User talk:JMetrope

Your additions to "Magellan's circumnavigation"
Hey there, I wanted to explain why I reverted your additions to Magellan's circumnavigation, and didn't think I'd be able to fit it into an edit summary:


 * The fleet initially consisted of 237 men There's a citation for the previous 270 number that was used here in the "Crew" section in the body. The citation includes the quote "Personnel records are imprecise. The most accepted total number is 270". FWIW, I just checked the nearest source I had at hand, which is Joyner 1992, and it corroborates that. On pg. 263, he says "The number of men who sailed with the fleet probably was 260-270".


 * In Tenerife, at the behest of Magellan, four more men went aboard and one disembarked, whilst a child called Juanillo (the son of the pilot João Lopes Carvalho) joined the crew in Santa Lucía (Rio de Janeiro) This is too much detail for the introduction, but you're welcome to add it to the body.
 * although 13 others (12 Europeans and one Moluccan), who had remained captive in Cape Verde, returned to Seville a few weeks thereafter, whilst 5 survivors of the Trinidad eventually made it back to Spain between 1525 and 1527. In all, there were 35 circumnavigators Again, I think this is just a little too much detail for the body, but it would definitely be good to have in the body somewhere.
 * and Magellan had only, contrary to popular belief, underestimated the size of the Pacific Ocean by 2% I would say this contradicts the consensus of mainstream historians, so at the very least it needs an in-text attribution (rather than stating it as fact in wiki's voice). It could also use some more detail to explain why this source comes to a conclusion that differs from most historians. And again, this is not significant enough to merit inclusion in the intro (but may be appropriate to include somewhere in the body).

I hope you won't be discouraged from making further contributions - I think the second and third bullets above are definitely important pieces of information to include in the article (just not in the intro), and I may take a stab at integrating them into the body myself. Colin M (talk) 16:19, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Dear Colin M., Many thanks for your comments. I must apologise profusely in advance for my inability to reply to you in proper English. More recent French and Portuguese research works (Castro et al. 2010 [1088 pages], Castro 2018 [351 pages]) have accounted for every single crew member aboard the 5 ships: 241 in total (237 when departing Spain, 4 went aboard and one disembarked in Tenerife, then Juanillo joined the crew in Brazil). The aforementioned authors have also provided a description of each and every single crew member (date and place of birth/death when available, nationalities, personal background, role played in the journey, what became of them after the journey and until they passed away etc.). A great many of the assertions made in these aforementioned two pieces of research, which are corroborated by primary sources (legal texts, maps etc.) found in the relevant Spanish and Portuguese archives, had been often overlooked by many previous researchers. No fewer than 28 primary sources, including the 12 accounts of the trip left by 12 different crew members etc. (and not only Pigafetta and Albo), were all published and critically analysed by the aforementioned pieces of research.

Essentially, the sole purpose of my amendments is to show how different this circumnavigation looks with the addition of these more recent pieces of research which, seemingly, are hitherto largely unknown in the English-speaking academic world, which is a crying shame as they debunked a number of popular misconceptions about the journey (the underestimated size of the Pacific Ocean by Magellan being only one of them).

In order for theses additions to be regarded as cogent by English users, I shall ask an Irish friend of mine to translate them into more academic English, This will take some time though, so many thanks for encouraging me to make further contributions to this issue. Yours sincerely, J. Metrope (MA, MPhil). JMetrope (talk) 17:29, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Regarding the question of number of crew members, Joyner 1992 actually includes an appendix with a list of 241 names (including the men who came aboard at Tenerife and Rio de Janeiro), along with their rank, salary, place of origin, etc. So, at least in this specific case, it doesn't seem like the sources you're referring to have turned up any sources that weren't already known to historians writing in English. However, to the appendix Joyner adds the footnote "Due to lack of records, this list of 241 names is incomplete. The number of men who sailed with the fleet probably was 260-270". To say that there were exactly 241 men, or that the fleet left with exactly 237 men, would imply that the existing records are complete, which seems to contradict the consensus among historians. Colin M (talk) 17:43, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks for your reply Colin M. With respect to the initial number of 237 men aboard, two archive documents published by Toribio Medina (1888, I, p. 137, 147) and mentioned by Castro (2010, p. 478 footnote 1), state that 115 45 44 maravédis had been paid in advance to 237 sailors belonging to the relevant armada, not to mention that, by Royal Decree (“Real Cédula”; 5th of May 1519), the maximum number of men had been fixed at 235 by Charles V (2010, p. 477). Admittedly, these facts do not entail that there could not have been more men aboard when the armada departed, yet between the records of deaths (id est: when that of the Victoria and that of Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa on the Trinidad are being cross-examined), the figure of 241-242 men aboard becomes, at the very least, likelier that of 260-270, if you catch my drift (of course, I am not taking into account the 13 Moluccans that were on board when the Victoria left Tidore on the 21st of December 1521).

