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Uruguayan War

Uruguayan War (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/Uruguayan War/archive1
• Featured article candidates/Uruguayan War/archive2

Nominator(s): Lecen (talk) 11:43, 14 March 2013 (UTC) • Astynax

Everyone has at least heard of the Paraguayan War (a.k.a. War of the Triple Alliance) (1864-70). But few have heard of the war that led to it. The Uruguayan War was the second of the international wars fought by the Empire of Brazil under Emperor Dom Pedro II. It was short and successful, but it brought terrible consequences to all countries involved directly and indirectly.

Writing this article was not an easy task. The Uruguayan War is usualy mentioned on sources in English either in an introductory chapter or the first chapter in works about the Paraguayan War. They talk about the Uruguayan civil war that caused it, a little bit about the siege of Salto and Paysandú, only to focus on the Paraguayan invasion. For the first time the entire war has been brought to English. Everything. All military operations. I'd like to thank Hoodinski for creating the much-needed maps for this article. They look wonderful. I hope you all enjoy a little bit of South American military history. Lecen (talk) 11:43, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Most war info boxes contain the headings Strength and Casualties and losses, would it be difficult to include these here? Mattximus (talk) 19:23, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, because there are figures on how many Brazilians fought the entire war, the same goes to Blancos and Colorados. How many civilians died is also a mystery, as the "aftermath" section tells. I don't want to guess them since it would mean my POV. Regards, --Lecen (talk) 19:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Comment: First of all, I don't understand why are Argentina, the Argentine parties Unitarian and Federal and Bartolomé Mitre listed in the infobox. The only mentions to Argentine topics are in the context sections, neither Argentina nor any Argentine military leader or army (unitarian or federal) is ever mentioned in war action from "Early engagements" to "Fall of Montevideo"... except when it is mentioned that Mitre (listed as a commander?) refused to join the conflict and had Argentina stay neutral. Being allied in previous conflicts does not count, nor providing mere political or economic support: the infobox is for actual belligerents.

Second, why is this conflict treated as a stand-alone war, and not as a campaign of the War of the Triple Alliance? After all, if we skip all the introductory and contextual information, all we got here are a handful of sieges and naval skirmishes, and military actions continue after it (Solano López takes military action in support of the Blancos, and the war heads next to López). In fact, I feel that the article is a bit too big than it actually should: there are lengthy explanations of things that lead nowhere, lengthy explanations that overlap with similar explanations that may be made for the War of the Triple Alliance itself, high use of quotations, trivial information... for example, in "Army of the South in Paysandú", we have 9 lines and 3 quotations just to say that Brazilians were more numerous and better armed. If, as you say, all English literature treats this conflict as a campaign of the War of the Triple Alliance, it must be for a reason... perhaps because that's what it is. Here I searched Google books for "Uruguayan War" plus "Flores", and only got 68 results.

I should point as well that this article uses English and Brazilian sources, but lack any Uruguayan sources. Cambalachero (talk) 00:04, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

By the way, File:Gaucho 1868c.jpg is a lower version of File:Gaucho1868b.jpg, a featured picture made from the same photo (and it is an Argentine gaucho, makes little sense when talking about Uruguayans). Still, it should be better replaced by an image with higher EV in relation with the Blanco-Colorado conflict, rather than just a generic image of a random gaucho. Cambalachero (talk) 00:26, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

First, I take these criticisms seriously ... I've said similar things in the past at Milhist (although not specifically about Lecen and Astynax's articles), that military history is not just things that go "boom" ... it's history. (And a lot of Milhist guys know that ... quite a few have or will soon have PhDs in history ... but some don't know.) But that's just my personal opinion about military history. My personal opinion about Misplaced Pages is that "it is what it is", and there's not a lot that I can, or should, do to try to make it something completely different. Many of the more than 130,000 military history articles don't do a lot more than tell you who did what when and what the results of the combat were. Lecen and Astynax tend to cover context ... but if they want to write an article that's long on what happened and short (or shorter than you want it to be) on historical context, I'd be hypocritical to oppose their article on the grounds that we don't do that here ... because we do in fact do that here, sometimes. Having said that, I hope the three of you can reach a position that you can all live with. - Dank (push to talk) 03:34, 15 March 2013 (UTC)