Commons:Categories for discussion/2025/10/Category:Maps of the Low Countries in the 15th century

Category:Maps of the Low Countries in the 15th century

There are currently four category that are supposed to hold the exact same content: Maps of the Low Countries in the 15th century, Maps of Belgium in the 15th century, Maps of the Netherlands in the 15th century and Maps of Luxembourg in the 15th century.

The last three of these categories are essentially unneeded and should be turned into redirects to the "Low Countries" category, which was specifically created with history in mind to avoid this issue. History maps that differentiate between the preindustrial history of Belgium, the preindustrial history of Luxembourg and the preindustrial history of the Netherlands are exceptionally rare. The Netherlands became an independent nation in the 1650s; Belgium in the 1790s/1830s. Before the 17th century, the whole area was either considered one single entity ("The low countries") or many provincial/regional entities like Flanders, Holland, Brabant, Geldria, Utrecht and so on.

Reviewing the the content of all four categories should validate this position.

The same should thus be done for all similar instances up to the 18th century, as we should not keep quadruplicated categories on the same topic. Enyavar (talk) 19:40, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

This CfD relates to a review of our History maps categories (User talk:Ty's Commons#History maps) - which is my primary interest and current focus. The associated project and categories are being designed to effectively provide a series of maps - easily searchable for each European country - depicting the evolution of its territory through all of the various twists and turns of European history.

This is not an easy project but one I believe to be valuable, especially because European history can be quite complex - even for Europeans. This summary is intended to review why it's important and also to consider how it best works in a manner that makes it easier for average users - who are not only non-historians but may know little about the evolution of the countries and territories of Europe.

While Europe is the starting base, and a challenging one, a model that withstands and portrays the complex histories of our European countries can also then be applied to other countries - many of which likewise have complex histories, including reorganizations and renamings.

A. Fundamental principles and basic needs:

(1) Every current country in the world (in Europe and elsewhere) possesses its own unique territory - which is precisely defined and obviously important to its current identity as well as its history.

(2) Each country's territory or land (again for virtually every European country and most elsewhere) has a complex history - and that is likewise of central significance to each country's identity (including its various regions, its places of historic interest, its monuments, its unique composition and/or combination of various cultural influences, dialects, arts, trades, etc.).

(3) With respect to each country's current territory, the series of maps showing the evolving transition of regions and states - both within the existing territory and nearby - are critical to depicting and understanding the evolution of each country leading up to its current state (both physical and political). Indeed, the series of such maps over time is one of the most fundamental and basic tools for describing each country's history - as any historian or history teacher fully appreciates.

B. General ways of addressing these needs:

Consistent with and serving the principles and needs noted above, virtually every country has, and historically has had, an atlas or similar collections of maps showing the evolution of its territory - again naturally including predecessor regions or entities within the territory as well as larger entities that contained or controlled all or parts of its territory.

Reflecting these same fundamental principles - as well as providing an organizational system that is clearly defined and easily used - Wikimedia Commons is likewise developing and featuring a series of Atlases based on each country of the World, ambitiously called the Atlas of the world. These are essentially arranged by country, including each country in Europe, which is our initial focus here. The organizational framework necessary to present each country's history and territory is also essentially the same as our focus here. In the case of Belgium, for example, the relevant section of the Atlas of Belgium is organized as follows:

- "History maps: This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day Belgium, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day Belgium."

Since each Atlas is a Gallery page intended to provide a brief overview of the history of corresponding territories, it features an overview of the country and its territory, as well as selected general maps and some historical maps highlighting the two millennia of its history. It cannot practically also serve as a repository for the many additional maps that more fully reflect the country's history. Indeed those maps are essentially what we are discussing here - to be categorized in a methodical, complementary and similarly easy-to-access and intuitive manner.

The language being used to organize the corresponding country-based century-by-century categories is also analogous. In the case of maps related to Belgium, for example, the following language is used:

- This category is directed to maps showing all or substantially all of the territory of modern-day Belgium - as the lands were in the 15th century (1401-1500 CE).

