Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Armed Forces of the Empire of Brazil

Armed Forces of the Empire of Brazil edit

Hello, everyone! I´ve written this article but unfortunately I am not able to write very well in English. I´d like to know if you could help me out on fixing all grammar and spelling errors in the article, and also anything else that can allow it to be reviewed to an A+. Thank you very much! - --Lecen (talk) 22:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

YellowMonkey edit

Per the Platine War article, the identical references needed to be merged. Also, ndashes are needed instead of hyphens with numbers. I've done some examples. YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:56, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

AustralianRupert edit

Good effort so far. I have the following comments:

There is some inconsistency in the way you treat numbers greater than 10 and above, i.e. in some places you spell them and in other places you use numbers. I think that the Manual of Style prefers that numbers below 10 are spelt while using numbers for 10 and above; Done
As per YellowMonkey there are still some hyphens that need to be converted into endashs or emdashes; Done
In the citations where you have a page range it should be denoted with a 'pp.' instead of a just p. which would denote a single page, e.g Janotti pp. 101–102; Done
In the Organisation section you slip into slightly informal language, e.g. "we would call it Anglo-American", I feel that this should be reworded to be less conversational; Done
The lead could possibly be expanded. If you are wanting to take it to a GA review it can be up to four paragraphs.
I'd suggest tweaking the copyrights of some of the photos. You use the PD tag which justifies use as copyright expired - "life of author plus 70 years". If you can provide the date of the author's death it might make their PD claim beyond doubt. As it is it is probably okay, but as some of the photos were taken in the late 1800s it is possible (although unlikely) that it is not quite copyright expired and could be questioned. I will elaborate. For example the photo of Dom Pedro II was taken in 1870. Assuming that the author was 20 when he took (I don't know, just making things up) and say he lived until he was 100 (another guess, it is possible), which would mean he died in 1950. 1950 + 70 (the terms of the copyright) = 2020, hence it is not quite copyright expired. Of course, all of these dates are made up. I am just using them to illustrate that it is not clear cut, although one would assume they are okay. If you know when the author (Joaquim Insley Pacheco) died, I'd suggest putting it in. Simply adding it beside his name in brackets e.g. Joaquim Insley Pacheco (died 1930). That would make it unquestionable.

That is it for now. Just a few thoughts. I just had a quick look. I will try to read over the article again for spelling and punctuation later (1am here). Well done so far, though. — AustralianRupert (talk) 15:10, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I´m sorry, but I have to confess that it taks too much time to write the article and do all those "wiki" things on it, such as ndash, wikifying it, etc... I don´t have the time. I can help with stuffs about making sources more clear, but I can´t write the article from scratch up to perfection by myself. I don´t have time now to write the lead now (I´m taking my free time to work on the article about Pedro II). If you know someone who could help, it would be wonderful. About photographers, I´ll fix that, don´t worry. But thank you very much for the insight. And last, but not least, about the "anglo-american", it is a strait citation from a book. - --Lecen (talk) 14:54, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I think I've got most of the dashes and the page ranges, and consolidated the refs. I will look to see if I can fix some of the other small things for you too. — AustralianRupert (talk) 06:29, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hchc2009 edit

Purely stylistic, but you could probably lose some of the brackets, in that "new ones with rifling barrels (that had larger reach and better precision)" could just be "new ones with rifled barrels, that had longer reach and better precision" etc.
The English needs a little work in places; "a national subscription to congregate capital", "acquired by his own expense", "its old sailing ships gave became forty steamships" etc.

As I said to AustralianRupert, I can´t work on grammar and spelling issues because my English isn´t that good. I can do a pretty much good job on writting the articles with reliable sources. But more than that, like wiki rules and good grammar, I can´t. I´m truly sorry about that.

"The long reign of fifty eight years of Dom Pedro II would represent the pinnacle of the Brazilian Navy" - might be worth saying in what sense it was the pinnacle - was this the largest it would ever be? the best organised? the most regionally powerful it would ever become? etc.

It means that that was the point when Brazilian navy reached it´s most powerful moment when compared to other nations.

