territory" instead of "British India."  They are not all from Joppen; three are from the Imperial Gazetteer from India Atlas, the same Atlas that I copied the "Political divisions" map from.  The only reason why I removed the "Political divisions" map is that it is already on a number of Wikipedia pages; however, its replacement (which is of the same vintage, ca. 1907) was in danger of becoming a newly-born orphan had I not included it here.  It was as simple as that.  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Maps

message: I have moved the post to this subpage of my user page.  Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: , also he has  and two others... what were they called? YellowMonkey  (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 00:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  and  YellowMonkey  (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 01:26, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Sockpuppets?

message: What to do now (see Talk:British India/Archive 3#Final proposal also above #If ... and #Stocktaking after two months). If it is decided to revert the pages to as they were last year or to some other solution that involves moving pages around let me know. --PBS (talk) 17:23, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest returning to a mid-December version of the article that F&f thinks is ok. Only the various socks seem to have edited the article since about Dec. 15. We then copy edit the article, protect it, and move on. Hopefully, we can stop going around in circles. --Regent Spark (crackle and burn) 23:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Alternatives are (c) leave as is and rewind the history (as RS suggests above), (d) move the pages back and put back the dab page, (but we can not protect a dab page indefinitely). But given that my last move of this page was done because of a compromise resulting from a false consensus created through the use of sockpuppets (now confirmed by another CU team member), the simplest thing to do is to implement Option b (redirecting British India to Provinces of British India), because we can not protect an article indefinitely but we can protect a redirect until such time as there is a consensus to take the protection off. To do this we rewind my last move: We move British India and its history to Provinces of British India, (placing a hatnote for British Raj) and then move British India/Article during the second half of 2008 back to here adding a redirect to the top. This will preserve the history of the two articles. We will also have to unwind of the two sets of talk archives.  --PBS (talk) 10:48, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

text: PS And then shoot for that Featured List. :)  Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:50, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Could "Provinces and presidencies of India" be mistaken for any other period, or could in include other colonial powers? --PBS (talk) 11:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's no secret that I'm related to Xn4, who asked me to help him with all this, and there's nothing wrong in that. With Wikipedia's articles leading up to 1947, you've been struggling, but at least the debates have been relying much more on facts and sources than on personal opinions, and you need to keep a clear separation between the two, just as you do between "British Raj" (whatever you call it) and "British India" (whatever you call it). The historical realities are all very clear and well sourced. UmarZ (talk) 15:43, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: OK I'll rewind my move of last year the rest does not need administrator assistance. --PBS (talk) 19:18, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

text: I have rewound the move of 11 December and redirected British India to Provinces of India. I have not protected the redirect and won't do so until the the new page name if any is agreed upon. --PBS (talk) 20:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

text: As I said above, such a move does not need an administrator to make it. So I'll leave it to others to decide if this move should be made. --PBS (talk) 13:21, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

text: Fine with me. (I also agree that British India being anything other than a protected redirect is asking for trouble.) --Regent Spark (crackle and burn) 15:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Just one thought which came first presidencies or provinces? --PBS (talk) 18:32, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Presidencies came first.  So, I guess the move would be to Presidencies and provinces of British India.  Since, Regent Spark and me are the only two people left from the original discussion, I will go ahead and make the move.  Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  What to do now  

message: I have now moved the page Provinces of India to Presidencies and provinces of British India, and would like to request PBS to protect the redirect British India ==> Presidencies and provinces of British India.  I have also redirected both Presidencies of British India and Presidency town to Presidencies and provinces of British India; however, I didn't know what to do with the talk pages of the redirected pages.  So I've left them as they were for PBS's attention.  Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: As there was not substantial information on the two talk pages, all I have done is leave the history in place and redirect the talk pages to this one. I have altered the wording on British India (disambiguation), please check it is correct. I have also protected the redirect British India as agreed. --PBS (talk) 22:45, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Moved