Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Platine War

Platine War

Hello to everyone! I have been working on this article for quite some time by now. I believe it is a good article, but perhaps with some grammar or spelling errors that could be easily fixed if identified. Thus, I would like to ask for your help to review the article and make it better, if possible. Thank you very much. - --Lecen (talk) 13:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

YellowMonkey

• Citations that are the same need to be merged. I'll do some examples for you
• For the montage, can you put an explanation on the image page at least of what each of them are? They need a source for each of the constituents to be PD. I presume the individual pics were before 1860 but that you grouped them, whcih should be noted on the image page YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 01:47, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
• Can you move the commanders into the infobox. The ARG and URU guys, it doesn't say which side they were on YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:51, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I´ve putted the information about each image in the compilation. I´ve moved the commanders into the infobox. - --Lecen (talk) 11:53, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Jinnai

• Lead is not adequete. It does not tell the outcome or aftermath of the war for starters. Some more detail during the war would also be helpful, but not too much.
• In the section The Empire of Brazil the line "It was probably the only one with a steady and democratic constitutional regime." would appear to be original research. If the source states that it should be better clarrified that historical evidence justifies that.陣内_Jinnai 01:24, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, fixed it. I´ll improve the heading later. I presume everything else is ok? - --Lecen (talk) 01:47, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell. It's getting late though so some trivial stuff may have slipped by.陣内_Jinnai 02:33, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

AustralianRupert

Looking pretty good, although I haven't read the whole article through yet. I have the following comments:

• There are some stylised quotation marks that should be converted to straight quotation marks ("), an example is in The Empire of Brazil reacts section (this is a nitpick, I know);
• The lead could be expanded, up to four paragraphs if you want (usually required for a GA mark);
• The reference error checker indicates that there are quite a few references that are the same. As per Yellow Monkey's comment these should be consolidated using WP:NAMEDREFS;
• As per my comment in the Armed Forces of the Empire of Brazil review, I suggest adding more details about the authors of the images used if you can (i.e. date of death) in order to put their PD claim beyond doubt;
• Possibly format the entries in the Bibliography using the {{cite book}} format.
• Add ISBNs to all the sources if you can.

Hope this helps. — AustralianRupert (talk) 15:26, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Hchc2009

Really good to see a substantial article on this. A few comments:

• The odd untranslated/linked word early on - e.g. "the caudilho searched" in the 'Juan Manuel de Rosas dictatorship' section.
• I think there's room for some further polishing of the translation - "The Argentine dictator looked to hinder the contact of Paraguay with the exterior thus to submit it to his will." "With almost the totality of the Uruguayan territory at his hands, Oribe allowed..." "a convict monarchist", "they practised booties and murders", "the decurrent instability" etc. I'm happy to give it a thorough scrub if you like.

::My english sucks. I´m trying to find someone who could fix all grammar and spelling issues. However, I had no luck so far.

• I do sense a POV in the article, but this may be a result of the translation rather than intent. A couple of examples:

We have the "assassinations" and "murders" of one side - I'm really not certain from context if these are murders or assassinations, or just deaths in a bloody civil war.

They were political murders. Those deaths were not resulted from battles in a civil war, but killings ordered by Rosas. I did not enter in details because that should be done on his article.

There is the "old Brazilian province of Cisplatine" in 1830; the wikipedia entry on Cisplatina describes it as a Brazilian province from 1815-30 only, and as Spanish before that - I don't know the full details, but it sounds disputed at the very least.

Portugal colonized Uruguay first, from 1680 up to 1777. The Spain took over up to 1815. Portugal reconquered and then Brazil kept it up to 1828. The text says that the once Brazilian Cisplatine changed its name to Uruguay.

The Argentinian military is comprised of "thugs" - it feels a little pejorative.

They were not soldiers but in fact, men who worked for the caudillos. They were thugs and bandits. We can not even call it a militia as they weren´t.

