Talk:Wars of the Three Kingdoms

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Proposed article name change to: The Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland.[edit]

Continuation of the earlier debate which achieved a consensus view that the current title was not acceptable. I offer this as a suitable replacement given its use by authorities in the subject already cited on the page. Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 14:59, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Today's WP:BOLD edit to move the page from its long-standing location at Wars of the Three Kingdoms to The Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland doesn't seem so far as I can see from previous discussions to have specific consensus (and the title has not been discussed at all for getting on for five years). Whatever some editors felt in 2006 or 2007 may well not reflect WP:COMMONNAME academic usage now. This deserves wider discussion, particularly as Wars of the Three Kingdoms is used quite widely across Wikipedia in other articles, template and category names. Personally, I'd like to see the article name reverted to its long-standing title, but I'm not an expert in this. Would be interested to hear from @Girth Summit:. MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:56, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can find no instance of the use of the phrase "The Wars of the Three Kingdoms" unprefaced by "Civil War" anywhere except in Wikipedia. (Please see the examples cited in the article.)The description "Civil Wars in Britain & Ireland" or "British & Irish Civil Wars" in contrast, clearly do reflect current academic usage as found in numerous authoritative book titles and classifications of major archival collections - usually in conjunction with the date range 1637-1652 (or 1660). The inclusion of the words "Civil Wars" in the article title is essential for clarity, recognizability and continuity.WP:COMMONNAME Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 20:52, 11 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Preliminary comment - I expect that I will contest this move. I'm going to go back to the sources and refresh myself, but the article has been at the previous title for a long time, and discussion should have taken place before any change. It is likely that I will revert the move, and recommend that a move discussion take place per the guidance at WP:RM. Girth Summit (blether) 11:11, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've looked at this in more detail. To assert that there is consensus for a move based on a discussion from four years ago (one in which I see no such consensus) is not appropriate, so I have reverted the rename. Horatius At The Bridge is welcome to propose a rename and attempt to form a consensus, but no such consensus currently exists: a discussion will need to be initiated per the directions at WP:RM. I'll add that, if a new name is proposed, it should not start with the definite article per WP:THE. Best Girth Summit (blether) 14:17, 12 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 13 December 2021[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Favonian (talk) 09:16, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wars of the Three Kingdoms → Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland – A consensus was reached some time ago that the current title is clearly unsatisfactory and should be changed. No substantive objection has been offered since. I can find no instance of the use of the phrase "The Wars of the Three Kingdoms" unprefaced by "Civil War" anywhere except in Wikipedia. (Please see the examples cited in the article itself.) The description "Civil Wars in Britain & Ireland" in contrast, clearly reflect currents academic usage as found in numerous authoritative book titles and classifications of major archival collections - often in conjunction with the date range 1637-1652 (or 1660). The inclusion of the words "Civil Wars" in the article title is essential for clarity, recognizability and historical continuity as per WP:COMMONNAME. Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 22:20, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose – "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" seems to be the most common name in academic usage. My search on Google Scholar found about 1,180 hits for "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" and 150 for "Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland", while Google Books has 11,100 hits for "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" and 3,270 for "Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland". Also, the proposed title could cause confusion, as it suggests the article is about the many civil wars in Britain and Ireland throughout history; such as The Anarchy, the First and Second Barons' Wars, the Wars of the Roses, the Wars of the Three kingdoms, the Williamite-Jacobite War, the Irish Civil War and others. ~Asarlaí 23:20, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – In addition to being by far the more commonly-used name for these conflicts, "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" clearly is the more precise and specific name and is less likely to misdirect Wikipedia's browsers/readers. CitizenKang414 (talk) 05:28, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – Even without digging into academic examples, the idea that "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" is unused 'anywhere except in Wikipedia' is easy to disprove from the first couple of pages of a Google search. Here is just a small sample of popular common usage in reliable sources:
MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:24, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – Your failure to find examples of academic standalone usage without the identifying phrase "Civil War" is significant because there are none. Just ask your friends what "The Wars of The Three Kingdoms" are and I predict you'll get zero correct answers. Repeat the question using "The Civil Wars in Britain & Ireland and I'm sure there will be many positive responses. That's how Encyclopedias work too! There is no place for pedantic conceits such as this one. I again draw your attention to the sources cited in the actual article in support of its eccentric name - none are unprefaced by the key phrase "Civil War". The links you cite provide both testimony to the influence of Wikipedia and are also cautionary examples of the damage done through the uncritical replication of basic errors in its content. Those errors, as set out in detail in the preceding discussions, have simply not been addressed by you or any of the other current objectors and are copied below:
Quotes from earlier discussion
"Wars of the Three Kingdoms' strikes me as somewhere between precious and pedantic. We should remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and is intended for use by the general public, not by specialists. Of course it is true that the "English Civil War" is not literally sufficient for the activities in Scotland and Ireland – but it does reflect the political reality that the action was overwhelmingly dominated by the English (and if you really want to be "accurate", how do you cope with Wales? 'Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Principality', perhaps? And then there are the Channel Isles and the Isle of Man, and the colonies over the ocean...). This unhelpful name to me is all of a piece with the enthusiasts who change the German navy to the "Kriegsmarine", or who change all ancient Greek names to a new spelling convention which is mysteriously supposed to be closer to the Greek alphabet (like "Konstantinoupolis" or "Ioustinianos"). Can we revert to something which most people will recognise? Deipnosophista (talk) 16:35, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I second these concerns. A resource such as wikipedia shouldn't be used to advance new theses using terms that impede a non-specialist user consulting the pages.JF42 (talk) 20:03, 24 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thirded. Another factor that hasn't been explicitly mentioned is that the title doesn't give any clues as to which Kingdoms are involved! So it's definitely unhelpful. I would propose 'British and Irish civil wars' Mabandalone (talk) 10:21, 6 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Do we have a consensus? Will anyone do the actual name change? Creuzbourg (talk) 07:59, 27 November 2016 (UTC) [reply]
