Talk:Universal monarchy

Content

This article has again reverted to a piece about one aspect of Britain's historical foreign policy. It concerns itself with how Britain reacted to one or two instance of attempts at Universal Monarchy, rather than actually being about the subject itself. It reads as if from a point of view, and notably makes no reference to how the subject applied in Britain itself (the British Empire). The article as current is therefore misleading.

One would expect an article on Universal Monarchy to be about the subject, to consider its theory and application around the world, and not just in western continental Europe.

--Utinomen (talk) 08:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Have re-written the article to bring it back to the subject in question. Needs further editing, particularly on the concept in Asia.

If editors want an article on "English foreign policy fears" then they should create one. --Utinomen (talk) 19:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

dubious

This article suffers from severe NPOV issues, and sections of it read in an unencyclopedic manner. I focus below on two specific examples, but the issue is more widespread than that.

The statement: "Napoleon came close to creating something akin to a Universal Monarchy" is unsupported. While he certainly attempted to establish dominance over the continent, a Universal Monarchy is a very specific goal, and so it could not be called a Universal Monarchy unless it is shown that he took his actions with the conscious goal of creating a Universal Monarchy (with all the ideological baggage that it implies, as opposed to just a powerful empire)

The statement that "The last attempt to create a European Universal Monarchy was that attempted by Imperial Germany in World War I" is ridiculous and also seemingly unsupported. A brief look at the citations shows that they appear to argue that Germany planned to become a dominant world power by instigating a war. This does not seem to imply an attempt at creating a Universal Monarchy, which is a fairly specific concept that extends beyond just a dominant Empire. Furthermore, even if the claim that this constitutes an attempt at Universal Monarchy is accepted, the statement that Imperial Germany was the *last* to make the attempt is entirely unfounded, and quite biased. Surely a similar argument could be applied to any one of the imperialist or expansionist powers of 20th century Europe?

While I personally find some of the parallels drawn here to be interesting, they ultimately seem to be composed of opinionated and independent research. They have no business being stated in so authoritative a tone, and would be better placed somewhere outside of Wikipedia.

Aside from the {{dubious}} tag I have added, I leave the article as it is, as I am not knowledgeable enough on the topic to make the constructive and significant edits necessary to resolve this issue. Gravensilv (talk) 03:01, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

I independently came to the same conclusion. There appears to be non-neutral points of view being expounded throughout the article, and there are issues with the manner of expression and grammar. Nonetheless, I think there is a significant core of interesting encyclopaedic content that should be retained. I have added banners to the article to encourage knowledgable editors to resolve these issues, and in the meantime warn readers. Ypna (talk) 00:09, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Pacifism

Subchapter "Pacifism" was deleted from "Features" of universal monarchies for the following reasons: "Information was blatantly wrong, there were numerous heroic epics in Chinese history and no universal monarchy is known for its pacifism."

The absence of Chinese heroic epic was noted by Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics) and ever since:

• Maurice Bowra (1962). Heroic Poetry, (London: Macmillan), p 13-14.
• Ernst Robert Curtius (1967). European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, (Princeton), p 167.
• Mari Chan, (1978). "Heroic poems and European epic," Comparative Literature, vol 26 (2): p 142-145.
• Saussy, Huan (2020). "The Absent epic: China and the politics of narrative," (Berlin: American Academy), https://www.americanacademy.de/the-absent-epic/

Are all of them "blatantly wrong"?

Perhaps, no universal monarchy is known for its pacifism to the person who deleted the chapter, but the Roman universal monarchy is known for Pax Romana and Ara Pacis Augustae; the Chinese for Pax Sinica and Twelve Metal Colossi. Universal monarchies dominate this list and the list in Pax imperia. Res Gestae, Edicts of Ashoka and Steles of Qin Shi huang glorify peace or non-violence. Pacifist creeds such as Buddhism, Stoicism and Christianity were products of universal monarchies. With the rise of the universal monarchy in Egypt, the kings changed their names from warlike to pacifist. The deleted chapter is based on reliable sources describing more elements of pacifism in universal monarchies and many more can be added.

Pacifism qualifies as a feature of universal monarchies and should be undeleted or re-written.--IronMike6 (talk) 06:06, 8 June 2024 (UTC)