English or British?

[fluffy]

Originally posted by red_jon
The people who live on the Isle of Man. It's very small and insignificant, but they think they are important

It probably has more significance than some much larger countries:

The Isle of Man is an island of 221 square miles with a population of 70,000 situated almost equidistant from England, Scotland and Ireland in the North Irish Sea. It is a UK Crown dependency and, by convention, the Crown is responsible for its defence, external relations and "ultimately the good government of the Island". Subject tothese conventional responsibilities, the Island has a high degree of autonomy with its own legal system, judiciary, government and parliament, Tynwald, which celebrated its millennium in 1979 and lays claim to be the oldest parliament in the world in continuous existence. It was pre-dated by the Althing, but the Icelandic parliament had a more chequered history.

http://www.tynwald.isle-of-man.org.im/process/

[Dimorier Maximus]

If you go with English, it needs to be:

Tribe: English
Adjective: English
Country: England

If you go with British, it needs to be:

Tribe: Britons
Adjective: British
Country: Britain (or Great Britain)

It should be noted that you should not mix the two in any way whatsoever. If you do, you will get many people arguing about what it should be.

For example, DO NOT do this:

Tribe: English
Adjective: English
Country: Britain

or

Tribe: English
Adjective: British
Country: England

So, my point is, pick one of the 2 ways proposed at the beginning of this post and stick with it. Don't mix it in any way with the other. Either way will work fine.

[Dauphin]

DM, if only Firaxis would listen yo your words of wisdom.

They also need to realise that Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh etc are not in England. Neither is a city called "Wales".

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Big Crunch
Neither is a city called "Wales".

Do they really have this?

[Chris Horscroft]

Hi Mishgolden,

I too find these threads fascinating. On the plague, there were many outbreaks in places across Europe (and no doubt elsewhere as well) at many times.

There was a nasty outbreak, I believe, in around 600 AD (OK, maybe a 100 years either way) which did significant damage to some quite important parts of the old world. It is suggested that volcanoes in the south pacific errupted with sufficient force to throw dust clouds into the atmosphere which had a measureable impact on global temperatures. The drop in sunlight was enough to allow the plague to spread out of its breeding grounds in central Africa along the ivory trade routes to Constantinople (which imported large amounts of ivory), and had a devastating impact on the city. The historical record apparently talks of 10s of thousands of deaths, which given the sizes of the cities at the time, is a terrible casualty rate.

The reason some parts of Europe get plague at some times, and others don't is based to an extent on trade patterns. Peoples tended to trade within the same racial/tribal groups, so fast mortality diseases (and diseases in general, for that matter), would spread in very uneven patterns, based on who traded with the infected communities. England and North Germany in the dark ages had considerable commerce, as the peoples were related closely. North France, from different tribal stock, did not trade so much with either English or Germanic peoples, and would not have suffered with them. But France and Wales/Cornwall had strong trade links, and plague from a French outbreak may have impacted Wales much more than it would have done on England.

Part of the reason the proto-English were able to dominate Great Britain may have to do with the assymetric impact of plague and other diseases on the other communities on that island.

Another thing to bear in mind about plague is that most people who got it, died. Those who got lucky may have had higher immunity, or else they may just have been lucky at the time. There was no lingering disease against which antibodies could develop. Then several hundred years go by, and another similar strain comes through and wipes out the population again.

I think the reason the 14th and 17th century plagues were so bad was because population numbers had increased so much that far greater numbers were exposed to it. Also, trade by then was much more widespread, and cared less for tribal/national boundaries, so the disease reached larger populations, more evenly.

Anyway. Enough.

I also think DM is right on how to name UK-based civilisations.

[KrazyHorse]

about the Wales thing.

"Canada? I don't even know what street that's on."

[Sarxis]

Very informative post Horscroft.

And about the volcanos and the drop in sunlight theory: I wonder is this has anything to do with why we call them the 'Dark Ages'? A longshot, and a bit contrived, but still....

[Lumpkin]

Sid Meier doesn't know his history

I have also noticed the English Queen of the British thing and found it very irritating. Shame on Firaxis.

I've also noticed a few people mix up the dates and facts about the creation of England and Britain so I thought I'd try and try and clear it up once and for all:

THE ORIGIN OF ENGLAND:

The Anglo-Saxons appeared in British history in the aftermath of the Roman Empire in Britain. In the early 5th century, faced with the complete collapse of Roman authority (due to endless civil wars and rebellions) in the province of Britannia and increased barbarian attacks, the Romano-British aristrocracy employed Germanic mercanaries (including Angles, Saxons and Jutes) to defend themselves. This worked a treat until 455 AD, when two Saxons brothers named Hengest and Horsa decided to rebel against the aristocracy and take power for themselves. For the next half a century, Saxons, Angles, Jutes and Frisians poured into the area of Britain now known as England, pushing what remained of the native British (or Celtic if you prefer) culture into the outskirts of the island. This was made much easier by the plague which wiped out much of the Romano-British population.

