Talk:Treaty of Shimonoseki

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[edit] Li Hongzhang assassination

added sentence about consequences of assassination attempt and source for this (The Search For Modern China)... I'm new to this, so if the format is lousy, I'm sorry... --Aep 06:47, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] LordAmeth mal-edits Treaty of Shimonoseki

  • Your elimination of my typesetting effects emphasis was probably about half right inasmuch as an article impacting five languages get confusing, and using such keeps me straight to the research. If you've got the time to waste, go for it.
  • However, since the user:Nik42 didn't tag the article Talk with POV objections, I had gone out and solictited 4 or 5 history savvy admins to give me a POV read there; so your timing !^$*&^$*%$%#$, as those requests went out yesterday. My comment in the talk evidently never got posted - my bad, but the damn server was down. Since you objected to this:
"The Treaty of Shimonoseki. This humiliation is regarded by many Japanese historians as being a turning point in Japanese external affairs - from this point on, the nationalist, expansionist, and militants began to join ranks and steer Japan from a foreign policy based on economic hegemony toward outright Imperialism (landgrabs). In time the once peaceful and mercantile Japan, transformed by mimicking the rapacious high handed Western powers in the coming decades - in one of history's more delicious ironies - would adopt a reverse racism and eclipse its teachers in applied Imperialism and cultural disdain. "

Without revising it's content to less emotive terms, I don't think I'm TOO IMPRESSED with your knowledge of history in that place and era, no matter what how you managed to snow your professors. One of my sources lived one or two towns over (Newton), taught at Havard most of his life, and wrote five revisions to his much reprinted books, so I suggest you review your history of the era. Especially since I've been heavily researching this area for nearly a month.

  • At the least, a competent job would assume you attempt to keep the content which is factual, however loaded the wording, and all of that is historically true. Period. I was editing late and was too tired to recast it into the four or five longwinded but less polite sentences at the time — and forgot about it. But it is accurate, if you choose to truly study your to supliment your educational wastepaper. Welcome to the bigs. This is the real world, and your school carelessness must be left at home with the sandbox.
  • Kindly be more careful in the future. You may be hell on wheels in D&D, but your history in this era is sadly lacking. Or did you just not care? For your edification, I've posted a partial list of my references on my page - follow the Flue Powder then scroll up, or use the TOC to:R-JW Project References.
User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB 29 June 2005 20:20 (UTC)

[edit] Rude and Presumptuous

Excuse me. First of all, my intent was not to dispute the historical accuracy of your information, merely your excessive use of bold and italics. When have you ever seen such use in a professional academic work? I cannot recall ever seeing entire sentences in bold in a history text or in an encyclopedia. By placing things in bold, you emphasize a point, an argument; you emphasize one point of view. This is not the purpose of an encyclopedia. If you're confused as to what I mean about objectivity, see Wikipedia is not a soapbox.
Secondly, I find it incredibly rude and presumptuous of you to accuse me of not caring about the accuracy of the text, and to talk (write) to me as if I'm a child who dabbles in 'adult' historical matters. I have a degree in History and Asian Studies, and have quite a number of quite reputable sources which I use for my research. Your wording was 'loaded', and your use of bold text excessive. That is all. There's no need to attack anyone over this. LordAmeth 30 June 2005 03:01 (UTC)
  • I Moved this answer in between it's chronological sisters below at: Refactored into Order From Above, as we were posting and editing on top of each other at the same times, some chronology is wacked by ongoing work. User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB 30 June 2005 18:41 (UTC)

[edit] POV Check And Rebuttal Interleaved

The language employed by User:Fabartus is not reflective of a Neutral Point of View (NPOV), and is not appropriate for an academic, encyclopedic treatment of the subject. See his revision as of 17:31, 29 June 2005 for 'loaded' phrases such as the following:

