Talk:Perfidious Albion

Alba/White

I thought "Alba" was the Scots Gaelic name for Scotland too. If it refers to white in that context then why would Scotland be named after the white cliffs of Dover in England? I can't think that the two words are completely unrelated, but they may be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.85.15.76 (talk • contribs)

They almost certainly are unrelated. Alba was a generic Latin title used for mountainous areas. Albania is a non-British example of its use. It generally refers to the white snow-caps on the mountain peaks. That is almost certainly why it was used for Scotland by the Gaels. Albion is generally assumed to be connected to the White Cliffs but this may just be a case of fake etymology. It may well refer to Britain as a whole, which, north of Watford, is fairly mountainous. -- Derek Ross | Talk 05:47, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Then who's running all these casinos?

"Total annihilation of the aborigines"? That's a bit harsh. Also a bit verifiably untrue.

Moreover, it's hard to see how British support for the 21st-century invasion of Iraq can exactly be seen as a cause for the coinage in Spain of a 19th-century French phrase, which is what I think the article is trying to claim. Seriously, is this article even salvageable? — Haeleth Talk 11:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

the current article is a joke

there is nothing valuable in, this is the result of the non-NPOV of English users' protectionism and censorship. However, by merging a translation of the French and Spanish articles, the English article could become encyclopedic. Synchronicity I 15:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the Spanish article does not cite any sources whatsoever, so we cannot use any material from it: it fails our fundamental verifiability policy. The French article cites only one source, and only for the explanation of the term "Albion", so again, we cannot simply copy most of the rest of the material, for the same reason.

This is not a question of "censorship", it is a question of conforming to Wikipedia policy. — Haeleth Talk 18:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I have, however, rewritten it in a more encyclopedic form, and added a reference. I haven't been able to get access to the whole of Schmidt's article yet, so I haven't been able to expand the article much, but at least people with an interest in the subject will now know where to look for a scholarly overview of the history of the term. — Haeleth Talk 19:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree of course on your encyclopedic POV. Here is a section that was written on the anglophobia but needed to be moved here. It is sourced and could be used to complete the current article.

"The very same expression is known as Pérfida Albión in the Spanish speaking world though. Perfidious (from the French perfidieux, later perfide) signifies one who does not keep his faith or word. The expression is coined to the French bishop and theologian Bossuet "England, ah! Perfidious England inacessible to the Romans because of her seas rempart, the Savior's foe is get into." It was later popularized by French diplomat and poet, Marquis de Ximénèz, in his poem, The French Era, as "Let's attack the perfidious Albion in her waters".. A century later the expression was stil in use with authors such as Henri Simon, writting "Tremble, tremble you perfidious Albion", or Christophe's "The perfidious Albion who had burnt Joan of Arc on the Saint-Helen rock" in France's first comic, La Famille Fenouillard. These two authors are quoted in the 1821 anthology, Poésies Révolutionnaires et Contre-révolutionnaires, which indicates the perfide Albion expression was à la mode in the 18th & 19th centuries. Other notorious authors who have used the anglophobe expression in this era were Chateaubriand, Banville, Goncourt --who already refers to the expression as "a well known old saying"-- and Anatole France, plus the popular press journalists who use it in articles about the rivalry between the United Kingdom and France about the colonial extension in Africa, or about the attitude of the British trying by every means possible to prevent the completion of the Suez Canal, as the French project was jeopardizing their own interests in the area." Synchronicity I 03:31, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

That's more like it! Informative, encyclopedic, NPOV, and above all sourced. You're absolutely right: that information should certainly be merged into this article. I don't have time to do it myself right now, but I will do so later if you or anyone else doesn't do it first. — Haeleth Talk 12:05, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I enjoy the current article with large sections of OR (or is it just unsourced) and, at times like this, leaving my editor hat to go fly, I wish unsourced material and OR would illuminate and benefit all articles the way it does here. Merrry Xmas. SmithBlue (talk) 05:15, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Should I be surprised that the very people this article is about are on here grasping for straws as they attempt to whitewash their untrustworthy country? There should be at least 2 english wikipedias so that we can have the Old World traitors quit trying to inject in as much british propaganda(and bias)as they've been doing over the last few years. Funny how a page that's slightly slanted to an American point of view has a banner whining about American imperialism on Wikipedia while every article on here is starting to look like what one would expect if this was a .uk site. British propaganda should be scrubbed from this site. 63.152.110.224 (talk) 11:30, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

References

Humorous use

It should perhaps be pointed out that, in modern French, the phrase often is used humorously. If an Englishman defeats a Frenchman at chess, for example, the latter might well exclaim "Perfide Albion!" There's an element of self-mockery aimed at French chauvinism. Rhinoracer 13:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

No Mention of Palestine?