These earlier contributors may wish to share their current views @Deipnosophista: @JF42: @Mabandalone: @Creuzbourg: Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 13:45, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You have selectively pinged users who were in favour of changing the name (several years ago). Do you also intend to look through the talk page archives and identify editors who argued against changing the name in the past? Or indeed the editor who origially created the article at this title? You may not be familiar with the guidance at WP:CANVASSING, but selective notifications like this are problematic, for obvious reasons. Girth Summit (blether) 15:00, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a disappointing comment. I originally contributed to an existing discussion which had reached the point of consensus that the article title was unsatisfactory and should be changed. Following advice from yourself and another editor I then went on to create two new sections to facilitate progress. At that stage I thought it would be beneficial to notify all the original participants of this in order to better inform the continuing debate which by then involved direct challenges their views. As far as I am aware there were no objectors to the proposal at the time I joined the discussion. Your complaint is a bit rich given that you also received a personal notification and invitation to comment on my proposal from MichaelMaggs - to which you quickly responded - was that not selective and "problematic"? If I was in breach of Wikipedia rules by updating earlier participants you may be quite sure I was unaware of them, unlike yourself.Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 19:41, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is a subject area I'm very familiar with - indeed, I've authored a couple of featured articles in this subject area. Michael Maggs knows me from discussions in related articles, most recently one where I argued in favour of changing a long-standing article title to a new one that I believed better reflected the current academic consensus. I don't think that there is any reason he would have had to expect me to take a particular side here - rather, I expect he asked me (a single editor) to comment as someone with familiarity with the sourcing in this area. You, on the other hand, have selected multiple users specifically because they have commented, years ago, expressing opinions that you agreed with about this particular question, and you did not apparently think to look through the archives to see whether there was anyone who disagreed who you should also notify. I'm not accusing you of intentional malfeasance, but I don't think it's a comparable situation. Girth Summit (blether) 20:04, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't select, I updated all of the contributors to the discussion I joined, which was the only one on the Talkpage at that time. To suggest I should have trawled the archived material to invite earlier editors is frankly absurd. Poor form really. Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 21:44, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You didn't update all the contributors to that thread - you updated the first four, whom you agreed with, and you somehow managed to overlook the most recent two, who disagreed with your position. If you are going to attempt to rekindle long-dormant discussions, notifying the contributors when you do so, you need to be much more careful about notifying all interested parties, not just those whom you agree with. Girth Summit (blether) 23:35, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Let's try to keep this friendly please. The most recent two contributions were from the editor who suggested starting a new section! I'm sorry one was omitted but PBS didn't object to the rename only that it should not include 'British' and my proposal used the geographical identifiers Britain and Ireland instead. Anyway, for the sake of completeness @PBS: @MichaelMaggs:. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Horatius At The Bridge (talk • contribs)

  • Oppose – In my 1991 edition of Michael Lynch's Scotland: A New History (and therefore uncontaminated by Wikipedia, social media, and what-not) there is a section entitled "The Wars of the Three Kingdoms" on pages 270–276 covering exactly this topic.[1] The book is available on loan at the Open Library. The group of conflicts do not seem to be described in any other way. Of course, I have no objection to redirects from descriptive phrases. Thincat (talk) 12:15, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The title of the section in the book is actually The Conflict of the Three Kingdoms and the heading of a six page sub-section does not constitute an example of general academic usage of the article title. Once again, please see the sources cited by the proponent of the title in the article and the classification of the subject in every national collection and archive, you will find that all contain the phrase "Civil War(s)".Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 13:45, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In my printed copy of the book (1994 reprinting of 1992 Pimlico edition, 1st edition 1991) the section heading is "The Wars of the Three Kingdoms". Supposing the Open Library copy was different, I looked again at my link to the Open Library and it does indeed use "Wars". I've looked also at the second copy in the Open Library and that says the same. Perhaps you are looking at (and misreading?) the running header at the top of the page which is "The Crisis of the Three Kingdoms" (sic). This relates to the title of the whole of Part IV encompassing chapters 15 to 19 and covering a very much broader period. As for the references in the article, the recent titles referred to all look to have minor variations of "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" but two of them also have, as you imply, the phrase "Civil War" in their titles. To me, the new article name you suggest implies a far broader time period. Anyway, I won't squabble any further, I am not in a position to assess any academic consensus. Thincat (talk) 16:46, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies, I misread the section title. Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 22:10, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – Wars of the Three Kingdoms is a very commonly used phrase amongst scholars to refer to the wider series of conflicts. This Google Scholar search provides plenty of examples of usage; plenty of books on my shelf refer to it in these terms. Do these sources also use the phrase 'civil war'? Very commonly, because of course the phrase is intended to encompass the English Civil Wars; but they also include other conflicts, which were not civil wars in any meaningful sense, hence why scholars sought an alternative phrase to use to refer to the whole shebang. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms is the one that stuck - it's not an invention of Wikipedia, scholars were using it in the 1990s before Wikipedia was founded.
