Talk:Overseas expansion of the United States/Archive 1

message: Where are you getting 1854-90 for Indian Wars? - Hephaestos 01:19, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Large-scale incidents began after Wounded Knee, and by 1890 there was virtually no Indian opposition to the U.S. --Alex S 01:21, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: That doesn't mean there was no fighting; the Battle of Fallen Timbers springs to mind, for example.  I think an argument could be made they started in 1776 with regard to the U.S. as such. - Hephaestos 01:26, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Isolated incidents don't equate to a war. I agree that they should be listed, but as sepearte events and not under "Indian Wars." --Alex S 01:33, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: They were all isolated events when looked at that way, including Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee.  We can't have it both ways. - Hephaestos 01:35, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: They were "isolated events" only in the sense that each battle between the British and the American Revolutionaries were "isolated events." What makes it a war is the magnitude of conflict. Between the years 1865 and 1898, 943 battles were fought during 12 different campaigns, and over 30 wars were fought between 1850 and 1865. Nothing of this magnitude occured before 1850 or after 1890. --Alex S 01:51, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Getting 1854-90 for Indian Wars

message: I have big problems with this page. The title expresses a blatant POV, namely that every military action ever taken by the United States was "Imperialist" (whatever that means). We already have a page about the military history of the United States, and that seems to cover all the events mentioned on this page just fine. If anything, this page should be a redirect to the US military history, and nothing more. user:J.J.
:I understand what you're saying, but it simply isn't true that every military action taken by the United States is here. There is no mention of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War One, World War Two, or the war in Kosovo. These are all significant wars that have no place in the "History of Imperialism" Page. --Alex S 23:39, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: So it doesn't...but what is the criteria for inclusion on this page? Can that be determined without running into significant POV problems? It can be argued that the Indian wars were a domestic issue, since the US considered indian lands part of its own territory. Hawaii wanted to be annexed (it was conquered only through economic means.) How was the Afghanistan invasion not justified? It's all iffy... --Jiang 23:50, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: big problems with this page

message: *I moved the bulk of the section on the Natives to Indian Wars because we were missing an article on that subject, and if we went into that much detail about every American imperialist venture the article would become far to large to be useful.
*I made the article more into a discussion of the debate over American imperialism, both today and at the time it was occuring, mostly because imperialism is an idea rather than a concrete event.
*I incorporated more on cultural and economic imperialism because I do not think the topics can be separated from military imperialism, nor do I believe that military imperialism is the the central focus of imperialism.
*I removed the POV warning because the changes made were fairly large, please feel free to reinsert it if you do not feel the bias has been suitably expunged.
-SimonP 22:27, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)
:Better, but still too many unattributed "many believe" or "many argue".  Also you don't mention that imperialism was opposed by conservatives and promulgated by progressives/liberals in the 19th century, but that the positions completely reversed in the 20th century. It would be interesting to trace a connection with the use of "imperialist" as an epithet in Soviet propaganda, I'm sure there are books on the subject although I don't know any titles (currently deep in Teddy R's bio myself). Stan 23:46, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: I like the changes a lot too. The only major revision was that I moved back a lot of the information on Native Americans, albeit streamlined. I think that while too much information burdens the point the history of native-settler interaction in the US is key to the idea of US Imperialism. I want to start expanding the "current opinions" part of the article with global views (backed by #s and %s) on the idea. --Alex S 00:56, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Explanations of some of my changes

message: maybe a "the neutrality of this article is disputed" is called for? based on this talk page at least... jengod 22:58, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)
:There is no need for a neutrality dispute. There is a need for users to stay on topic. "Imperialism" is common technical term in the social sciences with context-specific, values-neutral meanings. J.J just needs to look up what "imperialism" means in the first place and how it is used in the social sciences and history. This doesn't mean finding the first op-ed piece that comes up on Google or Yahoo. This means that he needs to go to his local library or university library and consult encyclopedias, social science sourcebooks, and textbooks. It would behoove him to do this, rather than rambling on about he personally "feels" about the term. 172 00:34, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutrality Disputed?

message: I haven't added any content to this article (other than removing some irrelevant tangents). Nor was this my choice for an article. If users don't know the definition of the term, you can edit the article and add it to the intro. A word may be widely confused, but it's fine so long as this article uses properly. 172 03:08, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: If users don't know the definition of the term