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Administrator Elections | Discussion phase

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:52, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Chinese Military History task force International involvement in the Battle of Yangxia

Hi Toadspike

I noticed you are a part of the Chinese Military History task force.

I am doing research on October 9th 1911 in Hankou during the the Battle of Yangxia. Some Chinese rebels were going to bomb the Russian concession there, but were caught and ran away. When they realized they were caught they started the 1911 Revolution. But this first battle was the Battle of Yangxia. The Russians, Americans, Japanese, British, Austro-Hungarians, Italians, French, and Germans all supported each other in defending the concessions. Mainly the rebels seemed to fight the Qing dynasty forces though.

It seems to me almost a mini Boxer Rebellion as far as the allies were concerned.

I want to know about European, Russian, and especially American involvement in the battle. I have a book that in 2 pages briefly goes over the battle and the foreign involvement in it, but not in much details.

I am wondering if you know of any books or articles that go over the international involvement in this battle. Also if you know of any good books on the War Lord period of China I would appreciate that too.

Thanks (:

~~~~ Historyguy1138 (talk) 15:59, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

@Historyguy1138 This is a really fascinating story. Could you tell me which book you have that mentions it? If it cites sources, e.g. in the footnotes, those might provide more information.

Chinese Wikipedia seems to mention this incident in a section here [1], but it doesn't cite any sources, which is unfortunate.

My default starting point for Chinese history is the Cambridge History of China, which we have access to via the Wikipedia Library (under Cambridge University Press). This event would probably be in Volume 10. If it mentions this incident, it should also cite sources that go into more detail.

Searching JSTOR is always a good idea. It seems a large number of books have been written on the Xinhai Revolution; you could try checking those as well. I am fairly familiar with this period of Chinese history as a reader, but I don't edit much on it, so I'm not as knowledgeable on the sourcing as perhaps some others might be. Asking at WT:China may get a better response. Toadspike [Talk] 16:49, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

"This is a really fascinating story." I think so too.

"Could you tell me which book you have that mentions it? If it cites sources, e.g. in the footnotes, those might provide more information."

Yes I can. In the Yangtze Patrol: The U.S. Navy in China https://www.amazon.com/Yangtze-Patrol-China-Bluejacket-Books/dp/1557508836, by General Kemp Tolley. He gives us a few pages of the incident on pages 65-69.

Tolley is a good author, but I wish he was better at being more specific in his citations instead of just a blank bibliography.

Also the 1911 revolution article gives a Chinese for the bombing here: 1911 Revolution#Wuchang Uprising:

It reads:

"Revolutionaries intent on overthrowing the Qing dynasty had built bombs, and on 9 October, one of them accidentally exploded.$$$$$ Footnote here $$$$$$ Sun ad no direct part in the uprising and was traveling in the United States to recruit more support from Overseas Chinese. The Qing Viceroy of Huguang, Rui Cheng (瑞澂), tried to track down and arrest the revolutionaries. The squad leader Xiong Bingkun (熊秉坤) and others decided not to delay the uprising any longer and launched the revolt on 10 October 1911, at 7:00 p.m. The revolt was a success; the entire city of Wuchang had been captured by the revolutionaries on the morning of 11 October. That evening, they established a tactical headquarters and announced the establishment of the "Military Government of Hubei of Republic of China". The conference chose Li Yuanhong as the governor of the temporary government. Qing officers like the bannermen Duanfang and Zhao Erfeng were killed by the revolutionary forces.

Revolutionaries killed a German arms dealer in Hankou as he was delivering arms to the Qing. Revolutionaries killed 2 Germans and wounded 2 other Germans at the battle of Hanyang, including a former colonel."

The footnotes source is "王恆偉. [2005] (2006) 中國歷史講堂 No. 6 民國. 中華書局. ISBN 9-6288-8529-4. pp. 3–7." Historyguy1138 (talk) 17:11, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately I'm not able to access 中國歷史講堂 卷6 民國 or find out much about its author (aiming to assess its reliability). I can try doing some searching later, but I'm currently a bit busy. I'll let you know if I find anything. Toadspike [Talk] 17:23, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Please do I would surely appreciate it, but please do so at your own pace. Own and if it would interest you, I wrote this article. About the 1 time the USA, British, and Taiping rebels teamed up to fight the Qing dynasty. (: Battle of Muddy Flat Historyguy1138 (talk) 17:32, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Woah, also fascinating! Thank you for writing it and sharing it with me :) Toadspike [Talk] 17:34, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm please you like it. It was fun to make. I might have a related research related question for you about it later. But I will leave you with the Battle of Yangxia for now, when and if you get around to it.