The OP suggests that we ask our friends what "The Wars of the Three Kingdoms" are, and confidently predicts that we will get zero answers. We usually go with what reliable sources call something, rather than what our friends call it, but FWIW: my partner is an academic, a professor of early modern British history, who specialises in the 1640s. As you might expect, many of our friends have similar levels of familiarity with the subject - she is on first-name terms with quite a few of the authors whose work is cited in this article, and many more who are not (but who could be). If I were to ask my friends what the best name for these conflicts would be, I expect it would start an enjoyable and rambling discussion that would fill a long winter's evening down the pub; I expect though that at the end of it, there would be rough agreement that this phrase is the best choice. Girth Summit (blether) 14:32, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just to emphasise the point, here are a few examples of usage from the first page of the Google Scholar search: David Scott, Wiley, Eamon Darcy, Royal Historial Society, Robert Armstrong, Manchester University Press, Nicholas McDowell, Routledge, Farah Mendlesohn, Palgrave Macmillan, Mortimer and Scott, Journal of the History of Ideas. There are dozens more of them, these were just the first few I clicked on, all of them using this precise phrase in the titles, without any 'civil war' prefacing. Girth Summit (blether) 14:45, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
All well and good but not relevant to the salient issue - an article's title is a key finding aid for all users of the enclyclopedia, very few of them specialist historians! The current one gives no clue as to its primary content about 17th century civil wars in Britain and Ireland and this should be remedied. Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 14:58, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone who types 'Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland' (an unlikely search term in my view) would find this article by means of the existing redirect, so concerns about difficulty finding the article are moot. The simple fact remains that in reliable sources, the WP:COMMONNAME for the whole series of conflicts (as opposed to a particular subset of them) is the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. There is no reason to opt for a descriptive title when a commonname exists.
In your nomination statement, you asserted I can find no instance of the use of the phrase "The Wars of the Three Kingdoms" unprefaced by "Civil War" anywhere except in Wikipedia. I have just provided you with dozens of such instances, in irrefutably reliable scholarly sources. It would be nice if you were to acknowledge that, and perhaps strike that part of your rationale. Girth Summit (blether) 15:15, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I entered this page expecting to support the move, since the term "Three Kingdoms" makes me think foremost of the period of Chinese history - however, once I took a look at the sources for myself, it became clear that "the Wars of the Three Kingdoms" was the typical name for these wars in current academic literature. The most compelling evidence in this regard was the Google Scholar link shared by Girth Summit above, which shows the term being used with a high degree of regularity. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 18:02, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it certainly looks that the TWTK phrase has gained currency in recent publications, particularly as a portmanteau term used to provide a context for a related but different main subject - which is the case for all the examples listed by Girth Summit: i.e. John Milton & TWTK, The Protestant War, The 'British' of Ireland & TWTK, The Irish Rebellion of 1641 & TWTK, Creating Memory:Historical Fiction and the English Civil Wars - Critical Approaches to Children's Literature TWTK, Leviathian & TWTK, A Companion to Stuart Britain Ch16 TWTK. I do think though that TWTK Wikipedia usage and its links to many other WP articles may be responsible for this recent increase in part. I also think this is a most unfortunate outcome. TWTK is a profoundly uninformative label which lacks general recognizability, historical continuity or an association with the main corpus of scholarship in the central subject - all of which are required by WP:COMMONNAME. In addition, as has been already been alluded to by previous contributors: "The reader of this entry should be aware that there is often a subtext to the retitling of events. This new title being given to the struggles that tore apart the social fabric everywhere in the British Isles emphasizes one fact and de-emphasizes another. The new expression reminds the reader that though Charles I of England was also King of Scotland and King of Ireland, those kingdoms were simply united in his person. It is just as if a historian refused to call Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile King and Queen of Spain, for the crowns were united only in their heir. At the same time, the new title serves to de-emphasize the fact that this was a civil war, and keeps it on the level of a political event." Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 21:44, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry to be blunt, but this is arrant nonsense. Leading scholars, like John Morrill, Jane Ohlmeyer, J. G. A. Pocock and Michael Lynch were using the phrase in the 1990s, before Wikipedia existed. You have provided no evidence whatsoever for Wikipedia having any influence on the increase in prevalence of the term over the last thirty years. Believe me, I am all too well aware of the risk of the language used here affecting scholarly discourse, but that usually happens when scholars from unrelated fields have cause to mention something they're not expert in, and refer to us for convenience - that really is a problem. That isn't what is happening here though: do you really think that scholars of the caliber of Ian Gentles, John Young or Micheál Ó Siochrú give two hoots what our articles say about their area of expertise? The term is simply how the main corpus of scholarship now routinely refers to the series of conflicts - it has been for decades. That you don't know that says something of your familiarity with the literature on the subject. If you think that it is our job to correct scholars in how they refer to historical events, you have fundamentally misunderstood the aims of this project. Girth Summit (blether) 00:08, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Arrant nonsense" hmmm. Possibly, but there are certainly more civil ways of expressing fundamental disagreement. Please try to conduct this discussion in good faith and with good manners. First, I did not claim that all the occurrences of this phrase post dated its WP usage, but most of the ones quoted here so far probably do. Let's look at the bibliography of Morrill, the first leading scholar you claim provides evidence:
List of titles of books and articles by John Morrill that do not contain the phrase 'Wars of the Three Kingdoms'
  1. Revolt of the Provinces: Conservatives and Radicals in the English Civil War, 1630–1650 (Allen & Unwin, 1976); ISBN 0-06-494975-3 (review)
  2. The Civil War and Interregnum: Sources for Local Historians (with G.E. Aylmer) (Bedford Square Press, 1979) (read online)
  3. Seventeenth Century Britain, 1603–1714 (Dawson, 1980) (read online)
  4. Reactions to the English Civil War, 1642–1649 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1982); ISBN 0-312-66443-5 (read online)
  5. Charles I (with Christopher W. Daniels) (Cambridge University Press, 1988); ISBN 0-521-31728-2 (read online)
  6. Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Longman, 1990); ISBN 0-582-01675-4 (read online)
  7. The Impact of the English Civil War (Collins & Brown, 1991); ISBN 1-85585-042-7 (read online)
  8. The Nature of the English Revolution (Longman, 1993); ISBN 0-582-08941-7 (review)
  9. The British Problem, ca. 1534–1707: State Formation in the Atlantic Archipelago (with Brendan Bradshaw (Palgrave Macmillan, 1996); ISBN 0-333-59245-X
  10. The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain (Clarendon Press, 1996); ISBN 0-19-820325-X (review by Anthony Fletcher)
  11. The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland, and Ireland 1638–1660 (ed. John Morrill, John Kenyon, and Jane Ohlmeyer) (Oxford University Press. 1988) (read online)
  12. Revolt in the Provinces: The English People and the Tragedies of War, 1634–1648 (Longman, 1999) (read online)
  13. Stuart Britain: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press Paperbacks, 2000); ISBN 0-19-285400-3 (read online)
  14. Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears a Crown: Dynastic Crises in Tudor and Stewart Britain, 1504–1746 (University of Reading, 2005) read online
  15. Oliver Cromwell (Oxford University Press, VIP series, 2007) read online
  16. Firmly I Believe and Truly: The Spiritual Tradition of Catholic England, 1483–1999 (with John Saward and Michael Tomko) (Oxford University Press, 2011) read online
  17. The Nature of the English Revolution Revisited: Essays in Honour of John Morrill (eds. Stephen Taylor and Grant Tapsell) (Boydell, 2013)

No sign of TWTK there - how about your second nomination as a leading authority Ohlmeyer:

List of titles of books and articles by Jane Ohlmeyer that do not contain the phrase 'Wars of the Three Kingdoms'
  1. Ohlmeyer, Jane H. (1993). Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randall MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim, 1609-1683. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521419789.
  2. Ohlmeyer, Jane H., ed. (1995). Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521434799.
  3. Kenyon, John; Ohlmeyer, Jane, eds. (1998). The Civil Wars: A Military History of England, Scotland and Ireland, 1638-60. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198662228.
  4. Ohlmeyer, Jane, ed. (2000). Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century Ireland: Kingdom or Colony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521650830.