You could go for 'irregular', which could capture the sense of 'thug' I think you're after here, but wouldn't be perojative or imply they were an organised militia; if they were bandits, however (i.e. the source you're citing states that they met the definition at Outlaw), I'd go with 'bandit'. Or you could go for "formed almost entirely of men drawn from the caudillos who supported them", which would also keep it neutral. Hchc2009 (talk) 15:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Brazil's desire for regional hegemony is uncommented on; Argentina's is.

::Yes, it is. Read again. It says clearly that Brazil wanted to make South America its own zone of influence.

• The interests of France and Britain in uninhibited trade could be made clearer (if I remember correctly, their original problem with de Rosas, and why they intervened during the civil war to keep the ports open).

**That´s a matter to be written more detailed in the article about the Guerra Grande, not in the Platine War article.

• I didn't entirely understand how the "internal stability caused by the victory over Argentina allowed the material development of the Empire of Brazil" - insofar as it wasn't clear to me how the victory caused internal stability in the Brazilian empire.

Rosas kept aiding seccessionist rebels in southern Brazil for years. Once Brazil defeated Rosas, it also ended any possibility of rebels in Rio Grande do Sul try once again to rebel.

• (additional) Just had a look through the Spanish wikipedia articles on the Guerra Grande - some material there could probably be incorporated - the fate of the escaped slaves at the end of the conflict, for example.
  • The Platine War was not the Guerra Grande. Different conflicts. They are part of a larger conflict in the Platine War, if you want to consider it as such. However, Spanish Wikipedia never use sources. I prefer not to put something wich I´m not sure if it is true. - --Lecen (talk) 14:45, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
  • There is a strong line of thinking in other English wikipedia articles that places the Platine War as part of the Uruguayan Guerra Grande conflict (see Uruguayan Civil War for example). I wouldn't suggest that you turn the Platine article into an article on the Guerra Grande, but the introduction might usefully capture the different perspectives - i.e. that for Brazil, the Platine War was a specific international war against a troublesome neighbour; for Uruguay it was part of a very long running internal civil war (the Guerra Grande); and for Argentina it formed almost the end of the internal Federales-Unitarios conflict.Hchc2009 (talk) 15:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Hchc2009 (talk) 18:30, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

The source says: "Mas essa gente não tinha entusiasmo pela ingrata causa que tentava defender e o seu general, sem estado-maior, sem técnicos, não sabia aproveitar as inegáveis vantagens dum terreno propício. O seu exército, na maioria, era um "exército de presa, sem pátria e sem lei", composto pela escória da província de Buenos Aires e de seus arredores. Não havia unidade na sua formação e as tropas verdadeiramente veteranas atingiram a pouco mais de dois mil homens. Source: Barroso, Gustavo. Guerra do Rosas: 1851-1852. Fortaleza: SECULT, 2000, p.119. Although the author is Brazilian, he cite his sources as "Ramos Mejia - Rosas y su Tiempo, Atanasio Martinez, Buenos Aires, 1927, vol. III, pp.157 and 157, and Private Memo of "del Ministerior de Guerra y Marina". Both Argentine sources.

In English: "But this people [Rosas´soldiers] did not have enthusiasm for the ungrateful cause that they tried to defend, their general had no military staff, no experts, was not wise enoulgh to use in his advantage the undeniable advantages of a propitious terrain. His army, in its majority, was one "army of looting, without native land and nor law", composed by the scum from the province of Buenos Aires and its outskirts. It did not have unity in its formation and the truly veteran troops were a little more than 2,000 men".

The Guerra Grande, or uruguayan Civil War ended when Oribe surrended. The Argentine civil wars ended when Rosas fled. However, the international war between Argentina and Brazil that started in 1851 ended after the Battle of Caseros in 1852. They are all connected and part of a larger conflict between the Portuguese and Spanish American world that began in 1500 (or 1825 if you want to begin with the Argentina-Brazil War). - --Lecen (talk) 17:28, 19 July 2009 (UTC)