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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Southern Rhodesian military involvement in the Malayan Emergency

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article promoted Hawkeye7 (talk) 13:37, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Southern Rhodesian military involvement in the Malayan Emergency edit

Nominator(s): —Cliftonian (talk)


Zimbabwe-Rhodesians of all races were involved in the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s, which proved the birthing ground for the Rhodesian SAS, which was there between 1951 and 1953, as well as a key location in the pre-histories of the Rhodesian Light Infantry and the Selous Scouts. The Rhodesian African Rifles were there between 1956 and 1958. These were four of the most important units in the Rhodesian Security Forces during the Bush War of the 1970s. Several of the Rhodesians' top-ranking officers in the Bush War were Malaya vets: Jakkie Cilliers refers to them in his study of the Bush War as the "Malaya clique".

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because I think it meets, or is at least close to, meeting the criteria. It just passed a GA review by Anotherclown (talk · contribs). I look forward to seeing your comments. —Cliftonian (talk) 21:51, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Great work again Cliftonian. Here are my comments:

  • "The conflict had its roots in the Second World War, in which local ethnic Chinese fought alongside the British in Malaya against occupying Imperial Japanese forces; these Malayan Chinese subscribed to communist political thinking, and called themselves the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army." - I see what you're getting at here, but this wording is too broad. Only a small sub-set of Malayan Chinese were involved in the Communist resistance units, and these units didn't do a great deal of fighting. The British forces operating in occupied Malaya were also quite limited.
  • Thanks for the compliment at the top. I'm sorry if the wording here was too broad, I was just paraphrasing the source material. I have altered to "in which groups of local ethnic Chinese fought alongside Britain's limited forces in the country against the occupying Imperial Japanese". Is this better? —Cliftonian (talk) 09:25, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some background on the state of the SAS would be helpful - I believe that it had been disbanded at the end of World War II, and was re-formed to fight in Malaya. It didn't have the same kind of reputation, or role, that it does today.
  • "They achieved a 100% success rate on operations in southern Pahang province in 1951" - what did this involve? Most of the Commonwealth operations of the war involved wandering around in the jungle without ever encountering Communist forces (who were quite small in number and tended to operate in small groups).
  • The source doesn't say. I must say it confused me a tad too. That paraphrased sentence is more or less all it said. I guess it means they accomplished all their objectives, though as you say that is hard to define specifically. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful here. —Cliftonian (talk) 09:25, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd suggest removing this sentence then: it seems unlikely that the unit really achieved all the goals it was ever set (I don't think that any military unit engaged in active operations for a prolonged period could claim this), and strong evidence is needed to support a claim that it did. Nick-D (talk) 11:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Were the men who volunteered to fight in Malaya (and especially those selected for the SAS) World War II veterans?
  • The source doesn't say specifically; it says there were some WW2 vets, but doesn't give anything more specific. I've noted this in the prose. —Cliftonian (talk) 09:25, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In March 1953, after two years in Malaya, the men of "C" Squadron returned home, having completed their required two-year tour of duty" - this is a little bit repetitive
  • "The black Southern Rhodesian soldiers were reportedly naturals when it came to tracking." - were they? If so, why? (had they been trained in this in their youth or after joining the army?) Nick-D (talk) 07:20, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good call here. I've put something about this; many of them came from rural areas and so knew a lot about this from their youth. Thanks for the comments and the kind words; I must apologise for some of my responses, which I fear are not really adequate. —Cliftonian (talk) 09:25, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support My comments are now addressed. Once again, this article is great work Cliftonian, and your positive responses to other editors' comments is to be commended. Nick-D (talk) 10:34, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the support and the very kind words, Nick! —Cliftonian (talk) 11:14, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
  • Surely this should be at 'Military involvement of Southern Rhodesia in the Malayan Emergency' - it has nothing on the military history of S. Rhodesia in Africa during the period.
  • I'll defer on this to other reviewers, but I would be comfortable with this. —Cliftonian (talk) 09:25, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Southern Rhodesian military involvement in the Malayan Emergency" is another alternative. —Cliftonian (talk) 09:52, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could you clarify - the RhAR element deployed was actually 1st Battalion, Rhodesian African Rifles?

