Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 December 31

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December 31

Anti-American Revolution

Are there any movies, television show or books which portrays the American Revolution in a negative light and the British in a positive light?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 03:54, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

The most recent bestseller that comes to mind is The Book of Negroes (novel) and its associated miniseries. The term you may want to search for is "Loyalist"; we have plenty of articles about them. Here's "the first book-length investigation of the literature written by loyalists during the revolutionary period" (review Cambridge 2014, of book Oxford 2013). Carbon Caryatid (talk) 13:33, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

The Sergeant Lamb novels by Robert Graves show the American Revolution from the point of view of a British soldier serving in that war. Naturally, he's none too sympathetic to the American cause. --Antiquary (talk) 17:44, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

It looks like The Fort by Bernard Cornwell and several of Kenneth Roberts' novels might also fit the bill, but I've read none of them and can't say for sure. --Antiquary (talk) 18:32, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

The Scarlet Coat (1955) has the British officer John André as hero. Tevildo (talk) 19:30, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

"Those Damned Rebels: The American Revolution As Seen Through British Eyes" by Michael Pearson is a historical account of the American Revolution that I found informative.--Wikimedes (talk) 22:01, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

One of the early Fox books by Adam Hardy (a pen name for Kenneth Bulmer) portraits part of the revolutionary war through the eyes of a member of the British Navy. Sorry, I only inherited the German editions, and even those are 600 km away, so no details. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:56, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Benjamin Grierson

After the Civil War his only pedigree or credentials was attacking inocent children. Not only have I never found that line to be true but it is contrary to the rest of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quillrun (talk • contribs) 04:10, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

There was a bunch of vandalism by an anonymous IP — I've reverted to the last good version. Thank you for reporting this here! NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 04:14, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

political violence and not terrorism

(Originally posted and moved from here by me. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:25, 31 December 2016 (UTC))

Hi I am a new user as well. My question is why is this defined as political violence and not terrorism? Isn't political violence by definition terrorism?

ter·ror·ism

ˈterəˌrizəm/Submit

noun

the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

Source:https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=definition%20terrorism&oq=definition%20terrorism&rlz=1CAASUA_enUS719US719&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.3895j0j7 --Wimp35 (talk) 18:29, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Our Terrorism article discusses the difficulty of defining the word - there is no clear answer. Alansplodge (talk) 18:40, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Or perhaps even more specific, see Definitions of terrorism. Note the plural - there is no universal definition. Eliyohub (talk) 20:24, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Possibly related... if considering referring to someone in a Wikipedia article as a terrorist, see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch#Contentious_labels Eliyohub (talk) 22:27, 4 January 2017 (UTC)