- See Wikimedia Commons Atlas of Belgium for a general overview of the territory including its evolution in European history. Additional maps related to the history of Belgium - including various entities comprising or controlling the Belgian territory as well as smaller entities within the territory - can be found at Maps of the history of Belgium.

C. Wikimedia Commons overall organization of maps:

Consistent with the principles and practical points noted above, Wikimedia Commons likewise organizes maps (as well as many other types of files) by country - and these countries are likewise principally organized based on the set of current countries (see, e.g., the meta category Category:Maps by country)

Each of these current countries is defined - and each of course has a history. Alternative methods to instead have the country-based organization sporadically "swapped out" for various other entities that occupied, controlled or reflected parts of these territories or their regions over time would be both complex and subject to numerous debates about appropriate names, controlling aspects, boundaries etc. It would also be far more difficult for average users to make use of because navigating its organizational structure to find maps of interest would require users to effectively know about the various entities and names that existed historically - and then still have to guess or search to figure out how some map categorizer (such as one of us) decided to refer to them and/or group them.

D. Furher benefits of the country-based territorial approach:

There are several important additional benefits to this standardized approach. First, the territories of each of our countries are (almost always) precise and clearly defined. Second, the world and each of its continents are effectively and clearly divided up and mapped (since essentially all of the associated lands are accounted for without overlap). Third, and perhaps most important from a community and user perspective, the system is easy to search and to navigate (since existing templates like that for the existing countries of Europe can be easily employed and they then allow simple navigation from one country to any of the others - which appear in standardized and generally accepted alphabetical order).

Based on all of the foregoing, the system seems to be not only the best way to organize but practically speaking the only way to do so that makes it relatively easy for both contributors and organizers of associated maps - and most importantly for visitors and average users (especially those without detailed preexisting knowledge of the corresponding histories and variety of corresponding names used back over the centuries). A further benefit of the system is that not only can such users easily navigate back through the complex histories, but the galleries reflected in each corresponding category will literally illustrate - pictorially - the corresponding histories. For each country and century, users can quickly see the associated names of the various entities existing at that time, as well as borders, regions and neighbors.

E. Requirements of the approach:

There are basically two essential requirements needed to make the system work well. The first is as noted above, to use the countries of the world as at least a principal organizational tool for the territories of the world. That is in fact standard practice (and Wikimedia Commons, its templates, etc. are geared to it.)

The second requirement follows from the first. It is essentially the territories of our existing countries that serve as the primary organizing framework (regardless of the various and evolving sets of political entities and their names that comprised or controlled various parts of the territories over the course of its history). But that is essentially a reflection of the history of each territory - which is the principal interest of such categories and maps in the first place.

So the categories are structured such that the territory of each existing country serves as the subject matter for organizing the relevant maps - which effectively show each country's territory or land as they existed during the designated time period. The format is still being finalized but is generally worded as follows: "This category is directed to maps showing all or substantially all of the territory of modern-day [Country A] - as the lands were in the [Nth century]." A Wikimedia locator map pictorially shows the corresponding territory.

F. Planned refinement to category names:

Although the definition and specific text within the category description make it quite clear what is to be included (i.e. maps showing all or substantially all of the territory of the modern-day country as that land was in the prior centuries), I am considering modifying the basic category name to emphasize that it is referring to the land rather than a political entity. This should make the central feature of the framework more apparent, even before the specific definition is seen. The revised category would then be, for example, "Maps of Belgium (the land) in the Nth century."