Kind think that would be the biggest example haha ;D 2.122.83.65 (talk) 12:50, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

see also

I wonder whether a "see also" to Night of the Long Knives (Arthurian) can be worked in anywhere. Maybe not. The Wednesday Island (talk) 15:50, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

== Hello, as a consultant (not a wikiperson) I came across this bit: (This is, of course, a joke - carried away by his anti-English fury the character mixes up Joan of Arc with Napoleon, also a "victim" of England).lollipop,Rollo,l,l,

Lollipop?? I assume these are signatures of wikipeople who edited or produced this page? or just something left behind by mistake. Dont be so harsh on this page, it taught me all I needed to know about the expression Perfidious Albion.

Cheers and thank you for Wikipedia, keep up the good work.

19:48, 19 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by BlueSkies999 (talk • contribs)

Examples of British "perfidy"

An article on the origins and use of the phrase Perfidious Albion if fine, but the section Examples of British "perfidy" is just a rant against the English/British. A better title for this section would ‘Questionable reasons to hate the British’. For example, Operation Catapult could be seen as the right thing to do under the circumstances at the time. And all major nations and peoples, the French, the Americans, Poles, Germans, Spanish, Chinese, Arabs and many many more across the world and history have a history of double-dealing and dishonesty. Only examples directly related to the use of the phrase should be listed. Otherwise this is just an excuse for unbalanced bigotry Chwyatt (talk) 12:32, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, I have reduced the list to usage of the actual term, which is the limit of this articles subject. (Hohum ^@)

Your edit seems pretty broad, there are many examples that include Perfidious Albion that you have removed, that are therefore in the scope of the article. The question is not if it was justifiable at the time, but whether the term Perfidious Albion was applied. Operation Catapult may have been a smart move, but it did incur that label. Ottawakismet (talk) 20:16, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

On the whole, to merit inclusion in the article, incidents really need to be reliably-sourced uses of the term. Otherwise the article will just become an almost limitless list of cases where the British might have behaved badly/deceitfully without any real encyclopedic value (and potentially non-neutral). Lord Cornwallis (talk) 20:42, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I have reverted the change to a list of "Examples of British perfidy" again. That is not within the scope of the article. The article is about the usage of the term, no anything the British have done which has been criticised. It was also unreferenced. (Hohum ^@) 20:52, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that the issue here isn't whether or not Operation Catapult was justified, but rather how the French viewed it at the time. JDZeff (talk) 19:01, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Fascist Italy

For those who believe there are no sources about the use of the term by Mussolini and Fascist propaganda: https://www.google.it/search?q=%22perfida+Albione%22+mussolini&tbm=bks. --Enok (talk) 15:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I have trimmed the section for relevance and cleaned up the references. For the Japan section the references simply don;t support the usage of the term. (Hohum ^@) 18:56, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Anglophobia?

Its not anglophobic - It was political reality

Stop with the political correctness

bossuet

Curious that someone who wrote a discourse on universal history (1681) should be unaware that Roman occupation of England lasted for 400 years, slightly longer than French occupation. Pamour (talk) 16:51, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Napoleon murdered

... may have died by being poisoned, according to the Swedish toxicologist Sten Forshufvud[4]

Shoukd this be deleted? Not only was the Swede NOT a toxicologist, but real toxicologist using modern techniques rather than 20th century Swedish imagination have put paid to this theory. Rustygecko (talk) 19:59, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I concur, the detailed suggestion being now widely accepted, that as arsenic is a poisonous element which was commonly used in the production of a green dye much favoured at the time, it's use in wallpaper (fact) could have accidentally poisoned the Emperor (conjecture). I would recommend you locate some of those modern toxicologists reports, and post them here, as justification for deleting the phrase, which most certainly does NOT seem to be NPOV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.70.112.105 (talk) 14:41, 16 September 2022 (UTC)