Talk:War of Independence

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Contents 1 Earlier discussion 2 Spanish War of Independence 3 Boer Wars 4 relationship to article on wars of national liberation

[edit] Earlier discussion

An alternate name for the American Revolutionary War.

Hang on, don't some other countries also have a 'War of Independence'? e.g. Israel? If you said American War of Independence, okay; but to call it the War of Independence is just U.S.-centric -- SJK

Seconded. And if there were only one sense of the term (there's not), this would be better as a #REDIRECT. Perhaps we should use this one as a disambiguating page. Koyaanis Qatsi, Friday, April 5, 2002

Agreed. --maveric149, Friday, April 5, 2002

The definition (to which I agree) does not seem to span all the wars subsequently named, especially Turkey and Israel seem to lack a definite former overruling country. But, this pages of course serves also as a disambiguation page, and thus this is a not easily solved problem. Renke 00:51, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish War of Independence

I've added a link to The Spanish War of Indepencence (as it is known in Spain) or Peninsular War --Loren 00:33, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Boer Wars

I have removed the references to the two Boer Wars. While I recognize that the conflicts are referred to as a war of independence among many Afrikaners, the conflicts do not meet the criteria at the top of the article which states: "If a new state is successfully established, the conflict is subsequently known as a war of independence." At the end of the Boer conflicts, two independent republics were vanquished. I would not object to restoring the Boer wars to this list, but first the criteria ought to be amended. Skeezix1000 14:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] relationship to article on wars of national liberation

A merge with Wars of national liberation should be considered. The two articles mostly list the same wars; the definitions of the two types of wars broadly overlap. The situation is complicated slightly by the fact that "War of Independence" is a proper name, and this page acts as a disambiguation page for that name, whereas "war of national liberation" is a concept that has an article explaining it. That the two articles have evolved largely without knowledge of each other is suggested by the fact that they didn't contain "See also" links to each other (which I've added) and that the German article for de:Unabhängigkeitskrieg was cross-linked to Wars of national liberation, despite the German word being an exact translation of War of Independence. So, I'm not sure what the best solution is, I just wanted to point out the existence of the two largely parallel articles. Joriki 09:13, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It could be considered, in particular seeing that this article is rather a List of wars of independence than something else. However, the term clearly design different realities, as wars of independence were waged before the 20th century, while national liberation wars usually refers to decolonization. While you could certainly argue, with much legitimacy, that all wars of independence were part of Decolonization, this period usually refers to post-WWII. All in all, the conceptual difference is very slight, not to say non-existent; it is more a question about popular habit of naming "wars of national liberation" "colonial wars" (which, in this case, I also propose to merge; see Talk:Wars of national liberation#Merge). We could furthermore argue that "national liberation" refers to the nation, and therefore to nationalism, a 19th & 20th century phenomenon (at least if you endorse Benedict Anderson & others historians' thesis). While "independence" only refers to a state, not necessarily to a nation. As you see, you could say this is bickering. I don't think it is, but I don't think either that this debate is very important for Wikipedia, at least in the present, so, for practical purposes, I will endorse your proposal if you're keen on it. But I think it is first more important to merge together colonial wars and wars of national liberation. Tazmaniacs 19:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

This article should not be a list of wars of independece but a list of wars called "xxx War of Independence" in English and not like the Boer wars in Afrikaners or the Peninsular War in Spanish --Philip Baird Shearer 19:36, 12 May 2007 (UTC)