Humanities desk
< July 18	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 20 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 19

What was the first civilization to reach a 50/50 urban/rural split?

When did it happen? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:43, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on your definition of a "civilization". It happened around WW1 in the United States[1]... AnonMoos (talk) 05:03, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yep--but with Massachusetts and Rhode Island becoming urban-majority much earlier--specifically sometime between 1841 and 1850. Indeed, please take a look at this Wikipedia article (which, for the record, I myself previously created): Urbanization in the United States. Futurist110 (talk) 23:51, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And recent discoveries in paleontology have reshaped some ideas about Neolithic civilization. The oldest discovered structures at Göbekli Tepe appear to predate domestication of crops. If true, they were built by hunter-gatherers, which was previously thought impossible. So were they urban or rural? --47.146.63.87 (talk) 07:12, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, would they be considered urban by a typical 2018 country's definition? Or a typical very low industrialization or high industrialization country (i.e. US/non-Eastern Europe/Aus/NZ/Singapore/Japan/Canada/Israel). Interestingly, in the US certain kinds of remote "settlements" can never be urban even if they have enough people. (i.e. prisons). I haven't read the 2010 rules to see if this has changed since the 2000 Census. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:35, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

According to Urbanization, probably no earlier than the late 19th Century CE. "In England and Wales, the proportion of the population living in cities with more than 20,000 people jumped from 17% in 1801 to 54% in 1891." There is note in that article to a recent Yale University study that looks to directly address the OP's question as well. --Jayron 32 11:50, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
We also have to define “Urban” and “Rural”... for example, was the Pueblo civilization urban? Blueboar (talk) 00:33, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why wasn't the compromise of giving up Catholic-majority parts of Northern Ireland more seriously considered?

Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:23, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See File:Map of predominant national identity in the 2011 census in Northern Ireland.png - good luck sorting that one out. Besides the difficulty of getting agreement to such a contentious scheme (imagine for example, a Texan being told that his home town was being transferred to Mexico), it might not be in the interests of the Nationalist community in the long run; see 'Catholic majority possible' in NI by 2021. So playing the long game might yield the cherished dream of a united Ireland, whereas stripping away Nationalist voters would just prolong Loyalist hegemony. Alansplodge (talk) 17:25, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A bit like the 40s partition of the Subcontinent where a contiguous and not too gerrymandered border can only minimize population in the "wrong country" no matter what they try? Now I'm wondering why so many British people wanted to live in those deep patches but not intermediate depth into Ulster. And I didn't know about the demographic game theory thing, perhaps most British and Irish people knew but not me. Was there ever "demographic war", trying to out-reproduce and out-immigrate the competition? (with sympathizers from each island moving to the Northern part of Ireland to try to outvote the contemporary majority or prevent that). That seems more humane than paramilitaries and bombings. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:32, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Are you referring to the Partition of India here? Futurist110 (talk) 23:49, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:42, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Are we talking about 1914? 1970s?--Wehwalt (talk) 18:23, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Since giving back Southern Ireland became seriously considered. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:32, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Britain nearly came to civil war with no assurance of the army's loyalty in 1914 as it is. I think if Asquith had pushed such a plan (which probably could not have been enacted until 1916 under the Parliament Act 1911), violence would have broken out. Not a bad thing, necessarily, it might have derailed the July Crisis.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:46, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Or World War I would have still broken out on schedule, but Germany would have won this war as a result of British--and U.S.--neutrality. Futurist110 (talk) 22:19, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The demographic map is only partially relevant as the population would have moved quite a bit if it was split differently. However Northern Ireland would have just been a rump looking silly if that had been done, they wanted a viable sized country. It hasn't worked out because the unionists keep emphasizing their British identity rather than a Northern Ireland one, which means they are more likely to leave. Dmcq (talk) 19:07, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for my previous answer, I picked up the wrong end of the stick. The search for ‘statutory Ulster' describes the initial conception of a Northern Irish state during the Home Rule Bill crisis. Alansplodge (talk) 20:38, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC, Gibraltar remains a British possession because a referendum was held and a majority of the population voted for it. In the case of Ireland, about 1922 there was a referendum, 26 counties voted for independence and six voted for union. These six counties became Northern Ireland. A few years ago there was another referendum and all six counties again voted for union, which is why they are still part of the United Kingdom. 86.133.26.146 (talk) 13:15, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that you're recalling entirely correctly; there wasn't a referendum in 1922, instead an Irish Boundary Commission was appointed under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. However, the Irish delegation were (by their account at least) threatened with the resumption of war if they failed to agree to partition. The British for their part thought that allowing an all-Ireland republic would result in an armed Protestant uprising and lacked Parliamentary backing for such a move anyway. Although an Ulster composed of the four counties which had a clear Protestant majority had been suggested in 1914, in the end, a six county province including the Catholic-majority counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone was demanded; the Nationalists had either to agree, or walk away without recognition of the Republic and face renewed hostilities. Many Irish people thought that they should have done just that, resulting in the Irish Civil War.