G. Parallel or alternative categories:

There are parallel categories of several sorts. One set relates to regional collectives or "agglomerations" of territories of either an historic or simply geographic character. Examples include groupings such as the Low Countries, the Balkans, the Baltics, the British Isles, the Iberian Peninsula and Scandinavia. Just as with the names to be applied to various historic political entities, these varied over time and are still associated with various controversies over the asserted "appropriateness" of selected versions of the names and/or their selective "lumping." The Low Countries will be addressed in more detail below but groupings such as the Balkans, the Baltics and Scandinavia involve among other things the name that should be used, as well as whether and when various countries should or should not be included. Others such as the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula are superficially less controversial (in that they reflect physical geographic territories), but even these elicit controversies such as whether Ireland, which is typically included within the British Isles (especially by British historians) really should be - or whether that represents a perspective that is more than coincidentally associated with British history and/or political aims.

Other problems arise with the various continental entities that evolved significantly over time. Lithuania is just one example. While it is often lumped in as a member of the Baltics (along with Estonia and Latvia), during the 15th century the territory of the associated political entity (the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) included not only the "Baltic" territory of modern-day Lithuania but also all of present-day Belarus and Ukraine, as well as parts of Poland and Russia - making it the largest European state at the time with a territory stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

H. Additional concerns regarding use of the term Low Countries as a "substitute" or replacement for the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg:

For reasons outlined above, the principal organizational framework is based on using the territories of our existing European countries, and organizing maps depicting such territories over time. Even if we link to other regional groupings such as Scandinavia - or to political entities (such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the like) these are best done in parallel and easily handled by cross-referencing.

I therefore have no problem with continuing to cross-reference such parallel categories. I would, however, note that the use of the term "the Low Countries" raises additional issues. Unlike political entities (such as various kingdoms, commonwealths etc.) or culturally distinct regions (such as the Basque Country or Catalonia), it was generally neither politically nor culturally a unified region. Indeed the name itself tells us that: so even when the term was used it was referring not to a single country (as in the "Low Country" or in Dutch Nederland) but to countries, plural (i.e. "the Low Countries" or in Dutch Nederlanden).

The term was not consistently or uniformly applied and so is not historically a substitute for the territories of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Indeed, while it originally developed as name for the lower parts of the region, as the words imply, those extended into the German Rhineland and were associated with "Lower Lotharingia" - as opposed to the upper regions that eventually formed southern Belgium and Luxembourg.

As summarized in Low Countries, the constituent countries and lands also varied depending on the time-relevant controlling entities:

"Historically, the term Low Countries arose at the Court of the Dukes of Burgundy, who used the term les pays de par deçà  ("the lands over here") for the Low Countries as opposed to les pays de par delà ("the lands over there") for the Duchy of Burgundy and the Free County of Burgundy, which were part of their realm but geographically disconnected from the Low Countries.

"The Netherlands is a country whose name has the same etymology and origin as the name for the region Low Countries since "nether" means "low". In the Dutch language, De Lage Landen is the modern term for Low Countries, De Nederlanden (plural) is in use for the 16th-century domains of Charles V, the historic Low Countries, and Nederland (singular) is the normal Dutch name for the country of the Netherlands. However, in official use, the name of the kingdom is still the Kingdom of the Netherlands Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (plural). The name derives from the 19th-century origins of the kingdom, which originally included present-day Belgium."

…

Another source of confusion is variations across languages - which is a further concern for databases such as Wikimedia Commons that are intended to be and are translated across languages. For example, in many languages the nomenclature "Low Countries" can possibly refer to the cultural and historical region comprising present-day Netherlands and sometimes Belgium and Luxembourg (and potentially other areas depending on time) - and/or to "the Netherlands" alone, e.g., les Pays-Bas (i.e. the country name for the Netherlands in French versus Belgique for Belgium), similarly in Spanish (los Países Bajos meaning the Netherlands versus Bélgica for Belgium) and Italian (i Paesi Bassi and Belgio).