  5. Ohlmeyer, Jane (2012). Making Ireland English: the Irish aristocracy in the seventeenth century. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300118346.
  6. Ohlmeyer, Jane, ed. (2018). The Cambridge History of Ireland: Volume 2, 1550–1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107117631.
  7. Ohlmeyer, Jane, ed. (2020). A Short View of the State and Condition of the Kingdom of Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198791072.

So no TWTK there either - how about Pocock - I'll spare you the 300+ list of his published titles but no mention of TWTK in them or indeed those of the final one you cite Michael Lynch. So "the dozens of instances" you claim to have provided to show its ubiquity turns out to be zero for the principal works of those scholars. The short articles of Gentles, Young and O'Siochru do use the phrase contextually to their main subject i.e. 'English Revolution & TWTK', 'Scottish Parliament & TWTK' and 'Military Intelligence & TWTK' so I will revise my claim I haven't seen the article title appear "outside Wikipedia unprefaced by 'Civil War(s)'" to "outside Wikipedia in a standalone form." Finally, I return to the important point about the subtext of retitling. It is fashionable to try to challenge the established record of historical events to promote a particular narrative and this is a case in point. The missionary zeal of this editor and others to rebrand 17th century British history as Scottish or Irish or Welsh, using an empty 'Three Kingdom' code as the default, is no doubt seen as admirable by some. I am not one of those and it pains me to see such deliberate distortion. The "Three" Kingdoms in this context is a complete fiction - the last sovereign king of Ireland was Ruaidhrí in 1198 and the last sovereign king of Scotland (Idi Amin aside ) was James VI in 1601 - the last sovereign king of Wales was Owain ap Gruffudd in 1170 who has inexplicably been excluded so far - I await a proposal for "The Wars of The Four Kingdoms" with keen anticipation ;) Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 14:57, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is all beside the point - why would anyone expect them to use the phrase in the title of every book or article they publish? If they are writing about the English Civil Wars, they will call them the English Civil Wars; if they are writing about the interregnum, that's the word they'll use - it would be perverse to expect them to crowbar this phrase into the title of all those books and articles. However, when they are writing about the subject of this article - the wider series of conflicts that took place across Scotland, England and Ireland at that time - the phrase they use to refer to it is The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (with occasional variations - so, 'Wars' is sometimes in the singular). It's not me who has missionary zeal here - you seem to think that you are better informed on this subject than the totality of the leading scholars of the last thirty years, who all use the phrase routinely. You are the one who is trying to make a change, and you are flying in the face of long-established mainstream scholarship. Girth Summit (blether) 17:13, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at your previous comment in more detail, I think that you are actually questioning whether any of those scholars I mention use the phrase, rather that saying that you expect it to appear in the titles of their books/articles. OK, so it is sometimes necessary to read the actual work, rather than just look at the titles. Below are some more detailed comments about each of them - I'll collapse it to make the thread easier to follow for folk who can already see the writing on the wall.
Morrill, Ohlmeyer, Pocock and Lynch
  • John Morrill: I've been back to my bookshelf and pulled a couple of books off the shelf. His use of the terminology is somewhat different to what I remembered, I admit, but he uses the term, and if his writing would not obviously in support of the current title, it would also not support your proposed title. Here he is in 1991, in the introduction to 'The Impact of the English Civil War': "Yet there never has been any agreement amongst historians about what to call the crisis in England in the 1640s. Contemporaries in England saw it as 'the Toubles' or as 'The Great Civil War' or as the 'Great Rebellion'; while contemporaries in Scotland saw it as the 'Wars of the Covenant' and contemporaries in Ireland as the 'War of Three Kingdoms'. Nineteenth-century historians called it the 'Puritan Revolution', and twentieth-century historians, seeing it as the precursor of the other great world revolutions, have seen it as the 'English Revolution'. New titles are still being sought by scholars hard pressed for a good book title. The most recent attempts are 'England's Wars of Religion' and 'the Last Baronial Revolt'." Here he is again, writing in 1999 in Kenyon and Ohlmeyer's edited collection "The Civil Wars": "The traditional terms used to describe the conflicts which engulfed Ireland and Britain during the 1640s have included 'the English Revolution', 'the Puritan Revolution', 'the Great Civil War', and more recently 'the British Civil Wars'. Yet none of these reflect the fact that the conflict engulfed all three Stuart kingdoms; or that, in addition to the war possessing a pan-archipelagic dimension, each kingdom fought its own civil war and its own series of local and regional wars. The tension is caught in the fact that some historians speak of the 'War of the Three Kingdoms' and others of the 'Wars of the Three Kingdoms'." By 2008, when he wrote a chapter in Jenny Wormald's "The Seventeenth Century", he seems to have decided to go with "The Wars of Religion in Britain and Ireland, 1638–1660." This is kind of what I meant about the long, rambling pub discussion that would result if you asked a bunch of scholars what to call them - there would be a lot of different ideas put forward. Morrill changes horses quite a bit, it's hard to pin him down, but he describes the problem of what to call it quite accurately, and he doesn't give the impression that he thinks the WotTK is worse than other available options.