Lastly, since you are encouraging me to make further contributions, but not to include them in the introduction, I shall gladly do so by quoting different pages and elaborating upon the reasons why some researchers seem to have divergent views upon several matters pertaining to the journey. Would it, therefore, be acceptable for me to use such phrasings as: “Conversely / It may be worth recalling etc. that other researchers contend that…” whenever I mention pieces of information which: “contradict the consensus of mainstream historians”? Many thanks in anticipation of your reply. JM


 * Hey JM, a few responses:
 * re your reasoning about number of men who were aboard: I'm not a historian, so I'm not especially confident in my ability to analyze primary sources in context and draw appropriate inferences from them, and in any case, doing so is kind of contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia's WP:OR policy. I'm just assuming that the historians are competent to analyze the primary sources, and trusting them when they say 260-270.
 * since you are encouraging me to make further contributions, but not to include them in the introduction Just to be clear, my intention was not to tell you not to add anything to the introduction! I was just saying that some of the specific pieces of information I mentioned above were too in-depth for inclusion in the intro.
 * Would it, therefore, be acceptable for me to use such phrasings as: “Conversely / It may be worth recalling etc. that other researchers contend that…” whenever I mention pieces of information which: “contradict the consensus of mainstream historians”? 2 thoughts on this:
 * One style nitpick is that talking directly to the reader is generally discouraged, see MOS:NOTE.
 * As for whether to include the alternative theories at all, it really depends. It's just a question of WP:DUE weight. Factors that make it more likely that an idea contrary to the mainstream consensus is worth mentioning would include: 1) Does it appear in multiple sources, or is it just one author's pet theory? 2) Has it been discussed in independent sources (i.e. independent of the author(s) behind the theory)? 3) Are the author(s) recognized as experts in the field?
 * Also, one general note about the Castro sources, you may notice I've been replacing some of the citations to these sources with citations to other sources. I hope you won't be offended, but WP:NONENG says Citations to non-English reliable sources are allowed on the English Wikipedia. However, because this project is in English, English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when available and of equal quality and relevance. There's also the problem of accessibility. Even for those who can read French, these books don't seem to be available in any libraries outside of a handful in France, so it makes it very difficult to verify or dig deeper into a citation. May I ask if there's a reason you're drawn to using these books by this specific author/publisher over any others? Colin M (talk) 19:04, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks for your reply Colin M. My main sources (Castro et al., 2010; Castro and Duviols, 2019) are reference books on the matter in Europe: Xavier de Castro is a writer and an editor of historical books, as well as a translator (from Spanish and Portuguese into French), Carmen Bernand is a French historian and anthropologist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Bernand), Luis Filipe Thomaz is a Portuguese academic specialised in Portuguese history (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%ADs_Filipe_Thom%C3%A1z), Jocelyne Hamon translates from Spanish into French, and Jean-Paul Duviols is Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Duviols ). Naturally enough, given the subject matter, the overwhelming majority of primary sources (archives, accounts etc.) are written either in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian or French. Therefore, these experts are indeed “competent to analyse the primary sources”. “One style nitpick is that talking directly to the reader is generally discouraged”. I will bear this in mind in my future contributions. Lastly, the sole reason why I am “drawn to using these books” is that my fellow Wikipedia users and contributors may be interested in finding out about historians’ divergent views on this historical event. As a researcher myself, I believe that divergent views can be presented in a dispassionate manner, which I shall endeavour to do in my next contributions (which will also include early 16th century charts).

Please use edit summaries
Hey there, I'm just catching up on your changes to Magellan's circumnavigation. One request: could you try to use edit summaries in the future? This would be especially helpful in cases where you're effectively undoing recent edits by another user, or redoing edits that you did earlier and which were reverted by another editor. It's fine to disagree with other editors' rationales for changing some content, but it's important to communicate why you disagree. If you just undo/re-do changes without explanation, it tends to lead to endless cycles of back-and-forth reverts without reaching WP:CONSENSUS. Alternatively, if your thoughts on the subject are too long to fit into an edit summary, it can be even better to post to the article's talk page. Colin M (talk) 19:55, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Reference errors in Magellan's circumnavigation
Hey, I've noticed some recurring technical issues in your use of references in Magellan's circumnavigation which you might not be aware of: Hope that helps. Colin M (talk) 21:13, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Inline citations shouldn't have spaces between or around them.
 * Citations should generally go directly after punctuation (see WP:CITEFOOT)
 * The sfn template should only be used to refer to works that are cited in full in the bibliography section. You should not use it with arbitrary URLs as you did in footnotes such as 139, 145, 95, 104, 106, etc. (footnote numbers as of this version of the article).
 * If the sfn template is being used correctly, the generated links in the "Footnotes" section should, when clicked, take the reader to the appropriate entry in the "Bibliography" section. It seems like the ones you added are not working in this way (even the ones referring to works in the Biblio section, rather than using urls), so there's likely some metadata mismatch going on.