The terminology is thus varying, context-dependent, language-dependent and a recognized "source of confusion" - as summarized in Terminology of the Low Countries:

"The Low Countries - and the Netherlands and Belgium - had in their history exceptionally many and widely varying names, resulting in equally varying names in different languages. There is diversity even within languages: the use of one word for the country and another for the adjective form is common. This holds for English, where Dutch is the adjective form for the country "the Netherlands". Moreover, many languages have the same word for both the country of the Netherlands and the region of the Low Countries, e.g., French (les Pays-Bas), Spanish (los Países Bajos) and Portuguese (Países Baixos). The complicated nomenclature is a source of confusion for outsiders, and is due to the long history of the language, the culture and the frequent changes of economic and military power within the Low Countries over the past 2,000 years."

As noted, I have not nor do I object to potential use of the term for a parallel set of categories - although that is fraught with issues for reasons noted here and elsewhere.

What I do object to is any suggestion that categories based on the territory of Belgium should be essentially linked to the Netherlands, and both in turn should be subsumed into the "Low Countries" usage. You have gone so far as to assert in our parallel discussion that "the Low Countries were identical with Belgium, and so were the Netherlands" - which is not correct.

Similarly, from the perspective of maps, the territory of Belgium and its history is not the same as the territory of the Netherlands and its history. The fact that some maps portray the lands collectively (just as some maps portray Scandinavian countries together, or Spain and Portugal together) in no way implies or suggests that these are "identical" or merged entities - or that the various European countries therefore have identical or merged histories.

You also suggest in our discussion that 18th/19th-century Belgium did not exist earlier. But again you are talking about a particular political entity versus the territory of the country at issue (which is the focus of our map categories). Moreover, the same "argument" levelled against Belgium is applicable to many if not most of our European countries. Among other prominent examples, Italy was united as an entity in 1861, and Germany in 1871. So similarly, it would seem there should be no categories reflecting maps of the territories of the present-day countries of Italy or Germany prior to the 19th century. I don't believe that serves anyone's interest particularly well and is certainly not consistent with the presentation of maps in the Wikimedia Commons Atlases of the World's countries or elsewhere.

Such an approach is also inconsistent with other standard categorization across Wikimedia Commons. To cite just a few examples that you should be familiar with, the principal organizing category - Category:History of Belgium by period - does not just go back to 1830, but covers the territory of Belgium extending back to the Roman period and earlier (as, not surprisingly to most of us, "Prehistoric Belgium"). The same is true for Italy and Germany, and all the various countries of Europe you would apparently like to abbreviate, 'cut short' or merge into various conglomerations of your choosing such as Albania, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Ukraine, etc.

So the issue then is not really whether the category Maps of the Low Countries in the 15th century should or should not exist. There are clearly concerns with respect to it as noted above, but I am not opposed to keeping it, either as a cross-reference or parallel category. But that is not a basis to say that categories related to our actual European countries, their territories and their histories, should be merged. Just the opposite - to do so is to conflate the histories of our European countries and to effectively suppress their different pathways and compositions - both internal and external. Again, the fact that the territories are sometimes reflected together on the same map in no way suggests that the territories of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - nor their respective histories - are "the same topic."

Finally but not unimportantly, the "regional agglomeration approach" does a disservice to all of the various individual provincial / regional and historic entities that combined to make up the various countries that exist today. To parse your example, a key significance of Holland, Geldria and Utrecht is that they were effectively combined to form parts of the Netherlands - whereas Brabant, much of Flanders, Hainaut and other areas make Belgium what it is. To effectively throw all of these together into a blended agglomeration is to thus to not only ignore the fact that the history of Belgium is different than the history of the Netherlands, but to obscure the historic relationships linking Holland, Geldria and Utrecht to the Netherlands, and Brabant. Flanders and Hainaut to Belgium. That is not only unnecessary and inconsistent with their respective histories but might rather be regarded offensive. It is also inconsistent with the organizational schemes of countries on Wikimedia Commons and elsewhere. Again, these respective histories are not "quadruplicated" versions of the same topic. While they are neighboring lands that were sometimes subject to the same or parallel external forces, they are unique - and those individual lands and associated histories are what makes each of the current countries unique from each other.