  • I'm relieved to hear that! At least the last thing I ever want to be accused of is being an Acedemic. User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB 30 June 2005 06:33 (UTC)
"Russian intentions were laid bare" (as if the Russians are plotting, scheming villains)
  • No, they were naked imperialists moving into a power vaccuum against a gutted, impoverished and outdated and all but non-existant Chinese Military. In this particular case, the Triple Intervention with its direct and overt threat against a Japan barely out of fuedalism by no less than three of the eras superpowers taken together with the Russians all but immediate move in the following spring to emplace defenses in Port Arthur, while starting the southern spur of the Machurian Railway tells most anyone that they were certainly hatching plans long in the making. Or perhaps you misfigure that the surveying and planning of a 550 mile railway is a matter of a few weeks work for my fellow engineers with the primative technology of THAT day? For the triple intervention to occur in a mere three days, they were also plotting together as the war progressed — Nicholas II just couldn't call up Cousin Kaiser Wilhelm and have a chat, at least not easily. We are talking Russia here. Even telegraphs were slow compared to todays tech. They had their heads together for months, and ploting was a required course in the days diplomatic world. Just ask anyone killed in WW-I! FrankB.
"the now naked and defenseless Chinese Empire" (is 'Chinese Empire' not sufficient?)
  • Sufficient in what respect? To show concisely to the casual reader unfamiliar with the subject matter that things were not well in the old kingdom? Then your phrase connotes strength, not weakness. So, not in context — if they could defend themselves the British, French, and Germans wouldn't have followed on the heels of the Russians to extort even more unequal concessions. No shield and no sword, that's naked indeed in the early days of modern weapons. The first Modern War is usually given as the American Civil War. This was the end of the first modern war with efficient machine guns and rapid fire artillery (Howitzers) plus half decent warships. Japan had already built enough light and medium industry that she could arm her self. Where were the chinese to get arms? FrankB
"Germany, France, and Great Britain had similarly exploited the Qing" (I am sure the British, French and Germans, seeking to secure trade opportunities in the Pacific, did not see it this way)
  • This comment is unbelievable from someone claiming a degree in Far Eastern Studies, what relavance to our task does what they thought about what they were about matter to those of us who see it three or four generations later? Do you think that the generally liberal polities in those countries today would be disconnected from their shameful past as a people? Some of them know the truth, the rest don't read much, and perhaps a reference to their dirty laundry will stimulate some of that useful practice. I can ask no more as a writer other than to connect in some way. Are you as an American (I assume) proud of what we did to the Native Indians here? I'm not, and I'm pretty darned conservative. But I can look back and dispassionately acess what went on in grandfathers youth, and my Moms childhood without taking umbrige at a statement of fact. I doubt most Europeans would even blink at that, but we can ask a few. Bottom line: The Europeans were rampant raciests, not without a touch of noblese obligee — but "White Mans Burden" is certainly not a modern sentiment, and we are about writing a modern encyclopedia. If that puts egg on some nations face, then they should wear it as a caution with pride to remember their youthful follies. What do your professors call prohibiting a country to change its own tariff rates, and requiring extra-territoriality (Foreigners Not Subject to Courts of the exploited nation)? Paddy Cakes? You must have skipped that lecture. FrankB
"Japan, transformed by mimicking the high handed greedy Western powers in the coming decades — in one of history's more delicious ironies..." (firstly, I do not find it at all ironic that a nation should seek to modernize and to expand; all nations do it sooner or later, if they wish to survive as major powers in the world, politically & economically, even if not diplomatically. Secondly, calling the irony 'delicious' is a blatant show of subjectivity.)
  • Modernize Yes, but the human rights abuses Japan piled up in the decades after the 21 Demands are as nauseating as anything that happened under Stalin or Hitler. Let me spell it out — this was in part a counterpoint as I was quite aware that presenting Russias record factually would seem biased. So this is counterbalance. As far as the Japanese pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, I couldn't agree more, they did a marvelous job, and would probably have developed a damn powerful economic hegemony if it hadn't been for the western powers playing Italian politics in Asia — or were you unaware that that is where the whole F*cked up balance of power welpolitik came from? Well they also taught Japan to be an exploiter, instead of an exploitee, and thats the POV you seem to have a problem with. FrankB
    • Oh! I almost missed your comment on my 'delicious' comment. How? Thats an point (I guess made weakly) that the Japanese treatment of prisoners and occupants of their new terratories were treated very well by the standards of the Europeans, at the time of this treaty. Samo samo in the R-JW. But — then things began to slide and change.