You are correct that there was a Northern Ireland border poll, 1973, which according to Referendums in the United Kingdom was the first referendum ever in the UK. It was boycotted by the Nationalist community (only 1% voted to leave the Union) but the end result would have been the same if they hadn't. The vote was counted across the whole province, rather than on a county-by-county basis; there was no option for one or two counties to opt out. Alansplodge (talk) 16:54, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The trouble was mainly catholics being second class citizens in their own land which the Good Friday Agreement would right if it was actually being implemented, it is rather disquieting seeing the Knesset declaring itself a Jewish Parliament for a Jewish People. Dmcq (talk) 17:46, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Were no county by county results released? I looked at the article earlier before your comment and came to the same conclusion as you (i.e. although there was a boycott, since a majority of the electorate voted to remain anyway, it would have been same regardless ignoring the possibility of people voting differently) but couldn't find any info on whether the IP was likely correct that this applied to all counties. Nil Einne (talk) 18:06, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Alansplodge has given about as much as there is I believe. Going by the elections before partition only four counties would have been in Northern Ireland. In 1973 the votes were all counted at a central place to avoid giving any figures for individual counties. Dmcq (talk) 18:17, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A correction to my previous post - a 6-county Northern Ireland and a 26-county Southern Ireland were established by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 as an intended prelude to home rule within the UK. This established the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1921; it's southern counterpart never came to pass due to the Irish War of Independence. Alansplodge (talk) 18:32, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification, the original response while useful wasn't clear on the point of whether county by count results were simply considered irrelevant or not released. To give a simple example, the Brexit referendum was presented as a clear in or out referendum for the whole of UK albeit without total clarity on what that would mean other than article 50, wasn't counted in that way, which is one of the reasons why you now get people saying certain regions should remain in the EU. And this isn't uncommon in stuff like that. And the way election counting often happens means that even if there is no official results for sub-entities, it's often possible for there to be unofficial results at lower levels if there are sufficient observers willing to release them. Nil Einne (talk) 07:43, 21 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well you can look at this republican history about it [2] which probably isn't too far off as far on this is concerned. Dmcq (talk) 09:11, 21 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)All too true. When the London Borough of Hackney proposed to sell off six housing estates at the turn of the century it suckered the residents into co-operating by giving a solemn promise that any estate which voted "no" would not be privatised. One estate saw through the deception, organised its own ballot and was able to escape. This despite the Council saying that no repairs would be carried out unless the residents agreed. They then attempted to justify their action in a leaflet headed "Are we holding a gun to your heads? - No, of course not." The Council sent a polling organisation round another estate to ascertain residents' wishes but the one question they did not ask was "Do you want this estate to be privatised or not?" They rejected the decisive "no" in a poll conducted by the estate TA (they wanted to be shot of it because they suspected it was in such poor condition that it would have to be demolished) as windowpanes crashed into stairwells narrowly missing decapitating children, promising that the residents' wishes would be respected in the ballot when it came. Come the ballot, the votes were all taken from the estates to a central location, the boxes were opened and the votes mixed in together before counting, and after the count the Council announced it could not state which estates were in favour because it didn't know. 151.227.20.35 (talk) 09:30, 21 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The majority in Northern Ireland do want to stay in the UK, and that includes at least 40% of the catholics and probably a lot more. And whatever about identifying as British unionists have just as much right to their views and a decent life in Northern Ireland as nationalists. There is no good peace if a majority dictates everything for a large minority - and that would still be true even if nationalists get to be a majority. Dmcq (talk) 10:31, 21 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What the article says is that the 1975 vote was the first ever national referendum in the U K. Prior to that (don't quote me on this) there were referenda across Wales on whether the public houses should open on Sundays. If a county voted to be "dry" it was subjected to further referenda every seven years until the Sunday drinkers got the result they wanted. 86.133.26.146 (talk) 10:51, 21 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's true, the Sunday Closing (Wales) Act 1881 article says: "The Act was repealed through the Licensing Act 1961, which allowed local authorities in Wales to hold polls of their residents on the continuation of the ban [on Sunday opening]".

Whether a local authority poll counts as a referendum is another matter; our UK referendums article says: "Referendums have been held in local areas in England, Wales and Scotland since 1913". "National" is a difficult word to define in British terms; the 1973 NI border vote was certainly national in respect of the Home Nations. Alansplodge (talk) 13:35, 21 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Part of the confusion is because people think that Ireland was partitioned in 1921 on a religious basis. It wasn't. The Unionist Party demanded 6 counties, and that is what they got. If it were partitioned on religious grounds, Fermanagh and Londonderry would currently be in the Republic of Ireland. Therefore, there is no precedent to re-partition on religious grounds.

Even if that happened, only two counties would be left in Northern Ireland (Down & Antrim). Presuming, of course, that all nationalists voted to become part of the Republic of Ireland. Belfast complicates the matter, because it has a nationalist majority. 146.90.121.194 (talk) 20:52, 24 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Have a read of Kipling's poem Ulster about the Ulster Covenant and see if it was about religion or not. Dmcq (talk) 22:35, 24 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See Irish Boundary Commission. Basically, a boundary commission to adjust the border was part of the treaty that partitioned Ireland, but so was making the Irish Free State (as it was then known) liable for a portion of the UK national debt. The boundary commission did prepare a report that recommended transferring parts of Northern Ireland to the Free State and parts of County Donegal to Northern Ireland, but it was suppressed. The government of the Free State didn't think it gave them enough land, and felt that agreeing to it would make partition more permanent and harder to challenge in the future, and they agreed to let it slide in exchange for the debt being forgiven. --Nicknack009 (talk) 22:53, 24 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes they both though it best to sweep the matter under the carpet and it saved the Irish Free State some money after the civil war. The final stoppage of various monies being given to Britain wasn't until the Anglo-Irish Trade War which also resulted in the ending of the agreement about the Treaty Ports (Ireland) in 1938. I think that trade war is an interesting illustration of how ineffective hardship from economic sanctions can be. Dmcq (talk) 11:08, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]