Thank you, and by the way in the future I would love to hear more about your work on Wikipedia and, no doubt trouble you for some book recommendations. (: Historyguy1138 (talk) 18:21, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Translation query

Hello Toadspike! I found your name on a list of users at Wikipedia:Translators available, and your userpage says you're able to do translations. I recently came across a German source for a draft I'm working on, and I ran it through a quick Google Translate (I am not familiar with how well machine translation works German to English, I know it varies a lot by language but I needed a spotcheck for usability).

I was hoping if you had a moment, you could verify the veracity of the translation for these two quotes, or provide a correction if the translations do not match the source (both from Wissen in der Fantastik ISBN 9783658177898).

Zugleich wird durch die spezielle katalogische Erfassung dieses Wissen neu geordnet, den Büchern ein neuer Platz im ‚Kosmos des Wissens‘ zugewiesen; der neue – utilitaristische – Ordnungszustand entspricht dem „Zeitgeist“ seiner „Epoche“. → At the same time, this knowledge is reorganized through the special cataloguing, assigning books a new place in the "cosmos of knowledge"; the new—utilitarian—state of order corresponds to the "zeitgeist" of its "era."

– in diesem Akt wird die gängige Bibliotheksmetapher von der Bibliothek als Zeughaus aufgegriffen (vgl. Schmidt 1999, S. 175–180). In dieser Auseinandersetzung werden die Wissensressourcen der Bibliothek materialisiert; Wissen wird in Form der Waffe direkt in eine Möglichkeit der Machtausübung übersetzt. → – in this act, the common library metaphor of the library as an armory is taken up (cf. Schmidt 1999, pp. 175–180). In this confrontation, the library's knowledge resources are materialized; knowledge, in the form of the weapon, is directly translated into a possibility for exercising power.

This is not a time sensitive request, and if you're unable to help, I completely understand. I apologize for coming to you directly, but I couldn't find any centralized place to make this kind of request, so my apologies as well if this is not the right way to go about it. Thank you for your time! NovaHyperion (talk) 04:47, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

@NovaHyperion Hello and thank you for coming to me! Checking these translations is not a problem at all. They both look good to me; although I might've phrased things slightly differently here or there, they are entirely correct. I might've reworded "special cataloguing" to "special catalogical collection" ("collection" is being used as a verb here); I'd also remove the "an" before "armory" for a more direct and powerful phrasing to match the German.

Two notes:

1. In "vgl. Schmidt 1999", "vgl." is short for "vergleich", which means "compare". "cf." also means "compare", so this translation is accurate, but as our article on it points out, "cf." is often used simply to mean "see". In this translation it is used literally to mean "compare".

2. "Auseinandersetzung", translated here as "confrontation", can also have a positive meaning: When a student sits down to learn something and "confronts" the learning material, the learning process can also be described using this word ("sich mit dem Lernstoff auseinandersetzen"). I am not sure if that sense is being used here, since I don't have much context, but it is possible that this word is not being used to indicate destructive conflict here.

I hope this helps. This was a rather fun request; I hope I receive more like it! Toadspike [Talk] 07:38, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

@Toadspike Yes, that helps greatly! It is exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much. I apologize for the lack of context, I didn't want to copy too much text so I tried to limit it to the exact quotes I anticipated needing without extraneous words (the explanatory text surrounding these quotes describes events from a novel, so I was able to verify that myself).

The confrontation being referenced here is absolutely a destructive one, but that is exactly the sort of nuance I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing. I will admit, I considered cutting the vgl. bit since it has no direct bearing on anything, but I left it in on the off-chance it was worthy of comment. Glad I left it in, that's a great fact to have on hand.

I'm glad you found the request fun, thanks again for your help! Hope you have a pleasant day :) NovaHyperion (talk) 22:11, 20 July 2025 (UTC)