Where is the bias there? Favoring the Russians over the Japs? The Imperialists. Who? Still the point can be made better. BUT you took it out before I could get back to it. Maybe I should send you a bill. (See: Talk:Tsushima Strait) Now seriously, At least I replaced racist, but this was a work in progress... one I'd forgotten in the flame war over on Tsushima, and when I left that stubbed in this afternoon, I had to leave abruptly for some Dad duties. I think I explained to you that that sentence was constructed specifically to generate a reminder of what needed developed, and a nice concise succinct piece of work it is in THAT respect. It retriggers my thoughts when I was getting too tired to work longer that night just fine. Your changes are pretty vanilla, and I'm amused that I was editing this evening in the sections below while you were editing up there, AND I didn't even notice it missing. In any event, I didn't realize we were interleaving edits, so I'll have to take a hard copy to plan refinements. I will say this. I consider it rude that you didn't drop a note on my Talk that you were replacing the POV tag. Common courtesy when applying such a harsh editorial judgement, or a clean or a revert, would require that. As it is, you took a paragraph out that I'd worked hard to find and put back as 'notes', if you will. I must have rebuilt without the mnemonic, as I didn't miss it tonight. FrankB

"eclipse its teachers in applied Imperialism and cultural disdain to the torment and tragedy of her prisoners and subjegated peoples in the next four decades." (another grossly anti-Japanese expression that serves no purpose in this narrative, and which purports to place the Japanese above all others in their cruelty, as if no other leader or nation has ever done the equal of what Japan did.)
  • Actually, that's a mistake, as I realized after closing this edit to take my teen as Taxi-Dad. That Should be FIVE DECADES, not four. This is the casus belli of the Russo-Japanese War, not the day after it, ten years later. Are you ignorant of the thousands of Korean sex slaves the Japanese imported in those years, the abject and open racism they began to display to all their 'Coolies', including W.A.S.P. clergymen and catholics alike? Oh, they weren't avowed racists as a rule at this stage, but this was the start, and Teddy Roosevelt gave it a big push when he strong armed the Japanese into backing down on monetary reparations. Shrug. But that's history, and the history I'm trying to tell with all the background, not the sanitized white washed bland mush you seem to think the real world experienced, but the whole story, from many sources and POV. I guess you've never had the displeasure of being at a social function when a Korean and Japanese immigrants confront each other. That's some deep hate, and it had it's causes, tens of thousands of them at least. A KKK idiot couldn't hate a black President worse. Take a look at the non-sense I was just arbitrating over in Tushima Islands. Absolutely silly by our stanards, but Mr Tan and the Japanese writers obviously do not see eye to eye on much of anything. Look at the article length history - it hasn't grown much over 10% in over three hundred edits. I'm not looking to Piss people off, but I am looking to make them think and want to dig a bit deeper. FrankB

I do not mention these things with the goal of starting a flame war; I simply wish to see this article improve to an objective, academic, encyclopedic level of quality. LordAmeth 30 June 2005 03:01 (UTC)

  • Me Neither, at least on 2 of the three. But no one hates flamewars more. I've been mediating a doozy over in Tsushima Islands. Take a look at it talk and the User talk:Mr Tan, to see the lengths I've taken to stop one. But don't waste my time with POV tags. Suggest some alternate words if my academic prowess doesn't meet your freshly minted standards. Polish the language all you want, but preserve the facts. I call spades spades. The content is correct, and I don't have all that much respect for acedemics unless they can demonstrate some real world savvy and common sense. Most fail that test with being too meely-mouthed by using ten words when one word or phrase with meat will do. User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB 30 June 2005 06:33 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion Posts Moved Here

This was on LordAmeth Talk, but belongs here, so the chronological refactored second posting. FrankB

