Talk:Battle of Taku Forts (1859)

Commander
The commander of this action was not James Hope Grant, it was James Hope. James Hope Grant commanded the british forces at the third battle of taku forts, not this one. See, http://books.google.com/books?id=1nV4lPZcbLYC&pg=PA97&dq=taku+fort+gunboat+cormorant+plover&lr=&cd=13#v=onepage&q=&f=false XavierGreen (talk) 23:30, 26 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks man I thought something was fishy, when I first edited the Page it said James Hope Grant as the British commander so I got confused. Thanks, I will try to clean up the mess I made.--Az81964444 (talk) 23:38, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Plagiarism
It seems that some of this is copied nearly verbatim from the book Impossible victories, it needs to be paraphrased at the very least and combined with information from various sources.XavierGreen (talk) 23:30, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I have not checked carefully, but it appears to be verbatim from this public domain source:

There may be additional material from these PD sources:
 * Williams, The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams (1889), p. 299-312
 * James D Johnston, China and Japan (1860), p. 234
 * George Battye Fisher, Personal Narrative of Three Years Service in China (1863), p.190-93

Impossible Victories is a later book that would of course draw on the same primary source material that evidently this article used. The real problem with our current article is its confused understanding of the politics behind the battle, and no understanding of the Chinese side of things. Personally I think this colorful first-person account should be on Wikisource and linked to this article, but not pasted in verbatim as the main text of the article. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 03:51, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Coming in late to this discussion... There also appears to be material from Battles of the Nineteenth Century, Volume 1 (1896). I couldn't find anything that appeared to be from Impossible Victories or Samuel Wells Williams. Can someone point it out to me? The article may have changed in the meantime as well. I should note that the user who added much of the questionable material, User:Az81964444, aka User:$1LENCE_D00600D, has since been blocked for repeated copyright violations (not to mention sockpuppetry), so I think we need to go over this with a fine toothed comb. It's very possible that the article incorporates at least some plagiarized text that does not ultimately come from a PD source. --Difference engine (talk) 20:44, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, and the related articles Battle of Dagu Forts (1900) and Taku Forts may appear on the front page on June 17 (Selected anniversaries/June 17) so it would be best to clarify these issues before then. --Difference engine (talk) 20:49, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Given what I know of this subject from more recent scholarship I would say it wouldn't hurt to TNT this article because trying to make it work with all these old sources is an impediment. With that said I don't have the time to do it, but a blank slate (or stub) might encourage someone. A good modern source is Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (2012, Stephen Platt). Covers it in a couple chapters though the whole book provides context needed to understand its significance. --  Green  C  02:34, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've got a copy of that, and will do what I can, but probably won't get around to it any time soon. -- diff (talk) 03:22, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

The NPOV and Copyvio tags have been unaddressed for two years. Trying a new approach: WP:TNT the article to a clean slate except for images, bibliography, categories and infobox. This will free it from 19th century source baggage (and possibly copyvios) and hopefully an editor will take up the challenge of filling in the blank space with a modern account and sources. -- Green  C  14:41, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

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