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Talk:Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam

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Complete rewrite

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Two remarks: 1. I think the title of this article is nonsensical. To speak of the "fall" of a city, in common parlance, that city has first to be besieged and offer serious resistance. Unlike Antwerp in 1585 and Berlin in 1945, Amsterdam never "fell" in this sense, not in 1795, nor 1940. The events of 1795 are described in my rewrite of this article. In 1940 the Netherlands as a whole "fell" on May 14, but there were no German troops near Amsterdam. The city therefore "fell" only in the sense that it was part of the area that was surrendered by general Winkelman that day. I think it is important to observe these proprieties, as we have to stay close to generally accepted terms. If one googles "Fall of Amsterdam" one mostly finds articles referring to Autumn in Amsterdam. No historian uses the term, certainly not for the events of January 18-19, 1795. Just as nobody speaks of the "Fall of London" in 1688 after the Dutch invasion of England of that year. I therefore think we need a different title for the article. 2. I was forced to write a completely different version of the article to make it describe the events of January 18, 1795 (and what went before) as they really happened. I used the source by Schama I supplied, as it is a very reputable source as far as the period 1780-1815 in the history of the Netherlands is concerned, and because Schama as a noted British historian cannot be suspected of an overly "Dutch" point of view. He has surprisingly nasty things to say about the behavior of British troops during their occupation of a number of Dutch cities in 1794-95, some of which I quote on this point, as it is relevant to the explanation for the impopularity of the British and of the regime they upheld in the Netherlands at the time. I carefully referenced my rewrite, so if somebody challenges certain parts of it, I think such challenges should be accompanied by similar careful references.--Ereunetes (talk) 23:38, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New title

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I propose to change the title of this article to "Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam." That covers the event much better than the current title.--Ereunetes (talk) 21:52, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As there were no objections, I have moved the article to the proposed title.--Ereunetes (talk) 20:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]