  • Rude Yes - and deliberately so. But the edit you did was unprofessional by the standards I care about, moreover, I told you above that it was a work in progress and that the paragraph you don't like was a mnemonic device. So why put a POV sticker on it tonight when a simple query would do. RU finished? Would have gotten an answer in minutes. I preview a lot. I'm not some single guy with loads of spare time, and your lack of professionalism (By not voicing your POV on my text on the talk, or by not fixing it without loosing content) is why I'm up at three am dealing with a person who's had less years than I read histories in a year. But what's this postering on your own user page. VANITY!!! If you're going to write me a note, do it where I might look, not on your own page to make yourself look good or something. Now as for the note you didn't mail:
Secondly, I find it incredibly rude and presumptuous of you to accuse me of not caring about the accuracy of the text, and to talk (write) to me as if I'm a child who dabbles in 'adult' historical matters.
    • That's the place you put yourself. All you had to do is ring the phone so to speak if you didn't want to take on the edit. I apologize on that part, but you shouldn't cut fact — no matter how damning you are of the words. You're an editor, you have a license to rephrase and extend. It says it right here on the cereal box. To me, that was rude. So let's go from here, and start over. FrankB
I have a degree in History and Asian Studies, and have quite a number of quite reputable sources which I use for my research.
    • What research? How is that material? Is the research on this material? So, I've got four degrees, we've got enough paper to clean our rear. Vanity. (I wrote that before I started over - really! <G>)

Your wording was 'loaded', and your use of bold text excessive. That is all. There's no need to attack anyone over this. LordAmeth 30 June 2005 02:30 (UTC)

    • The bold I get a little carried away with. I like a reader to wake up, though, so we may have an irreconcilable difference in any event; but I've been cutting it back some, except I find it helps me compose and keep the points and their relationships straight. If you check the date I stubbed in that expansion, you'll see it's been a while. You couldn't necessarily see that I got back to it tonight in a section edit, and you were evidently editing the same time. I don't usually leave things unfinished, but I do think its damn rude to put any kind of template on an article without informing the writer who inserted the material you object to. That's just plain politeness and common decency.
  • Re: 'When have you ever seen such use in a professional academic work? I cannot recall ever seeing entire sentences in bold in a history text or in an encyclopedia.' Never, but since you fiddled with it, I can hardly go back and see whether the sentence in question was worth the emphasis. I must have thought so. I have seen quite a few such things in engineering materials, and I wasn't exactly writing to standards. This one just fell off the radar. I don't watch my watch list much. And I'm the last person you want to refer to worship 'acedemia', at least most of it. Give me someone I can respect. Someone that's done something. Not some pen pusher that hasn't a clue as to the real world, or the private sector. I'm writing for the school kids and lay readers. Let the acedemics look out for themselves in the faculty lunchrooms. If the material is too acedemic, it puts people asleep unnecessarily, and fails to impart the excitement of the knowledge. Thus, it's an art. A balance must be struck. FrankB
    • Had you considered that concise little sentence, professionally, dispassionately you would see that it had a lot of fact to say, albeit in high emotive terms. As an editor, you destroyed rather than adjusted it. That and the invitations to get a POV+feedback from some experienced parties taken together with Nik42 failing to drop me a note was a little much on a tight schedule. I apologize for getting snotty, but seeing a partial product subjected to such hasty criticism w/o even the mitigating courtesy of notification deserves some come down. The article was lost accidently, it was hardly dressed up and ready for company. FrankB

(reminder, this heading copyed/moved from User Talk:LordAmeth)

  • In the meantime, I left you a large edit to review, plus a few things to ponder in talk. I really don't care to get into a rancorous discussion on this or anything, but your instincts could make you a valuable collaborator if you want to put this onto a higher plane. I did get pretty shirty, but follow the links on the article talk, look over what I been through, and give it some thought. User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB 30 June 2005 07:42 (UTC)