I. Wikimedia Commons exceptional policy related to the categorizations of countries:

Even if a regional category such as the Low Countries is maintained and some maps appear in both the country-specific category and the regional category, that is not in and of itself a problem. When the categories are actually populated (more on that below), there should indeed be some maps covering both levels. At the country-specific level, these will show the territory that forms Belgium (including its constituent parts) and its relationship to that of its neighbor.

The importance of and interest in the countries of the world is in fact expressly emphasized by Wikimedia Commons and reflected as being the principal exception to the general Overcat policy Commons:Categories#Exception for images with more categorized subjects:

- Commons: Categories - Exception for images with more categorized subjects:

-- "Countries may be categorized as part of multiple overlapping categories."

The text used to illustrate this Wikimedia Commons exceptional principle for the categorization of our countries is also relevant to what might be regarded as "multiple entrants" in the various regional categories - the example given being as follows:

"For example, Category:India is in Category:Countries of South Asia as well as Category:Countries of Asia."

Thus, India (being a country) is placed not only into its regional grouping ("Countries of South Asia") but is at the same time also reflected in the higher level grouping for the continent ("Countries of Asia").

J. Ongoing work:

As a procedural matter, I have only begun to populate individual country-based categories in part because some "activities" (reflected in our conversations) have effectively distracted from ongoing efforts - including removals of some maps reflecting the territory of certain countries, causing the category to become emptied and then deleted or redirected.

There are also (again as discussed) maps that have effectively been made very difficult to find because they have been essentially sequestered into an almost endless series of separate narrow drawers. The Category:Old maps of Belgium, for example, contains approximately 9,000 individual maps - but many of these are not in fact organized as maps of Belgium. In parallel, instead of the maps being effectively sorted into general categories, such as maps reflecting countries' overall territories, they are often sequestered into drawers such as "Maps showing the 1640s" - in turn subcategorized into "Maps showing 1640, Maps showing 1644, Maps showing 1645, Maps showing 1646, Maps showing 1648 and Maps showing 1649." (And yet these are somehow all considered helpful categorization and subcategorization techniques whereas maps showing the territory of Belgium in the 17th century are not.) Needless to say, such approaches and contexts make the identification of maps corresponding to these categories more difficult.

Furthermore, when initial maps are used to essentially set up the categories and link them to each other in sequence, removing them tends to obstruct the process and the ongoing project before the categories can even be established to prepare for more fully populating them. It would therefore be most helpful to refrain from removing maps from the categories to which they have been placed to initiate category set-up. That will allow these categories to be finally developed and the variety of individual countries can each then have an appropriate place to include maps that reflect their territories over time, as well as incorporate cross-references to other categories of interest to each country.

As discussed previously, we can then assess what, when and in which contexts the additional related categories such as regional agglomerations remain as useful, and if so how the categories are best cross-referenced.

Summary:

Overall, this is a substantial project but one that I believe is beneficial in several ways:

(i) it provides a standardized scope and relationship to one of the most important category sets on Wikimedia Commons: our current countries;

(ii) it enables an easily-navigated system that is supportive and helpful for visitors to Wikimedia and average users with little knowledge of the individual complex histories behind the evolution of each country;

(iii) it provides an organizational framework that can be used to easily cross-reference any of the variety of other history and old map categories that are applicable;

(iv) it is of use for parallel community projects such as enhancing the Wikimedia Commons Atlases of the World.

The eventual century-by-century 'galleries' become visual portrayals of the evolution of each of these territories over time, including the variety of names and geographic boundaries that reflect each country's unique history. As such, they then become in a sense a teaching and learning experience as well as an organized collection of useful maps. That at least is my goal and I certainly appreciate any and all assistance in furthering it. Ty's Commons (talk) 16:37, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Your main argument here is that you want to have maps accessible to users at the place where the users may expect them. That interest can be served easily with a redirect. The user inputs "maps of Belgium in the 8th century", and gets redirected to "Maps of the Low Countries in the 8th century", and if the user has any interest in the content, they will understand why that redirection happened.

