Talk:United Kingdom/Catalogs/Political subdivisions and dependencies

The {{subpages}} template is designed to be used within article clusters and their related pages.
However, it cannot function on sub-subpage talk pages..Please continue discussion at Talk:United Kingdom, or return to the Political subdivisions and dependencies subsubpage.

Historical subdivisions

Perhaps this article should list the subdivisions of each of the four constituent kingdoms? This gets complicated - England is historically divided into counties; there are modern adminstrative counties plus London, which don't share the same borders, and there are the nine regions, which I think are clusters of the adminstrative counties. The historical counties have apparently never been abolished, so they should be listed, if only to preserve the glory that was Rutland. Anthony Argyriou 20:01, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

"Perhaps this article should list the subdivisions of each of the four constituent kingdoms?" - Using a tier system so that the articles mirror the structure of the country they are describing. This article breaks the UK down into one level of control below central government. Technically that's Scotland, Wales, 9 Regions and 6 counties since there is no England and (currently) no Northern Ireland as administrative subdivisions. But I'm willing to pretend England and NI exist for the moment.

I conceive of four more articles called something like Regions of England, Council Areas of Scotland, Counties of Wales and Counties of Northern Ireland where the second tier of government can be broken down and described. In Scotland, there's not much smaller than Council Areas, but in England you would break the 9 Regions down into Counties and other divisions as required.

"The historical counties have apparently never been abolished" - There is a difference between abolished and used and then used for what purpose? Many historical boundaries are only used ceremonially. I feel for the Gazetteer we should stick to present divisions. Another article could deal with historical divisions of England. Such a history article would be quite interesting, I could write the one for Scotland but not the English or Irish one. However, to mix the historical and the present together would probably only serve to confuse people who are not form the UK and don't understand our Country's structure.

I should also mention that I have listed this by Administrative divisions. The purpose is simply to make a Gazetteer that covers all of the UK. The a Gazetteer for the whole of England. It's not to list all the combinations of possible ways to split up the country, but rather to provide a tool to research the structure and geography of the country as it is now. There are other ways to divide the country that may justify their own articles such as UK parliament Constituencies or police division areas and so on.

I'd also like to start on a Gazetteer of Cities of the United Kingdom. Though, I don't think CZ is ready yet to go as deep as towns and villages (yet). - Derek Harkness 20:53, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Guernsey

You might want to add about 1780 to your population figure for the Bailiwick of Guernsey since your island figure will exclude about 630 for Sark and about 1150 for Alderney. Wahib Frank 15:19, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Done so, but you may want to check the figures and sources. The numbers I found are different form your numbers. I used the gov.gg sites, if you know a better source, then please point us to it. Derek Harkness 20:34, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

I know the figure for Sark via one of the Church wardens for St Peters Anglican church there - 600 or 620 is really here nor there. Alderney is more problematic for two reasons: there's a danger of including people twice since many people also have a residence in Guernsey, also because air access is available (unlike Sark) many tax exiles "pretend" to be on Alderney but are not really resident there in the usual meaning of the world. Since your articles deal with the official figures, I think they'll do nicely until you can update the Guernsey island figure.Wahib Frank 06:33, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

Dates of Union

The dates were recently altered and I disagree with the current dates for the following reasons.

Crown of Ireland Act 1542 didn't alter the ownership, or powers of the English King over Ireland. Nor did it mark a union of Ireland to England. Rather it changed the title of the King within Ireland. Since the 12th Century, Ireland had been subject to the rule of the English King (to varying degrees).

The date 927 for England implies that the other countries joined England in a biased relationship. Why list the date that England unified into one body but not list the date of Scotland unifying into a single Kingdom. Either we list when the individual countries formed themselves or when the counties ceased to be individual to form the United Kingdom. We should not do half of one and some of the other.

The Statute of Rhuddlan didn't mark a union either. This set down the laws for Wales. The union was enacted by Edward I and a big army several years prior to this Statute. As for the Statute of Rhuddlan, this was harmonising the fractured legal system within wales rather than to join Wales to England as the people of the time saw Wales as part of England. In the converse, one of the effects of the bill was to set in place the modern borders that mark the distinction between where Wales stops and England begins.

Aside from the personal unions of crowns and ignoring the wars of Independence in the 13th Century and the brief period under Cromwell's commonwealth I think there are only two dates that are significant of the UK article. The 1707 union that formed the United Kingdom and the 1801 union that added Ireland and possibly the 1921 date of Ireland dividing into North and South. The other histories can be dealt with in detail on the Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales pages as the UK Derek Harkness 07:29, 17 August 2007 (CDT)

I see your point, though I'm not entirely certain I agree. I note that you don't disagree with the Laws In Wales Act date as a date of union - I interpret those acts as making Wales an integral part of the Kingdom of England, not just a nation ruled by the King of England. The Statute of Rhuddlan made legal the status of the King of England as the King of Wales, just as the Personal Union did for Ireland in 1541 and the Union of the Crowns did in 1603. If you take the stricter point of view that the date of union is the date of accession to the United Kingdom, then the entries for England, Scotland, and Wales should be 1707, with Ireland in 1801. If that's all the data which that column should contain, then it's almost redundant - the note about Ireland joining in 1801 could be added as a note outside the table, which could also explain the Union with all Ireland and the separation of southern Ireland in 1921. You are right that it's unbalanced to show the unification of England without showing the unification of Scotland, or Wales, or Ireland. My preferred solution would be to add more data, either to the table, or to take out that column entirely, and explain briefly the legal evolution of all four countriesin a text paragraph below the table. Anthony Argyriou 17:29, 17 August 2007 (CDT)

Suggested text:

The Kingdom of England arose from the union of several smaller kingdoms in its territory in 927. The crown passed to the Duke of Normandy who laid claim to the crown and successfully defeated other claimants in 1066; the remains of the Duchy of Normandy are still Crown Dependencies. The Kingdom of Scotland was largely united by 12xx, with the Earldom of Orkney passing to the Scottish Crown in 1471. Wales never fully united prior to its conquest by Edward I of England, who was established as King in Wales by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284. The Laws in Wales Acts in 1541 made Wales legally an integral part of the Kingdom of England. On the death of Queen Elizabeth of England in 1603, the throne of England passed to James VI of Scotland, who became known as James I & VI. The Union of the Crowns was a personal union for the next 104 years, until the Act of Union of 1707 which created the United Kingdom.

Ireland had a complex history, including multiple invasions by England, and various levels of control by the English. In 1541, King Henry VIII of England declared the English holdings in Ireland to constitute the "Kingdom of Ireland", with Henry as its King. Effective control over Ireland was not achieved until half a century later, and was repeatedly challenged. In 1801, Ireland was added to the United Kindom by the Act of Union of 1801. In 1922, the bulk of Ireland was separated from the United Kingdom under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, with only Northern Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom.

Anthony Argyriou 18:37, 17 August 2007 (CDT)

I think it's better when written in prose like this as you can explain things better. This page, assuming the subpages proposal goes through, will probably become a subpage of the United Kingdom. So I suggest you put the above text into the history section of that page (which I notice is rather brief and lacking detail at present) And/Or that you start a new article on the history of the Union which would allow us to expand the topic and cover it in a bit more depth.

I agree that if the Union dates column deals with only the 1707 and 1801 dates it does become rather redundant. It always was. That column only exists because I wrote the U.S. States and Territories at the same time as this one and copied the table structure so copied the Union column too. Derek Harkness 23:03, 17 August 2007 (CDT)