Talk:Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend


 * Boy, this is a pretty substantive article not to offer a single reference.
 * 1) I would guess from the mention of the Treaty of Utrecht that the ambiguous "States-General" is the Netherlands States General, but since niether the word "Netherlands" nor "Dutch" appears anywhere in the article, and I know nothing independently about Townshend, I hesitate to edit accordingly.

Untitled
Could someone clueful have a look at this?

-- Jmabel 22:15, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

States-General normally refers to the Dutch States-General. There'd be no other States-General in operation at this time, I'd think. The article is pretty clearly from the 1911 Britannica (I imagine I inputted it and forgot to source it - but it's pretty easy to tell such articles...) john 23:17, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, figured it was the Dutch States-General, but didn't want to disambiguate without confirmation. I've now done that.

1911 EB is no surprise, but sometimes articles are out-and-out plagiarism from a copyrighted source. Hence my gently worded question.

Thanks for helping me sort this out. -- Jmabel 23:22, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)

i think that it sucked! it didn't help me...i only want the most important things of his life, not the history of his entire extended family!

Pronunciation
Anyone know how to pronounce his name? Is it identical to "Townsend" (IPA [tʰaʊnzənd], putting on my best upper-class English accent), or is the "sh" pronounced as in "ship" (IPA [tʰaʊnʃənd]) or in "viSion" (IPA [tʰaʊnʒənd]) or is it a voiced aspiration (IPA [tʰaʊnzɦənd]) -- or even something else entirely? Grover cleveland (talk) 04:09, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Nitrate, clover, turnips, Norfolk Four Course System, grain exports, and Alexander Pope
I propose to delete much of the present content of the article’s “Turnip” Townshend section. The following comments explain why. The article claims that the symbiotic bacteria in the root nodules of clover produce nitrates. They do not. Symbiotic bacteria (Rhizobium spp.) in the root nodules produce ammonium by reduction of dinitrogen from the atmosphere. Outside of the root nodules, some non-symbiotic aerobic chemoautotrophic bacteria oxidize ammonium to form nitrite and others oxidize nitrite to form nitrate. (There are numerous textbooks, reviews and peer-reviewed research papers on these matters.) It seems unnecessary to identify the roles of various bacterial species in this biographical article. Such details appear elsewhere in Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia article alleges, with no supporting citations, that “Townshend introduced to England the four-field crop rotation pioneered by farmers in the Waasland region in the early 18th century. He added the turnip and the clover to the traditional crop rotation and directed it to cover four individual fields. Wheat, barley, be planted in that order in each field.” However, it is not clear whether there is evidence to support some of these claims.

Rotation of crops and use of multiple-course agricultural systems occurred in England as well as on the Continent before the 18th Century. The introduction of clover in rotations in England had been advocated before Townshend, e.g. by Blith (1652), who described “clovering” for improvement of grain yields. “The Great Improvement of Lands by Clover” (by A. Yarranton of Worcestershire) was published in 1663, i.e. before Townshend’s birth, and Yarranton promoted use of clover in several English counties. Lord Ernle noted that field production of clover and turnips had been introduced in Norfolk a half century before Townshend’s retirement to Raynham in 1730.

Weston’s “Discours of the husbandry used in Brabant and Flanders” (published in 1645, i.e. 29 years before Townshend’s birth) has been credited, by at least one author, with leading to the Norfolk four course system (and a case for a supporting role might perhaps be made in relation to some of the 17th Century contributions of Samuel Hartlib). Lord Ernle (1912) wrote “Though Townshend made the four course rotation widely known, it had probably been worked out before his time by the farmers of the Eastern Counties. Ellis (Chiltern and Vale Farming, 1733) describes it as regular Hertfordshire practice.” According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Norfolk four-course system had been introduced in  Norfolk (and in some other English counties) before the end of the 17th Century, i.e. at least 30 years before Townshend retired to Raynham. Gray (1957), in a paper on John Hunter and veterinary medicine, states that the Norfolk four course system had already been introduced before Townshend adopted it. Day and McNeil’s Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology states regarding Townshend, “He is popularly credited with the introduction of the Norfolk Four Course Rotation, but this had certainly been long practiced in his area.”

Instead of making the questionable claim or mentioning the claim and then acknowledging that it is controversial, with citation of numerous references on the matter, it would presumably be unexceptionable (and mercifully brief) if the article were simply to state that Townshend promoted (i.e. not that he introduced) the four course system.

Without any supporting reference, the article claims that “The clover and turnip were used to feed livestock while the Wheat and barley were mostly for export, with some being retained for domestic use.” The “mostly for export” claim is problematic. Data compiled by Shaw show that after about 1760-1770, through the remainder of the 18th Century, considerable importation of grain into England occurred; relatively little export of grain took place during that period. Lord Ernle’s “English Farming: Past and Present” indicates that exports of all corn [i.e. grain] from England and Wales over the 50-year period from 1715 to 1765 totaled about 11.25 million quarters, or an average of about 1.8 million bushels per year (a quarter of grain being equivalent to 8 bushels, not to be confused with the quarter of weight that is equivalent to 2 stone). For 1700 through 1749, Apostolides (U. Warwick) et al. estimate an annual average of about 62 million bushels of grain production in England, net of use for seed and livestock. (Their yield estimates are very roughly similar to those of Fussell, those of McCulloch, and the recent figures of Turner, as noted by Overton.) Such figures indicate that only a quite small fraction of English grain production would have been destined for export. Lacking a citation, we can only guess at the Wikipedia claim’s origin. A possibility is misunderstanding of a comment by Evans, which noted that by 1794, by which time the Norfolk system had been subject to significant adoption, Norfolk accounted for something like 90 % of the grain ”exported from the English countryside”. However, such a phrase indicates Norfolk’s role in production of grain consumed outside of rural areas, and cannot be interpreted as implying that production was predominantly for export from England. There is no question that during the period when England did have significant grain exports during the 18th Century, much of the exported grain did go out of Norfolk ports. Yet this simply indicates that Norfolk was a major contributor to such grain exports as took place, and not that most of Norfolk’s grain production was for export, rather than domestic use. These considerations suggest the desirability of deleting the article’s comment about production for export and domestic use.

The article states “Alexander Pope mentions him [i.e. Townshend] in Imitations of Horace, Epistle II, as a turnip obsessed person and says, in a note ... “  However, “obsess” (or a word derived from it) does not appear in the editions of Pope’s works that I have seen. Also, although the note which the Wikipedia article ascribes to Pope does appear in the 1757 edition and some others, that note was presumably actually written not by Pope, but by William Warburton. (In some later editions, a similarly worded, but not identical, footnote is explicitly ascribed to Warburton.)  Quite different wording and even quite different content of the  footnote can be found in various other editions, and presumably these represent the work of other editors. (Like the “turnip obsessed” claim, the claim that the note was written by Pope first appeared in Wikipedia in an edit made in 2004, and both claims have since been repeated elsewhere, even in some books.)

Because some readers of the biographical entry may not recognize the significance of the four course system, promotion of turnip production, and other contributions, it would seem appropriate to acknowledge explicitly (with appropriate citation) that Townshend is recognized as an important figure in England’s “Agricultural Revolution”. Schafhirt (talk) 04:14, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

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