Buckshot06 (talk) 08:47, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't think this is a bad idea. I'll look into doing this at some point. —Cliftonian (talk) 09:25, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I reviewed this article for GA and I am satisfied that it now meets the ACR criteria fol recent improvements. A couple of minor points though:
    • The Citation Error tool reports one error:
      • "shorttmcbride1920" (Multiple references are using the same name)
    • This seems a little awkward to me: "The SAS already had "A" and "B" Squadrons", perhaps consider rewording to something like "The SAS already had an "A" and "B" Squadron so the Southern Rhodesians became "C" Squadron..." (suggestion only)
    • This seems a little repetitive to me (on reconsideration of my previous comments at GA): "Engaged largely in counter-insurgency warfare, the Southern Rhodesians acquitted themselves well in the eyes of their superiors, becoming skilled in counter-insurgency's basic principles and doctrines...", specifically use of "counter-insurgency" twice in the same sentence. (suggestion only) Anotherclown (talk) 13:28, 15 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the support and the comments Anotherclown, I've attempted to resolve the issues raised, hopefully to your approval. —Cliftonian (talk) 13:45, 15 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (A1,A2)
    • I've watched this one for a while and I can't get a handle on why this whole article isn't WP:OR, which by itself probably isn't a insurmountable problem although none of your sources use the title of the article (which has changed a few times already) as far as I can tell and it seems like you are telling a story with bias, so its not really NPOV either. I also don't know how anyone would actually find this article - the what links here is all user pages. Maybe ping one of the admins to look this over? Kirk (talk) 02:55, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • How is the article OR? I think it would be helpful if you could also explain how the article is 'biased', which is a rather serious claim to make. Your claim about the article not being linked from any other article is outright wrong - did you check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Southern_Rhodesian_military_involvement_in_the_Malayan_Emergency? Nick-D (talk) 04:51, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • I must say I'm rather mystified by Kirk's comments and opposition, but I'm more than happy to look into any specific issues he has, if he will note them. I must say I don't see how this is OR or biased, and his claim about this not being linked from any other is quite simply false; I know because I added links to countless mainspace articles. And even if this last allegation were true, I don't really see what it has to do with anything. —Cliftonian (talk) 05:10, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • I've never read an article about this subject before, and I have a hard putting the article in a category; the OR parts are the article title, and the synthesis of two unit histories, a narrative of a conflict, and a historian's opinion about the effect of the Malayan Insurgency on the politics of (Southern) Rhodesia and its civil war.
Is the article title an actual "thing" written about by secondary sources - if you can point me to source(s) that use this phrase I'd be happy to review them but they look hard to find to me at first glance.
I have not yet seen any book or article which attempts to tell the whole story of the Rhodesian experience in Malaya, and so far as I know this is the first. However, I don't think the article title is OR; as the article explains, Rhodesians were involved in the Malayan Emergency in a military capacity and all this article does is explain how. After all, the material you can easily find in other sources about either the SAS or RAR in Malaya implicitly requires you to come to the conclusion that there was Rhodesian military involvement in the conflict. Combining the SAS and RAR material into this article is required by the scope (there were two tours of duty, each by a different Rhodesian unit, and this is the most logical way to organise the article). I don't believe this is synthesis of sources as anybody can clearly read the sources given and see that the conflict referred to in each case is the same one. I don't see how the narrative of the conflict is OR either, as all of this is sourced and given as background. —Cliftonian (talk) 14:39, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
NPOV/Bias might be the wrong terms but this article reads to me like its telling a story about the Rhodesian Bush War not just facts about the Malay involvement. Also, it only has a single citation for "Malaya clique", which I gather is a nickname for something which deserves a link and I got the feeling while reading the article that the previous prose leads up to this section. That is, the article should be "Malaya clique" and most of this prose is its 'Background' section.
I'm not so sure this is true. The previous sections tell the story of the SAS in Malaya, then of the RAR in Malaya, and the last section, which is what I think you are referring to, was actually only added later. The original intention was certainly not to tell a story about the Bush War, but to relate what happened to those Rhodesians who served in Malaya (which it does in detail, particularly in the RAR's case). It is very relevant to this subject to explain its links to the Bush War. I don't think relocating the article to "Malaya clique" would be a good idea (this is, as is made clear in the text, only what the particular historian, Jakkie Cilliers, refers to them as, but I thought it was a nice turn of phrase). The focus of the article would have to be strongly shifted, and the relabelling of the previous sections as "background" would make it remarkably lopsided. Moreover, having the article be about the "Malaya clique" would make all of the material on the RAR irrelevant, as all of the Malaya clique figures were former SAS men. —Cliftonian (talk) 14:39, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Are there other FA/A-level MilHist articles written about COUNTRY military involvement in the CONFLICT I can compare? The few I found are not high quality.
Military history of Australia during World War II is an FA, though admittedly on a topic far larger in scale than this article. —Cliftonian (talk) 14:39, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nick-D/Cliftonian, I went to the What Links here on the left, chose "article" as the name space and there are zero article links. Am I doing something wrong? Kirk (talk) 13:51, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I just chose "article" as the name space and it shows a few dozen articles (I didn't count exactly). I can only think you must have made a mistake here. I hope my responses are to your satisfaction and look forward to hearing more of your thoughts. —Cliftonian (talk) 14:39, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I struck my oppose since I noticed all the articles showed up all of a sudden yesterday, perhaps the renaming process must have taken a while? I still don't like the last section but if you remove that section rest of the article could just be put into the blank spaces in the parent article(s). Kirk (talk) 14:08, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose that must be what happened. Regarding the other comment, I think a better course of action is to keep this article as it is and to summarise Malaya in the parent articles (SAS and RAR). I feel the material we have here summarises Rhodesia's involvement in Malaya well, with context and background, and this would be lost by cut-and-pasting the various sections into separate articles. —Cliftonian (talk) 14:18, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. Please check the edit summaries. - Dank (push to talk)

  • Ugh. Before I get started, please look at every occurrence of "involve" (and others forms of the word), "sense", "terms", and other words that tend not to mean anything, and see if you can reword without them. It's generally difficult for copyeditors to fix this problem. - Dank (push to talk) 22:07, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The first sentence says that "Southern Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe in 1980) became involved in the Malayan Emergency ...". That's a string of words with no meaning; getting involved in something might mean writing a paper about it or hosting negotiations. The reader has to read on to find out that troops were sent. The problem, roughly speaking, is that the press constantly seeks to say less and less about more and more, so our brains are awash in contentless, featureless language. Kill it; kill it with fire. - Dank (push to talk) 08:13, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lead is much, much better, thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 12:33, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose per standard disclaimer. Not too much to do; nice work. - Dank (push to talk) 15:43, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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