Besides the readers/consumers of categories, we also need to keep in mind the people who categorize. The more categories a person needs to keep in mind, the worse the categorization work is going to be. Where are you going to sort a map that shows 'the languages spoken in the medieval low countries, when that map is an SVG file, claims a timespan of 1380-1520 and is kept in Spanish'? My own guesses would be "Spanish-language maps showing history of Europe", "Maps of of the medieval Low Countries", and "linguistic maps of Belgium/Netherlands". That is already four categories. The second of these four could be better specified with three Low-Country-by-century categories, leading to six categories instead. You would apparently not hesitate to add nine more categories on top of that, with close to no benefits.

Let me now go through all your points.

• A) not every country of Europe needs to have representation for each century. Even if there is one single map, that does not justify creation of "Maps of Andorra in the 3rd century BC". Similarly, just because the Burgundian Netherlands may appear in this history maps of Europe, does not make it a "map of Belgium in the 15th century". You may of course crop out a new file of just the area of modern Belgium in that map, but I would argue that such a cropped minimap has decidedly less value for realistic educational purposes. And if you do so just to fill up your desired category, that would be spam in my opinion.
• B) Your Atlas project has nothing to do with the category tree, nor is there any need to have a category tree that follows the Atlas project or its organizational framework.
• C) Yes, maps are to be organized by country. That also means, that when there is no country, there needs to be no organization. There is a different situation for example with the United States (where we don't have recorded history of the nations/countries before colonization happened, but we have maps approximating tribal territories) which leads to anachronistic categories like "15th century maps of the United States". Such is not the case with Europe. We DO know the history of the area before the country of Belgium was formed, and it does not involve a country named Belgium, but rather the "Burgundian Netherlands" as part of "Burgundy". Meanwhile, "Maps of Ghent in the 15th century" would be okay, but only if "Maps of the history of Ghent" needs to be subdivided.
• D) Instead of tailoring a "standardized approach" to our arbitrary modern situation, we rather need a framework (i.e. template) that fits the historical situations. You argue with definitions of the territories of the modern countries and apply them to the past where they do not fit. Inside Europe, your scheme does make a lot of sense, given how modern national boundaries are mostly following historical lines, Poland being a major exception. But if you apply your standardized approach outside of Europe (which IS something that we should care about in a category system serving the world), you will fail hard when you start categorizing "Maps of Saudi Arabia in the 15th century" (political landscape was totally different) and "Maps of Mongolia in the 14th century" (...as defined by the modern territory...?). It follows that we categorize what is, not what we can chop up to fit in a box.
• E) conclusion is based on incorrect assumptions, please check with D why such a template is a really bad idea.
• F) If I take that proposal as you have presented it, that would make categorization a lot WORSE again. Please see my second initial point from this post: How are uploaders supposed to categorize their files? It is preferable to have a clearcut system where you can infer the content directly from the category name. Hatnotes and definitions are helpful to clear up confusion of course, but ideally you should be able to assign a category via Uploadmanager or Hotcat without ever opening the category to check.
• G) You call it "lumping", I call it "grouping". If you have a group of countries like "Europe", you do not need to assign individual 40+ categories for each country of Europe. A map that shows all of "Scandinavia", is implicitly also showing all of Sweden, and "maps of Sweden" IS a subcategory of "maps of Scandinavia". The category hierarchy exists for a reason. The same map does NOT need to be placed in all parts of the tree, in fact Com:Overcat strongly disagrees with that idea. An exception can be made to the above example if Sweden is really the focus of the map (like, a location map of Sweden within Scandinvia). Sidenote: I regularly encounter maps of <Oslo / Silesia / Sardinia and Corsica> in "(...) maps of Europe". One could argue that Oslo is in Europe, and thus the category is applied correctly? No. The principle with geographical categories is to apply categories to specifically the level you are in. The map of Oslo would also be misplaced in "maps of Norway", and Sardinia would also be misplaced in "maps of Italy". Yes, the guesses are getting closer, but we have hundreds of thousands of maps of Italy, and only a few thousand maps of Sardinia.