  • Jane Ohlmeyer There's already a link to Ohlmeyer writing about the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the article - it's the third external link. It is entitled 'The Wars of the Three Kindoms' in 'standalone form', so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. It is from 2008, but we can go further back to the 1998 edited collection 'The Civil Wars', in her chapter written with John Kenyon (who had died by the time it was published, so although it has his name on it, she was de facto the main author), where she uses the phrase frequently: there is a section titled 'The Wars of the Three Kingdoms' (it starts on p31), and a separate section on 'The British Civil Wars' (starts p38); these set out how she is using each phrase, and what is meant by each of them.
  • J G A Pocock: here you go.
  • Michael Lynch: You've already been directed towards a book by him that has a whole section with this title - I don't know what your problem with including him is.
While I was perusing the bookshelf, I picked up Mike Braddick's book, 'God's Fury, England's Fire', published in 2008. Wikipedia had been founded and this article had been written by that time of course, but if you think that he took our article into account when writing the book then I have a bridge to sell you. The first section (Chapters 1-7) is entitled 'The Crisis of the Three Kingdoms'. Chapter 10 is called 'The War of the Three Kingdoms'. Make of that what you will. Girth Summit (blether) 19:17, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations on your most impressive bookshelf! Thank you for taking time to provide the extra data too, most interesting. Just to be clear - I do not dispute that article title is now widely used. The point is that this is almost never in an unqualified form. Its use here merely invites further explanation. I also do not dispute there is a obvious problem of ostensive definition. It is the absence of a term to succinctly embrace all these interrelated conflicts which has directly resulted in the present unsatisfactory situation. The current solution in my view is simply not recognizable enough as an encyclopedia entry but my powers of advocacy are clearly inadequate given I am still the lone voice for change. How about Civil War & Other Conflicts In The Three Kingdoms (1638-52) as a compromise? Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 21:38, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I confess that the books in question aren't really mine - they're my partner's - but she lets me read them when I'm good. Thank you also for acknowledging that the term is indeed widely used. My problem with your compromise proposal, however, is that it simply isn't necessary - the existing title genuinely is the term that is most widely used, so WP:COMMONNAME applies.
I don't accept your argument that its usage is usually qualified. You have been given plenty of examples of books where it is used as a chapter or section title without any qualification. Above, you seem to take issue with article titles such as "John Milton and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms", as if the inclusion of one subject is in some way a qualification of the second. That is a mistake: article titles of that nature are very common in scholarly articles about history. If I want to write an article about how Thing A influenced/was influenced by Thing B, the obvious title would be "Thing A and Thing B". The idea that the inclusion of the phrase Thing A is in some way qualifying the naming conventions around Thing B is genuinely hard for me to understand. Thing B is its own thing, independent of Thing A, it's just that someone decided to write a comparative history of them: this is good for us, we as an encyclopedia can use the content in our articles about both Thing A and Thing B.
As far as I can tell from my reading of the sources, the phrase first started to be used in the early 1990s (it was probably earlier than this, but I don't see anything in print); it quickly gained traction, and by the mid-to-late 2000s it was widely accepted. These days, it's the standard term. Yes, some people use different terminology, but both from my own reading of sources, and from the best Google-Fu I can muster, our current title is by far the most widely used term to refer to the subject. I appreciate that you don't like it, but not liking it isn't a criterion that we consider: we follow the sources.
