Talk:Midlands (disambiguation)/Old history
The midlands of a territory are its central regions.
"The Midlands" (with a capital M) usually means the English Midlands, an area generally considered to include the counties of Derbyshire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, the West Midlands and Worcestershire.
Its major urban area is the conurbation around Birmingham.
Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire are usually nowadays considered to be part of the Midlands, albeit at the far southern edge.
The region broadly corresponds to the medieval kingdom of Mercia.
East Midlands and West Midlands are regions of England, but these do not fully cover the traditional region of the Midlands - excluding parts of northern Lincolnshire, now part of Yorkshire and the Humber, and Peterborough, now part of the East of England.