Although these tribes would gradually start to think of themselves as "the English" they spent the next four centuries fighting each other and the native British tribes over the biggest share of the island. England as a united political unit was only really formed at the end of the first millenium as Alfred the Great (king from 871 to 899) and his dynasty united the Anglo-Saxon tribes and retook England from the invading Danish.

England was later partially invaded by the Norwegians (919 - 954), conquered by the Danish (1016 - 1066) and conquered again by the Normans (1066). After that it was England which did most of the conquering. These sucessive invasions by Danes, Norwegians and Normans all left big cultural and genetic imprints on the country but nevertheless it is the Anglo-Saxons who can be credited with establishing the cultural base of England.

Incidentally it was because of the Norman invasion that England has spent most of its history quarrelling with France. As a descendant of the Duke of Normandy, the king of England had a powerful claim to French lands while the French king thought that the English king, as the duke of Normandy, was his feudal inferior and owed him loyalty and obedience. The title "King of France" was only dropped by the King of England in the mid nineteenth century!


THE ORIGIN OF GREAT BRITAIN

In 1283 Edward I accomplished the first phase of the union of the island when he annexed Wales. However, for a long time Wales was considered to be a colony and only became an integral part of the country in 1536 the Tudor Dynasty (which had Welsh origins) united it with England and it achieved representation in parliament. In theory Wales is a principality with the Prince of Wales as its ruler; but in reality the title Prince of Wales has only been symbolic and whoever ruled England ruled Wales too. So after 1536, England and Wales should be considered as one entity.

The English tried to invade Scotland too a few times but were always unsucessful. However in 1603, Queen Elizabeth I of England (NOT Britain as Firaxis seem to think) died and her cousin King James VI of Scotland became James I of England as well. This was when the term "Great Britain" first became used. However, although King James was very eager to fully unite the two countries, his subjects were not so keen and they each retained seperate governments.

In 1707, the Scottish parliament (demoralised by the complete failure of their colonial ambitions and eager to share in English prosperity) voted to unite the governments of England and Scotland, thus formally creating a brand new country called Great Britain. The two peoples remained very suspicious of each other however and it would be a good half-century before inter-marriage (particularly amongst the aristocracy) and commerce began to result in the emergence of genuine Britons.

In 1801, Ireland (hitherto essentially a colony) was united with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. However, the division between the Protestant Anglo-Scottish elites of Ireland and the native Catholics and the memory of a long history of brutal conflict meant that it was not long before the Irish were demanding independence. In 1922, the 26 Catholic-majority counties of Ireland became an independant state while the six protestant-majority countries stayed with Britain to form the present country known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Hopefully that clears it all up!

As for what all this means for Civ 3, I agree that it makes absolutely no sense to have Queen Elizabeth I of English ruling Britain. Elizabeth was never queen of Britain (if I remember my history classes right, the Scots did offer her the crown after they ousted their own queen, she refused).

It is not fair to use English and British as interchangeable terms because a look at famous names in British history show a great many Scots, Welsh and Irish. The statistics also show that the Scots in particular played a disproportionately active part in the British Empire.

It would have made sense for Firaxis to use the British rather than the English as their civilization as the British that forged the biggest empire the world has ever seen and was the front-runner in commerce, science and culture for the majority of it's existence. England was only a medium-sized European kingdom that was usally overshadowed by France and Spain. They should have used Queen Victoria since, although by the time of her reign the monarch was only a symbol, she epitomized Britain at the time of its greatest power.

However, since they have already done the art for Elizabeth I think its highly unlikely that Firaxis will actually do any of this so I would advise them to simply change "Britain" to "England". I'm sure it would be very simple to do but I doubt if they have read this thread so I would be very surprised if they do.

[red_jon]

If Firaxis don't carefully research things, the city lists could end up like this-


English


London
Manchester
York
Wales
Glasgow
Northern Ireland
Upper S****horpshire

Zulus

Zululand
Zulucity
Zuluplace
Africa

French

Paris
Berlin
Bordeaux
Moscow
Beijing


And for the chinese and japanese, they'll have random oriental words, hoping no-one will notice

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by red_jon
If Firaxis don't carefully research things, the city lists could end up like this-
French
Paris

Paris is in Texas, like Firaxis would do something as stupid as make Paris the capital of France.