If it helps, think of it like this: part of our mission is to educate. This is the term that most modern historians use to refer to the subject. If some of our readers aren't familiar with the phrase, we shouldn't seek to dumb it down by trying to guess a phrase they'd be more familiar with: we should use a few redirects to help them find it, and use the term that scholars use as standard. Then they will be better informed about the state of current scholarship. Girth Summit (blether) 00:09, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Over the past few days, puzzled by this purported lacuna in my own knowledge, I have asked several friends the question "What were the wars of the three kingdoms?" It will probably disappoint but not surprise you that only one (a professor of international relations no less) recognised it and none of the others had a clue. You'll no doubt attribute their and my ignorance to a lack of recent education. It is indeed true that many of these folk are graduates of a venerable vintage and indeed a couple are retired university philosophy lecturers. They might recall Bishop Butler's admirable dictum - "Everything is what it is and not another thing" and I suspect Oliver Cromwell would have agreed with that. The 17th century Civil War in Britain was fought to establish the sovereign right of the people to determine such things was it not? Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 10:21, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you ask three different historians why these wars were fought, you'll get at least three different answers, probably more; if you were able to ask the participants, you'd get a very long list indeed. I don't know anything about you or your friends, but yes: if you were educated in the last century, and you're relying on what you remember from doing A level history or whatever, then it would not be surprising that you aren't familiar with the phrase. If you'd read many histories of the subject written in this century however, I truly don't think you could have avoided coming across it regularly. Our aim is to summarise modern scholarship, not to reflect readers' expectations back at them. Girth Summit (blether) 11:17, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think you'll find the authors writing about the Civil War in this century were, like me and my friends, also educated in the last century. The non-specialist understanding of the title phrase remains low among all age ranges and will continue to be so as long as it fails to contain any reliable indication as to what it is actually about. There is still no academic consensus on an accurate short description of the events under the present title phrase and I remain of the view its use on here is profoundly unsatisfactory in terms of meeting WP:CRITERIA. Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 11:42, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In my view, the current title satisfies all five of the criteria admirably, and is clearly the best available choice of title. I can see that I am not going to persuade you however, so I'm going to stop making this thread longer than it needs to be by responding to you. Girth Summit (blether) 12:44, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Simply asserting that the title satisfies the necessary criteria contradicts much of what you have already conceded. Finding a succinct accurate description of these events is recognised as a problematic issue among specialist historians and the debate continues. The phrase does not have currency as a standalone heading and necessarily invites further explanation. As such is unsuited to its use as a WP article title, demonstrated by a clear failure to meet any of the tests set out in the guidance. I am genuinely sorry you feel that further attempts to argue your case and reach a solution are futile.Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 13:20, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I find arguing with you to be futile, because every time someone points out that your argument is flawed, you try to find a new one to justify what appears simply to be a personal dislike of the present title. First, you said that nobody used it outside of Wikipedia; MichaelMaggs pointed you towards several popular history websites that use it. You countered that he couldn't find any instances of academic usage, so I then pointed you to a Google Scholar search with hundreds of examples of scholars using it; you then said that we shouldn't just be calling it what specialist historians call it. Then ModernDayTrilobite pointed out that it is the name typically used in current literature, you tried to argue that scholars were somehow constructing a portmanteau phrase with the term in, which somehow discounted its validity. When I pointed out to you that all they are doing is writing about the intersection of two different things, you told me that you had asked your friends and they didn't recognise the phrase. Over the course of several lengthy posts, and by dipping into half a dozen books, I have basically presented you with the history of how scholars have debated what to call the conflicts, how this phrase started to be used in the 1990s and gradually came to be the most widely-accepted term: you are now throwing that in my face and saying that because there has been debate about it, there is no scholarly consensus at all, and we need to invent a new phrase! Below, I see that you are now describing some of the most prolific and highly regarded scholars in this field as "a tiny subgroup of academics". You are ignoring the simple fact that Google Scholar searches show clearly that this name is by far the one most commonly used amongst all scholars. Indeed, you have presented precisely zero examples of anybody at all (except a few Wikipedia editors, and your friends) criticising the phrase. This type of argumentation is exasperating, and it is soaking up a lot of time.
Matt Lunker's comment below about an equine corpse is an allusion to the essay WP:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass. I too encourage you to stop flogging this dead horse, accept that the current title has consensus, and go do something useful. Girth Summit (blether) 15:53, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – "Wars of the Three Kingdoms," is evidently the more common name in academic usage and in books on the specific topic. The Google Scholar search linked by Girth Summit is telling, the first couple of pages for "Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland" mostly shows reviews and citations to Martyn Bennett, The Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland, 1638-1651 (Blackwell: Oxford, 1997) and other work by him. As Asarlaí pointed out above, "1638-1651" is needed as there were many civil wars in Britain and Ireland over the years. In 1831 William Cooke Taylor published a two volume History of the Civil Wars of Ireland,[1][2] including the Wars of the Roses (per wiki, known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars .. a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne) and the Williamite War in Ireland and that's before the Irish Civil War! Similarly, there were other civil wars in Scotland. . . dave souza, talk 08:07, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the current title is empty of meaning and therefore misleading.It is not in any sense an appropriate finding aid for an encyclopedia entry on the Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland between 1638 and 1652. Please see my reply to Girth Summit about his interpretation of the sources you mention which he seeks to use as validation of its use on here .Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 14:57, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your beliefs are irrelevant, multiple good sources have been linked showing Wars of the Three Kingdoms is a common name used by historians for this topic, while few use your proposed title. . . dave souza, talk 20:41, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The suggested title is not the common name, and suggests that this will turn into a list article. The Wars of the Roses was also a civil war covering both of the major British Isles. Dimadick (talk) 16:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. There is no academic consensus on a succinct name for the events in question, it is a matter of some controversy but the use of the current phrase is fairly common as a shorthand description by specialists. I believe it is not suitable as an encyclopedia entry title. What do you and other contributors think of my revised proposal?
