Talk:Panjdeh incident

Spelling
It would seem that a number of sources refer to Penjdeh rather than Panjdeh, including some contemporary ones referring to 'the incident'. Googling the words gave 6000 matches for Penjdeh rather than 4000 for Panjdeh, with top of the list for Panjdeh going to wiki. Sandpiper (talk) 01:48, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, have just added this to the intro. Should have read the talk page first.Paulturtle (talk) 17:34, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Lord Ripon
Lord Ripon was not a member of Gladstone's cabinet in 1885, though I'd imagine he'd have been a widely respected figure on Indian policy. Could someone with more knowledge fix this? Who that was actually in Gladstone's cabinet was actually concerned about this? Looking at the very brief description in Jenkins's biography of Gladstone, it sounds like what was actually done was to warmonger the incident a bit in order to distract attention away from calls for revenging Gordon in the Sudan, followed by a compromise solution. john k (talk) 13:39, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Final paragraph
The final paragraph of the article describes what happened more than 30 years after the Incident, and after a thorough change of regime in Russia. It appears to have no relevance to the article. Maproom (talk) 21:38, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Please discuss such major changes on the talk page first (?)
The upgrade I made corresponds to all the sources I can find. What else needs to be checked? Benjamin Trovato (talk) 22:48, 8 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm concerned that the version that has been put in as a "full replace" is no more verifiable than the one that's been removed, both having exactly two inline citations which support a very small portion of the facts claimed. The replacement version has better readability, a few more modern terms of reference, some additional information and an excellent and useful map, but it is not made clear why we are to assume that the replacement version is necessarily better than the old version when it brings no resolution to the problem of WP:VERIFIABILITY, or why the several pieces of information removed in the transformation are not appropriate for Wikipedia. Could you briefly explain the issues with the old version, please?


 * Alternatively, would you consider using inline citations to indicate which parts of the replacement version come from which source? MPS1992 (talk) 17:53, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Old equates Panjdeh with Kushka town. Marvin’s map, Britannica, troop movements and Indian Officer’s details vs GoogleEarth all place it at the mouth of the Kushka River. Kushka town or Serhetabad is about 70 miles upriver. *Old sources are general histories and an inaccessible journal article. “Indian Officer” has 63 pages. I.O is very knowledgeable. My best guess is that he was Charles MacGregor, head of British intelligence in India, but I cannot prove it. *First sentence confuses battle with incident. *Afghan territory: Russia said not, so claims need clarification. *Russians on east bank makes no sense. Afghans probably held the west end of the bridge and Russians fought their way accross, but sources are not clear enough to load in to Wikipedia. * Komarov link is wrong. *soured should be worsened. *withdrawal business is not clear. *Merv already occupied, so not part of negotiations. It belonged to Persia, if anybody. *Border Commission established before incident, work began after. *Afghanistan already was a buffer state. *Old has no map; new will be a sub-article of [*[Russian conquest of Turkestan]*] when that gets done. *Inline citations are only useful if you have the reference and are checking. Even then they are only needed if info is hard to find. Benjamin Trovato (talk) 00:08, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for these details. From what you say, "Indian Officer" sounds very close to being partly or wholly a WP:PRIMARY source, which does not make him better for Wikipedia's purpose than a general history. Regarding the inaccessible journal article, why is it inaccessible? -- please be aware of WP:SOURCEACCESS. I'm unconvinced of the importance of replacing "soured" with "worsened", though perhaps your meaning is that relations were already bad and were worsened, instead of an implication in the old version that relations were sweet and pleasant and were only turned bad by the incident. Regardless of all this, I agree that the first sentence of the old version is confused, and we are probably better off having a carefully considered even if difficult-to-verify version than continuing to host a 1911 Britannica text with various hacks made to it by others over the years. So I will reinstate your replacement version then I will make a few formatting adjustments myself.