[edit] Refactored into Order From Above

(The Link to here seems to not be working with the new software. This is not the first I've seen fail since the 'alledged upgrade', so I'm not sure how to tweak it! User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB)
I do apologize for making such gross edits and not realizing that you were in the middle of working on it. I understand what that's like, leaving something for yourself to add to, and then finding that someone else has gone and changed it all. Also, the POV-tag thing, I didn't mention it in your talk page because I figured you'd notice it in your watchlist; it was the last thing I did before going to bed last night, and I was just tired and more than a little annoyed... just didn't occur to me to put it on your talk page. Again, I apologize.
As to everything else, yes I am aware of just about everything you mentioned. I just choose to discuss it in a different way. This is supposed to be an article on the Treaty of Shimonoseki, not an anti-Imperialist manifesto. What I mean to say is, every nation has dark elements in its past, every nation has done horrible things by today's standards. But that doesn't mean we need to hate every nation, and it doesn't mean we need to talk about their greed, their racism, their cruelty every time we talk about them. To respond to your point about the Native Americans, no I am not proud of what we did to them, I don't think anyone is. But I am proud that our ancestors defended themselves from external threats, and built up their country into what it is today. To some extent, at least, these things (the reservations, the Trail of Tears, etc) were done to secure the safety and prosperity of our nation, not just out of rampant greed and racism. And the same applies to just about all imperialistic efforts. Russia desired a warmwater port on the Pacific, the better to secure trade and to gain political influence, which every nation wants. Does that make them villainous racists and warmongers? You seem to make China out to be the defenseless angel in this scenario - did they not seize Manchuria and make Korea a tributary state? Did they not treat the foreign traders with enormous contempt, refusing them fair opportunities for trade? Did China not, a century or so later, tear itself apart condemning its people to terrible horrors, poverty, and mass killings in the name of Communism? No country is blameless, and by going out of our way to label them every time we mention them, we not only lose the objectivity we are supposed to maintain here as an encyclopedia, but we distort the purpose and meaning of the article. Again, we're here to discuss the causes & effects of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, not to argue the degree to which Russia, France, Germany, and Japan are evil, racist, greedy imperialists. Every country simply did what they thought was necessary for their own well-being.
If you need to see what changes I made, you're welcome to check out the history tab, and look back as far as you need to, to before I touched anything. LordAmeth 30 June 2005 11:12 (UTC)

[edit] Response (Not Posted due to length) on User Talk

(i.e. Moved before saved on User_Talk: LordAmeth User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB 30 June 2005 18:41 (UTC)

OK I've seen your post on Talk:Treaty of Shimonoseki, and regardless of how crabby I was yesterday — again, big apologies on that on several different levels, Wiki has done amazingly bad things to the number of hours of sleep I've been getting — we appear to not be all that far apart. The main difference really seems to be that I want WikiHistory to emphasize hidden relationships glossed over by the drier styles of experts used to being peer reviewed by other experts, as I want the prose to provide enough 'glue contextually' that the lay reader can get important connections that aren't made in any of the usual terse references. This tendancy to gloss 'professional knowledge', is essentially why after six months of occasional edits as a AnomUser, I finally decided to get involved herein regularly. To give an example of what I mean as bad exposition, look at the Korean history sections of Tsushima Islands — JBell did some copyedit therein yesterday, but that history proceeds so often from term and title that it needs 'dumbed down' by appropriate expansion introducing terms smoothly et al. If you can step outside the shoes of your expert training, and glimpse what I mean by that, you will understand that that is essentially where I was trying to go when I FIRST modified the treaty article. In essence, I don't see the sins of the fathers as something that should be glossed, but as things that are needful reminders to where Homo Sapiens has been, and come from and through. The old saw, "A people that do not study their past, have no future", is very much something I believe whole heartedly, and the only soapbox I'm interested in occupiing. If you can forgive my over reactions, I'd welcome you applying your professional training to backstop my hacks.

