Talk:Frederick Townsend Ward

The Last Samurai?
I'm removing the two references to the movie The Last Samurai stating that the Tom Cruise character is based on Ward. This is seems to be an example of the internet-as-echo-chamber. Most of these statements contain similar phrasing to - or explicitly reference - either this WP page or an unsourced factoid at the IMDB trivia page for the movie. Which, needless to say, is no more a primary source than we are.

It's easy to find articles online, however, where the principals describe the historical inspiration for the film (short answer: Japanese history).


 * Interview with the screenwriter, John Logan
 * Interview with the director, Edward Zwick
 * Tom Cruise interview while promoting film
 * Productions notes section of the film's official site

While I recognize the superficial similarity between Ward and Cruise's Nathan Algren, this narrative theme is hardly new territory for Hollywood (white officer heroically leads less-pigmentally-challenged soldiers in exotic locale). There is no element of The Last Samurai's plot (that I know of) which seems drawn from any particular event in Ward's life.

The current WP article states that Cruise was involved in an abortive attempt to adapt the Carr book into a film prior to The Last Samurai. (It'd be great if this was sourced.) I find it easy to believe that if Cruise was interested in playing Ward he also might find the Algren role appealing - and even (pure speculation, here) that he'd been actively pushing for a similarly-themed screenplay that was unencumbered by whatever complications "The Foreign Devil" project had. But - for our purposes, this doesn't matter.

72.70.72.170 (talk) 18:49, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

hero: POV?
"As it is, he is remembered as one of China's greatest military heroes". I don't think many Chinese regard him (and also Gordon) as heroes. To majority Chinese, those guys are just agents of imperialism and ruthless butchers.

Wiki contributors are not valid and quotable sources for articles. - T&#949;x  &#964;  ur&#949;  18:24, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Rewriting?
"However, a certain Yankee trait of hypocrisy in the service of hard-nosed business interests was also held in esteem, or at the very least, politely left unacknowledged." This is A. not a sentance and B. also rather incendary in language. In refrence to this not being a sentance, where is the subject? 'a certain Yankee trait of hypocrisy'? no. 12.20.127.229 18:08, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

copyright
Large sections of this article seem to be taken directly from copyrighted sources, this article needs alot of work to bring it up to standards. Revision as of 06:41, 16 August 2005 is superior to the current version. 12.20.127.229 18:36, 7 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Matthewdkaufman replies: With regard to the above comments - "sez you" - I have no plans to take lessons on sentence structure from you, but thanks anyway. With regard to sections of the article taken from copyrighted sources, all sources are properly attributed. Give me an example of a part of the article in which material was "stolen" from a published work without attribution before you make claims of this kind.


 * None of the above comments are mine (although I have added section headers in the hopes of separating out what are different topics of discussion). However, a bit of copyeditting would seem in order because mere attribution to another person's intellectual property is not sufficient to deal with copyright issues. Words such as "untimely" are POV; phrases such as "(see appendix)" are especially inappropriate since they don't help the wikipedia reader. rewinn 04:27, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Speculative Material deleted
I deleted the speculation about subject's departure from schooling since it specifically states that no-one has any evidence about the truth. Also deleted comparison to Grant since it specifically states the men never met, were not really contemporaries (according to the text), and all they had in common were that they were former officers unhappily employed. There's too much of that going around to encyclopedic. rewinn 03:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I have re-deleted this edit after more than one anonymous editor reinstated this material. rewinn's reasons for deleting it were valid. Additionally the comparison is original research. Furthermore you can take any two people in history and find points of commonality between them; this is just playing a parlor game, not compiling encyclopedic knowledge. The meme of parallels between JFK and Lincoln doesn't appear in either the JFK or Lincoln articles proper, and the much less notable parallels between Ward and Grant do not belong here. k.lee (talk) 18:22, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

DISPUTE B-class
1. I think this article should go back to Start class, since the sources are of poor quality, the possibly high-quality sources are not easily verifiable, the citations are not wikified (and are specific enough to demand it). The article appeared in whole cloth | here based entirely on three dodgy online public-domain transcription sources, with no reference to the two printed works (Carr and Cahill). Gilding has since ensued.

2. Has anyone attempted a thorough wikification of all citations? If not, I will. I'd dearly like to see a copy of those damned books, though.

--Lexein 05:05, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Source notes
Starting a new Talk section to record my work tracking down some sources here so that they can be cross-verified by other editors...


 * "Macgowan, D. J. Memoirs of Generals Ward, Burgevine and the Ever-Conquering Legion."
 * This appears without any real source attribution in the current version of the article. According to this TOC by Yushodo Press, this is a series of articles in The Far East "New Series", Vol. 2, No. 5 and Vol 3. (various), originally published between May-Nov 1877. Scans of The Far East issues from can be found in these online public domain scans at hathitrust.org, from the Univ. of Michigan's collection; unfortunately these scans only include issues from May 1870-Aug 1875, which were reprinted by Yushodo in 1965-1966. If anybody feels like ponying up ¥145,000 (about US$23700) for the "New Series" volumes, which cover July 1876-Dec 1878 and were reprinted in 2007, they can be yours; your other alternative is to find some library that holds copies of the new series (see worldcat). My conclusion is that the editor who originally cited Macgowan in the Wikipedia article is either (a) a serious professional or amateur historian who did significant real-world library research to find this original source or (b) someone quoting this source secondhand from another book that cited it. k.lee (talk) 17:52, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Caleb Carr The Devil Soldier
I have some questions about the reliability of the Carr source. Particularly, The Devil Soldier is described by Thomas A Breslin in this review as "revisionist biography" and that "Carr is increasingly less reliable the farther his story gets from Shanghai". Reviewed also here by "David G. Egler", Egler writes "Carr is highly biased in favor of his subject, his narrative is full of digressions, and the book contains no bibliography. Although some major sources are discussed in the text itself, the notes cite only direct quotations. However, the work is valuable for the military historian and for early modern Chinese history"

This doesn't seem to qualify as a reliable source for Wikipedia? The book only seems to be once, but isn't there a more reliable source for his date of death? X0n10ox (talk) 03:07, 22 May 2024 (UTC)


 * That is very fair - I personally find The Devil Soldier to be a heavily romanticized account of Ward's life based upon a lot of speculation and hearsay, but the only thing that it's good for are the basic facts of his life. That being said, those basic life facts can be found elsewhere, so I've replaced the citation about his death with a citation to Richard J. Smith's Mercenaries and Mandarins. In the future, there should be attention given to replacing the other Carr references with more reliable sources.Panian513 03:25, 22 May 2024 (UTC)