• H) the Low Countries were identical with Belgium, and so were the Netherlands that is not my exact quote, but I would subscribe it when changed to "more or less identical". Low Countries is the term to use to describe the pre-national situation; and it is among the terms that were used historically. "Low" is not a denigrating term here, it is the name of the region. As I wrote, Gerardus Mercator (16th century cartographer!) grouped all maps about modern-day Benelux into the chapter he named "Belgii inferioris" (i.e. "Lower Belgiums" in Latin). To him, a dutch-speaking man from Gelderland would have been just as "Belgian" as one from Utrecht, maybe even so with a French-speaking man from Hainaut. He would also have known the large differences between these cities, no doubt. My point is that "Belgium"/"Low Countries" described more or less the same region, and he grouped maps into other such chapters like Gallia, Germania and Italiae. Back in that day, Germany and Italy were NOT nations, but they were regions. Italy is a region defined by the peninsular coastlines and the Alps to the North. If Italy had never been unified or if Italy would today desintegrate into a dozen new states, I would nevertheless propose to group the countries not because of their current borders, but because of the regional boundary of the region. By the way, I applied the same logic to Maps of Arabia in the 12th century: Arabia can be well-enough defined that way, the Saudis cannot. Back to your Italy example: Once there are enough maps that show the history of Tuscany, Lombardy or the Kingdom of Naples in any given century, I will gladly accept a category about "Maps of the Kingdom of Naples in the 16th century" and so on. That category would be inside "Maps of Italy in the 16th century" and all files in "Naples" would be removed from "Italy". It is that simple.
  On your point about the regional agglomeration approach which does a disservice to provincial entities? That is not the problem at hand here, if there were enough history-maps content I would also support "maps of Gelderland in the 16th century" just as I would support the Kingdom of Naples. But there IS not enough such content. As of right now, there is just enough content for all history Maps of the Low Countries in the 16th century. As per my response to G) above: grouping content to the right level means that you cannot subdivide the content to even lower levels. Show me the maps that exclusively deal with modern Belgium and not with the modern Netherlands: and only those would be acceptable for the subcategory of "Belgium" that sits below "Low Countries".
• I) Yes, that is the case. I explained it above in my response to G): Maps of India needs to be a subcategory of both Maps of Asia and Maps of South Asia. Categories are structured hierarchical. The files themselves are to be ordered into that hierarchy. All maps of India have to be categorized under "India", not under "Asia". That is why this edit was "overcat".
• J) a.) Yes, I noticed. You are now cropping out countries from history maps just to populate categories that would otherwise be empty because there are no genuine history maps about the region that you want to include in your scheme. Who exactly is supposed to benefit from File:C. 1500 Norway.jpg? You even cut away most of Denmark - the beige country is supposed to be "en:Denmark–Norway", in case you had not noticed. This activity (cropping just to fill categories) just makes no sense and is more obfuscation instead of clearing up. If there just are no history maps of the region you want to create a category for? Just don't create the category until you find some.
  b.) The "maps showing <year>" scheme is a related category hierarchy, which has been mostly slumbering for a decade. Most history maps that show specific dates/years, are currently not yet categorized, but we'll eventually get there. This structure is not intended to show specific locations and does have its own benefits. Although yes, in same rare cases it is already linked into the "maps of location in century" scheme, take for example Maps about Peace of Westphalia and Maps of Treaty of Verdun (843).

My summary is more or less what I already wrote in the intro to this post: Empty and misleading categories can be redirected to intended categories (as suggested), which will have just the same organizational benefits. Regarding that point IV: Categories are not galleries (although users can browse them as such). The Atlas of the world is nothing but galleries already, we don't need to duplicate it by mis-applying categories.

With all my best regards, --Enyavar (talk) 14:16, 3 November 2025 (UTC)