 * Inline citations are not only useful if you have the reference and are checking. For example, if there is a controversial, unlikely or disputed fact, and you cite it directly to a reliable source, then it is much easier for the reader or another editor to accept on good faith that you have represented the source accurately, and therefore the attributed fact can be retained. Or if this cannot be accepted on good faith, the source can be obtained for checking. Similarly, if someone is concerned about the accuracy or neutrality of one section or paragraph of an article, and you have used inline citations to indicate that section comes from a particular source, then someone wishing to check against the source need only obtain that one single source, rather than obtaining the two or more listed at the end of the article and then checking through each of them to find which relates to the disputed material.


 * It appears that others have had this discussion with you before -- making an effort to follow WP:VERIFIABILITY would make things easier for everyone, as for one thing it would make it less likely for concerns to arise when you carry out a full replacement of an existing article with a new version whose sourcing is unclear. MPS1992 (talk) 14:41, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * POV wars are as useful as footnotes. Benjamin Trovato (talk) 01:14, 12 August 2016 (UTC)


 * That does not really address any of the above. What leads you to believe that there is a "POV war" regarding the article? MPS1992 (talk) 07:50, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I unwisely added a personal opinion about footnotes that has nothing to do with Panjdeh. You replied with three paragraphs and I had to reply to you. We could do this for a week or more without accomplishing anything. Discussion of footnotes should be in WP:inline citations or similar, not in Panjdeh. Benjamin Trovato (talk) 01:07, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Only the shorter two of my paragraphs were about sourcing. But do not worry, for I have no intention of using up time that you are otherwise likely to spend bringing Wikipedia further away from 1911. Discussion of inline citations does not belong where you suggest; it is already part of the Wikipedia policies I linked above, so any attempt to move accepted policy back to how things were in 2008 would need to happen rather more centrally and would be unlikely to succeed. I've explained what I think would make your work more trouble-free, but I have little enthusiasm for enforcing trouble-free editing on those who prefer to stick with their own approach. Happy editing! MPS1992 (talk) 18:11, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Shelling St Petersburg
The naval historian Andrew Lambert argues in a podcast that one of the reasons Russia backed off was the threat of the Royal Navy - which maintained shallow-bottomed battery ships for exactly such a purpose - getting ready to shell St Petersburg (I dare say Britain could also have choked off Russia's foreign trade in the event of war). Supposedly one of the main reasons Russia sued for peace in the so-called Russian War of the 1850s (the name "Crimean War" dates from the turn of the century - and it comes as a surprise to a lot of people that it was very much an Allied victory) was that Britain had taken out the Baltic forts and was getting ready to threaten St Petersburg. He also argues that Admiral Fisher's Baltic Project in WW1 could have worked and was very much in this tradition of maritime warfare. He does have a bit of a bee in his bonnet on the topic but that doesn't necessarily mean that he is wrong.

I'd have to buy, read and go trawling through his books for a specific reference so I "leave this one out there" for the time being - it would be interesting to learn what detailed accounts of decision-making in St Petersburg say on the matter. Paulturtle (talk) 17:49, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Just dug out my old copy of Geoffrey Bennett "Naval Battles of the First World War" (first published 1968 - I read the Pan edition in 1983). He says in the intro chapter that the 1885 incident (which he doesn't name) revealed British naval weakness, with the RN scattered all over the globe, and our having only 27 modern battleships against 36 French and Russian ones. France and Russia were Britain's rivals at the time but weren't yet allied to one another until the early 1890s. Although Bennett doesn't labour the point there then ensued the Mediterranean Agreements with Italy and Austria-Hungary, and the 1889 Act which began a programme of naval building (said building was one of the factors in Gladstone's eventual resignation early in 1894). The two propositions are not of course mutually exclusive - the threat of the Royal Navy shelling St Petersburg might have been a factor in Russia backing down over Penjdeh, whether or not it was as decisive as Andrew Lambert argues, whilst at the same time hawks (as we would nowadays say) in the UK may have been horrified at the thought of the RN having to take on France as well and pushed for rearmament.Paulturtle (talk) 15:19, 21 May 2023 (UTC)