Civil War & Other Conflicts In The Three Kingdoms (1638-52)
A good Wikipedia article title should have the five following characteristics and the current one fails on each count:WP:CRITERIA
  1. Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize.
  2. Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.
  3. Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. (See § Precision and disambiguation, below.)
  4. Concision – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects. (See § Concision, below.)
  5. Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, in the box above.
Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 21:38, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
* Oppose – We don't need to go through more options. "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" is a perfectly good title, as has been more than amply demonstrated above. I know you don't like it, and that your friends don't understand it, but as has been explained those are not relevent criteria when deciding whether to make a change. Continuing with this will only irritate people. Given the very clear direction in which this discussion has gone it would I suggest be in your personal interest as an editor of good standing, as well as in eveybody else's interests, if you'd accept that you have not managed to achieve consensus and that you should now turn to other editing interests. MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:00, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What I or my friends like or understand has nothing to do with whether this article "Has a great title so it can be linked to and found easily, and follows existing naming conventions." It does not meet the required WP criteria, principally because it means nothing to anybody but a small number of specialist historians (among which, as you pointed out earlier, you do not figure.) If my efforts to improve WP irritate people that is indeed unfortunate but I am troubled by your suggestion that my good standing as an editor may be put into question through trying to achieve a new consensus for a compromise solution. FWIW it may useful for you to focus on the substantive issues under discussion, your opening comment for example - "We don't need to go through more options. "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" is a perfectly good title, as has been more than amply demonstrated above." could benefit from some sort of substantive evidence. Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 15:06, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That was intended as a very gentle hint. But to speak more plainly, constantly arguing when you know you are irritating people will affect your good standing, as it repeats one of the behaviours that got you into some trouble last year at ANI when you were editing as User:Sirjohnperrot. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:31, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Per every patient response to this dogged exercise in urging an equine corpse to advance. Regarding CRITERIA, the existing title would seem to win hands down, particularly if it is accepted that "the use of the current phrase is fairly common as a shorthand description by specialists". Mutt Lunker (talk) 14:21, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I really do not appreciate being compared with a dead horse and arcane shorthand descriptions by a tiny subgroup of academics do not usually make useful titles for WP articles. Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 15:06, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are not the horse; it is your indefatigable attention that is upon it. Mutt Lunker (talk) 17:55, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See Wikipedia:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass . . dave souza, talk 20:41, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Lynch, Michael (1991). "16. Revolution and War". Scotland: A New History. London: Pimlico. pp. 270–276. ISBN 978-0-7126-9893-1.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Question for administrator[edit]

Is it possible for admin to substitute my proposed revised title as above on the article page banner? --Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 13:51, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm an admin, but I won't take any action here since I'm obviously WP:INVOLVED. Just noting that you can't change the proposal mid-discussion after people have commented on the original. I guess you could close thread as failed and start a new one with a new title, but you will start to wear people's patience, especially when it's clear that there is strong supoort fot the existing title. Girth Summit (blether) 15:02, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your claim that there is "strong support" for not improving an obviously problematic title as an admin puts the tin hat on it. OK, I get the message I'm out, a pity because WP is a valuable resource and deserves to be as accessible as possible. Horatius At The Bridge (talk) 15:24, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure how you can dismiss ten respondents to your proposal, all in opposition, as an indication of "strong support" for the rejection of your "improvements". Mutt Lunker (talk) 18:51, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I claim nothing 'as an admin' - I was explaining why I am not taking action on your request for an administrator - I'm involved, and so policy would prohibit me from responding to your request because I am involved. Adminship confers no authority in discussions of this nature; I'm claiming strong support for the existing title as an ordinary editor, based on the nine-to-one opposition to your proposal in the section above. If you meant it when you said 'I'm out', however, I'll be happy to close both threads - there's no problem with someone involved in a discussion closing it when the proposer withdraws, unless there is already substantial support for it. Girth Summit (blether) 16:00, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is nothing more or less than a request for an administrator to abuse their powers by either (at best) preempting the outcome of a discussion still in progress or (at worst) unilaterally overturning a consensus which has already formed. I am therefore declining the request. JBW (talk) 18:53, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that Horatius At The Bridge may not have intended the message above to mean what I read it as meaning. I read "substitute my proposed revised title as above on the article page banner" as meaning "substitute my proposed revised title, which is above and on the article page banner, in place of the existing article title", but it seems to have meant "substitute my proposed revised title, which I have suggested above in the course of discussion, in place of the proposed title in the article page banner". If my new reading is the correct one, I apologise for having responded on the basis of my earlier misreading of the request. However, I think a comment by Girth Summit above fully answers the request: "you can't change the proposal mid-discussion after people have commented on the original". Also, administrators have no more authority to make such changes. JBW (talk) 21:32, 17 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to rename this talk page to The Romance of the Atlantic Archipelago[edit]

Azkm (talk) 12:11, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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