Talk:Imperial Preference

Pub bores?

the incompetence and tactless manner of British Dominions Secretary J. H. Thomas so alienated Dominion prime ministers that an opportunity was missed. (What this opportunity would have led to is anyone's guess.)[citation needed]

I think it would be reasonable to remove this sort of pub-bore comment from the article. NotYourFathersOldsmobile (talk) 12:53, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree, and have removed it. This is basically editorialising, not in keeping with NPOV. Robofish (talk) 22:35, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

An AfD candidate?

..if only because an orphan stub without citations and critical historical context. Juan Riley (talk) 23:12, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Just Plain Wrong

Look Here

and Here

and here

Imperial Preference in the British Empire for those with access to JSTOR

All our little gadgets like torches and suchlike were marked "Empire Made" which told us they were made in Hong Kong.

I surely must be missing something here. Was it written from, say, a Kenyan point of view? Eddaido (talk) 05:39, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Page title

I am not sure whether this page should be called Imperial Preference or Colonial Preference. Both are common in sources and are often used interchangably. Lollipoplollipoplollipop (talk) 09:46, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Without evidence I would suggest Imperial Preference is specifically British (when English words are used) and colonial preference is the general name for the practice (not specific to a country) and "refers to the lowering of tariffs between a (or any) colony and her suzerain" —from Google. Eddaido (talk) 10:13, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

So this article is about the practice in the former British Empire and should be subsidiary to the article named Colonial Preference Eddaido (talk) 10:15, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Whilst I think that viewpoint is appealing and I would not be against separating British and non-British forms of preferences, it is not supported in sources. For example, Britannica says Imperial Preference applies to all empires, not just the British. But globalsecurity suggests that Imperial Preference was just the British Empire. Hansard, the UK's parliamentary records, has multiple debates of both "Colonial Preference" and "Imperial Preference" The source currently used in this article to list other countries with preference systems, does not, in fact, use the term colonial preference or imperial preference to describe them, just calling it "preference".

All this, to me, heavily implies the terms "Colonial Preference" and "Imperial Preference" are interchangable. And unless we find a source that states the two are definitely different, I don't think Wikipedia should make the distinction between them.

I've reverted Colonial preference back to being its own page again, for now, but I do not currently believe it should remain its own page. Lollipoplollipoplollipop (talk) 09:32, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for discussing this matter. We do not agree. This is from the current online Oxford English Dictionary (you seem to refer to only US sources)

• • "imperial preference n. now historical a system of tariff concessions granted by members of the British Empire or (in later use) the British Commonwealth to one another.

1895 E. Burgis Perils to Brit. Trade xx. 248 Foreign States which have been partially exploited under our Free Trade policy are..under a policy of wise Protection and Imperial preference on our part, dependent upon the British market for the consumption of their vast surplusses.

1922 Encycl. Brit. XXX. 1016/2 At the end of April [1917] Mr. Bonar Law announced..that the Imperial War Cabinet had accepted the principle of Imperial Preference.

1958 Listener 18 Sept. 407/2 Both [sc. Australia and New Zealand] have sought to give foreign suppliers a better competitive position in their own markets by reducing imperial preferences to oil the wheels of reciprocity.

2000 I. Clark Governance, State Regulation, & Industr. Relations i. 8 A series of agreements running from the 1941 Atlantic Charter..to the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement..committed the UK to ending preferential trade arrangements such as Imperial Preference."

Imperial preference is the proper name for the British case. Were there named empires after the first world war aside from the British? I'd have thought any other empires will have had their own names for their arrangements and in their own language. I believe for example that France made many of its current remote (certainly in the Pacific and Caribbean) colonial territories part of metropolitan France to make them part of the EU but maybe that manages to escape the category altogether.

It seems to me that the two names are looking at the same subject from opposing ends. I'm not an academic. Imperial preference (relating to the British Empire only) is the name familiar to me, colonial preference is just the name for the giving of preference to colonies and because Imperial preference is taken - see the OED - in this English speaking encyclopedia Colonial preference has to be the category for everyone else. Eddaido (talk) 10:14, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The sources you have provided do indeed prove that "Imperial preference" was used in reference to Britain, but your sources do not support that "colonial preference" is different from "Imperial preference", which this discussion should hope to decide, and which determines whether there should be two articles or one. I did not refer to only US sources, both Britannica and Hansard (UK cited here, but also Australian) imply Colonial Preference and Imperial Preference are used interchangably. I cannot see the online Oxford English Dictionary, but I wonder what it has under "Colonial Preference", and if it makes a distinction between the two terms. If other Empires (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, American, Japanese) had their own words for colonial preference then that is not something I have found in my research, though that area of the article needs expansion. Lollipoplollipoplollipop (talk) 11:29, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Colonial preference (the article in WP) differs from Imperial preference inso far as Imperial preference is used in English as the name for the arrangement inside the English empire. The other empires you list will have had their own names for their arrangements which may or may not translate to imperial preference. Imperial preference is the proper name for the British arrangement. English speaking "America" has / had an empire but does not use that name for it. Britannica has not been a British publication for more than a century. OED has an American edition for sale in USA but I quoted from the parent. The real OED has no entry for colonial preference.

There must have been arrangements of this nature almost since the beginning of taxes. Why not cover your concerns by adding to the foot of the Imperial preference article about the British arrangement a note about similar 20th century arrangements in other country groupings or empires. Just leave Imperial preference the article primarily about the common use of the words — for the British arrangement. Eddaido (talk) 21:03, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Given that this is a form of arrangement common to empires and hegemonies, It would obviously make better sense to keep a single, wide-ranging article rather than burden the reader with multiple articles which, essentially, repeat identical boilerplate, with only minor details differing. Qwirkle (talk) 22:34, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I can't say I've ever seen Imperial Preference used to refer to anything other than the British Empire phenomenon, where it is often used interchangeably with tariff reform (a bad redirect), the Chamberlainite policy. I dare say other imperial entities had some sort of protectionism or preference of their own, and I see no reason not to have articles about those. I do not feel that the current title, Imperial Preference, should be hi-jacked for those. DuncanHill (talk) 17:57, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

References