"Russia desired a warmwater port on the Pacific, the better to secure trade and to gain political influence, which every nation wants. Does that make them villainous racists and warmongers? You seem to make China out to be the defenseless angel in this scenario - did they not seize Manchuria and make Korea a tributary state? Did they not treat the foreign traders with enormous contempt, refusing them fair opportunities for trade? "
  • To the sources I've read, in a word 'Yes', just not so bluntly. The authors had the leisure of booklength to work within, whereas we on Wiki need to distill that significe but (as I see it), and make the connections plain to the browsing readers.
  • I don't know what you did as a kid, but if you were interested enough in history to get a degree in the subject, you probably did as I did an skimmed from one topic to another 'linked' related topic — we call that browsing (then and now, I guess) of course, and Wiki is a perfect venue for such ad hoc dissemination of knowledge. A big motivator for me.
    • We do have the length on an electronic media to treat it far better than any printed encyl. work, and we should use that advantage!. Play to it, in fact.
  • There is certainly no question as to the racist/chauvanistic POV in that era (right up through the next seven decades at least!), but it is a poor weapon that does not point in both directions, so your comments wrt China's attitude and actions are certainly equally germane. In fact, some of that is totally new to me, and that's just the kind of filter that is valuable in making an article topnotch. I hope you realize by now that I'm not championing POV, but exposition in full. Toning down a poor choice of phrase is totally appropriate, it was the deletion that irked me, as I think my initial sally made clear. Still, that was wrong, I shouldn't have vented like that. I would be friends. I'm actually pretty easy going.
    • Perhaps you should work them into the article to balance the reminders of Imperialism I believe are appropo. In some ways, I'm in over my head on all these Far Eastern topics — its not an area I ever gave more than cursorary attention until recently, at least not to pre-WW-II and immediately preceding events, whidh tended to gloss this era; so it came as quite a shock to me to find that with all the WW-II reading I have done over the decades, how badly the fact that this treaty, the Triple Intervention, and the R-JW were presented as root causes. Your classes almost certainly did better there, but being an engineer, I'm a tad miffed and shocked that such things hadn't been laid bare in many many books.
  • The capstone of all that is I, a self-admitted Military History Junkie, had seen some mentions of the Battle of Tsushima, and the R-JW, but remember not one vanilla historically professional paragraph that devulged how important and why the events were important wrt to the later Japanese evolution as an Empire, I'd taken from those glosses only the terms without the glue that would have made the matters something to be looked into more fully as worthy topics on there own. Hence, the breadth and scope of the background when I did get a glimpse from Morrison was shocking in the extremis. So Frank wants to prevent that sort of shock, as this era in Japanese history is also a genesis of casus belli for the chain of events that lead to the present via WW-II — in this I'm only following the work of well regarded historians like the Warners and Reischauer, Nish and Morrison. So no soapbox. Just an attempt to get their conclusions out into the light of day. I'd welcome your help!
  • The article looks pretty good as far as I can tell from a screen reading. Have at it if you feel it needs adjusted. My mind pretty much still works on perusal of paper, and such further development almost always benifits from sitting a while. So do what you want. Again, apologies. I'll take a look again in a week or two and see if it needs any tweaking. On Wiki, none of us go unedited and second guessed no matter what!
User:Fabartus || Talkto_FrankB

[edit] Cede, Recede and Re-cede

  • I restored the term 'recede' (no hyphen) today into the Aftermath section. This is pretty acedemic, even picyune matter, but in my understanding, Ceding and Receding a terratory are complimentary operations - inverses. The term 'Recede' is used authoritatively by one of the far east historians I cite (see above from six months ago or so), as I know, for the term gave me pause as well. So I took time to consult a dictionary when it occured... a good month or so before my original edit on this article occurred.
  • Somewhat later in the 'Aftermath' paragraphs, someone has used a hyphenated form. Stylewise, my urge is to be consistant, but the matter is of little import. I let that occurance stand, as it does connote properly within the context of it's paragraph. Someone with a better grasp of english grammer nuance is needed to sort this one out. To my mind, the diplomatically technical 'recede' and the english construct 're-cede' are equivilent alternative usages... which, if I recollect my teachings should then revert to the hypenless form. Someone else make this call please!
FrankB 19:00, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] common misconception in Korea

I asked more than 100 Korean people in Korea. All they said was Korea had been independent for 5000 years. They did not know Korea was a client state.... until Treaty of Shimonoseki 1895. What a surprise.

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