There's a couple of places where you refer to a date that isn't mentioned elsewhere, e.g. "The conflicts in the Platine region did not cease after the war of 1825...", referring to the Argentine-Brazil war of 1825 - but earlier, you don't mention the date of the war, only its name.
"The anarchy caused by the despotic Rosas and his desire to subdue Bolívia, Uruguay and Paraguay forced Brazil to intercede." - slightly POV overtones - de Rosa was despotic, but he and the Emperor both wanted regional dominance and sponsored civil wars! Perhaps "The Imperial Armada continued to play a key role in the military rivalry between Buenos Aires and Brazil after the 1825 war, ultimately culminating in the Platine War of 1851." or something like that.

Pedro II never sponsored civil wars. In the Platine War, for example, Brazil aided Argentine rebels as a retaliation for Argentina´s role on Cisplatine´s seccession in 1828 and in Farrapo´s secessionist rebellion (1835-45). Although it´s true that Brazil wanted to make South America its own zone of influence, it preferred to use diplomacy. However, feel free to change the text to make it better.

"six fluvial monitors". I've not got a naval background (it may well be an accepted naval term) but this didn't sound quite right to me.

It means that they are monitors ships that are optimized to sail in rivers and not in sea.

"navy military" - is this "naval marines", or just "navy"?

Navy marines.

"the Militias and Orderlies" - what is an orderly in this context? (a link would be helpful, as per the militia link)

There are no Orderliers article in English Wikipedia. They were pretty much the same as militias, but Portugal loved to create confuse terms for everything. Removing it from the text won´t hurt the article, in my opinion.

"aiding the secessionist revolt of the Brazilian province of Cisplatine." POV - The wiki-article on Cisplatina suggests that the province had a very varied history, and according to that article had only been annexed military by Brazil itself 4 years previously; from an Imperial Brazilian perspective, yes it was a secessionist revolt; from a Republican Federal League perspective, it was a war against an Imperial invasion four years previously. Perhaps "aiding the secessionist revolt in the disputed province of Cisplatine" might capture the amibiguity here.

Portugal was the first country to colonize what is today Uruguay from 1680 up to 1777. The Spain took over up to 1815. Then Portugal reconquered it and then Brazil up to 1828. That is, the Portuguese-Brazilians kept the province for 107 years while the Spanish-Argentine for 38 years. To have an idea of the population of Uruguay in 1864, that is, 36 after its independence from Brazil, 33,3% of he population was composed of european immigrants, 33,3% of brazilian-born and the other 33,3% a mix of Portuguese, Brazilian and Spanish descendants. I was planning to write this down in the article about the Uruguayan War but I had no time so far.

"The battalions formed by mercenaries..." not sure these get a mention before this. What were they?

Pedro I hired some irish and german mercenaries to fight in the war of 1825-28. Some batallions were kept after its end.

"...received Brazilians who had joined spontaneously " Spontaneously or volunteered? (you then talk about conscription, making me suspect that you mean volunteered, but I might be wrong!)

They freely voluntereed. The conscription started at the end of 1866.

You mention that “ingenuous” (free children of slaves of ex-slaves) were allowed to join the National Guard, which made me wonder about slaves generally in Brazil at this time. Were they involved in the military (especially the navy, as ex-slaves were involved in the later mutinies over the use of the whip etc.)? Did the armed forces own their own slaves, as some nations did, for military pioneering work (digging etc.)?

30% of Brazilian population 1823 was composed of slaves. The other 70% of free men (whites, browns, blacks, etc...). By 1854, around 25% were slaves. By 1870, around 15%. By 1887, less than 0,5%. Slaves were usually owned by very rich farmers who had up to 50-100 slaves. Most Brazilians who were farmers worked by themselves. Slaves were properties, not "humans" (to them at that time, of course). They were not allowed to enlist themlseves of be enlisted in the Army of Navy. Brazil accepted ex-slaves in the Army in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-70). The most common example was an slave owner who gave a slave to the Brazilian government to fight in the war. As a rule (because the law demanded), the slave, his wife and children were the freed and the ex-slave was sent to the war, as a citizen, and not slave. 8,000 ex-slaves fought in the war. If you want to know more about it, we can exchange info on my talk page. But thank you for you help in here! - --Lecen (talk) 15:20, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks as ever for all your work on this, Hchc2009 (talk) 19:17, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

MBK004 edit

Just a one things I noticed during a quick look-through:

Ship names are supposed to be italicized per the MOS, and redlinks to them (to use an FA as a naming example per WP:NC-SHIPS: Brazilian battleship Minas Geraes) are perfectly acceptable because military vessels are notable enough for their own articles.-MBK₀₀₄ 02:51, 16 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]