Talk:Nanking incident of 1927

Untitled

Previously the entry for Nanjing Incident had been a redirect to Nanking Massacre, sadly confusing readers. I've given a brief account of this fairly important incident of an earlier era. I won't say that the Nanking Masscre has never been called the Nanjing Incident, but I certainly never have seen it so. In any event, I also refer the reader to the massacre entry.

Will O'Neil 05:07, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I have to eat my words regarding the issue of whether the Nanking Massacre is known also as the Nanjing Incident -- it certainly is in some contexts. See, e.g., the article "The Nanjing Incident: Recent Research and Trends" by David Askew at [1]. I ought to have realized that this was how the Japanese would call it. In any event, I'm revising the article to reflect this.

--Will O'Neil 07:39, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I would like to re-write this article in include more than the military aspect. This will be my first article. Are there objections to my doing this. Any suggestions on how to proceed. (I do not have my text finished, but do not want to work on it further, if it will not generally be acceptabl. Thanks Hilyard (talk) 22:22, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I strongly recommend rewriting. I am not an expert on the subject matter but the event deserves more careful treatment, especially giving attention to (a) grammar and sentence structure and (b) the political ramifications of the incident (including its impact on foreign relations). Incidentally, as far as I understand it was referred to as the "Nanking incident" starting soon after it occurred, because "incident" is how diplomats generally refer to events that affect relations between nations, rather than characterizing them as battles, attacks, massacres, or other such potentially inflammatory terms. SteveG23 (talk) 15:43, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Wording?

"an entirely different and more horrendous event a decade later" is horrendous really the word to use here? a few hundred thousand Chinese were killed in the Nanjing Massacre, while in the Nanjing Incident there were 40 deaths at most. Maybe that phrase should just be taken out? LuChang 10:50, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Big Problem

I have been researching this event and I have found a few different sources that contradict this article alot. First and foremost, my sources say nationalist troops were in control of the city when a communist army attacked and in the ensuing chaos, Nationalists attacked the foreign consulates while the communists committed other atocities before taking contol of Nanking. This article says warlord troops were in contol of Nanking and Nationalist forces attacked them. However, at the top of this article is does say that communists were involved. My sources also say that only one British cruiser actually bombarded the city, with two American and one British destroyer though several other warships were present. I have just finished writing an article about this event so I am going to assmume there are alot of mistakes in this article and replace it with one that makes a little more sense and has references. Please respond here if there is a problem, thanks.--$1LENCE D00600D (talk) 02:27, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Please do not edit the campaignbox unless you want to add more appropriate links or something.--$1LENCE D00600D (talk) 03:39, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Rewrite Nanking Incident I would like to re-write this article to include more than the military aspect. This will be my first article. Are there objections to my doing this? Any suggestions on how to proceed. (I do not have my text finished, but do not want to work on it further, if it will not generally be acceptabl.) Thanks Hilyard (talk) 23:23, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Rewrite this article

I would like to re-write this article in include more than the military aspect. This will be my first article. Are there objections to my doing this? Any suggestions on how to proceed. (I do not have my text finished, but do not want to work on it further, if it will not generally be acceptabl.Hilyard (talk) 20:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Historical context -- the Northern Expedition

According to this article, which is talking about events in March 1927:

"Conflict in China had been the same for years, since the beginning of the Warlord era, rebels from the south and communists in the north fought a long war which finally ended in 1949 with the Nationalist withdrawal from the mainland to Taiwan."

I thought the military conflict in the period of Northern Expedition (1926 to 1928) the two chief belligerents were

• the Kuomintang, moving north from the Guangzhou region, and initially supported by the Communist Party;
• Warlord alliances such as the Beiyang government, the Fengtian clique and the Zhili clique.

Or is the WP article about the Northern Expedition completely wrong? Kalidasa 777 (talk) 02:05, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I just had a look at the Time Magazine report currently cited at note 4. The report, dated April 4, 1927, says that Nanjing (Nanking) was taken over the previous week by "the Nationalists", who were fighting against the "the Shantungese". "Nationalist" being a pretty close translation of "Kuomintang", the Time report implies that what happened in Nanjing in March 1927 was the Kuomintang taking Nanjing from control of the warlords. And not, as our WP article currently says, a matter of the Communists taking Nanjing from the Kuomintang. Kalidasa 777 (talk) 08:47, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Chiang Kai-shek article contradicts this one

I've just been looking at the WP page about the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek. In the section Chiang_Kai-shek#Competition_with_Wang_Jingwei, it states that Chiang Kai-shek took Nanjing (aka Nanking) in March 1927, and from that time on he made Nanjing his capital. This contradicts what is said in the current version of this Nanjing incident article, that Nanjing was the KMT capital prior to March 1927 when it taken over from the KMT by the Communists. Something really does seem to be wrong here... Kalidasa 777 (talk) 09:56, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Cited book does not support what is said

I've been looking at the cited pages in the book Yangtze Patrol by Kemp Tolley. I agree it's quite a good source, but it does NOT support what the article says about which Chinese groups were fighting which. According to this book

• The victorious forces in the battle over Nanjing are described as Cantonese (page 154), which means they were coming from the south. Canton, also called Guangzhou is in the far south of China, and was the stronghold of the Kuomintang.
• the losers are described (on page153) as Shantungese and as Northerners, loyal to Chang Chung-ch'ang. Chang Chung-ch'ang is an old way of writing the name of Zhang Zongchang. He was then the warlord of Shandong. (Shantung).

In short it confirms what is said in the WP page about Chiang Kaishek. It was the Kuomintang, moving up from the south, who took Nanjing from the warlord in March 1927. How was this transformed into an account of the Communists from the north taking the city away from the KMT?

Tolley's book does mention that some of the victorious troops identified themselves as "Bolshevists" (page 156). These were, presumably, either members or supporters of the Chinese Communist Party. The thing is, though, at this time Chinese Communists were actually members of the Kuomintang. (See First United Front.) Chiang Kai-shek only launched his purge against them when his Northern expedition reached Shanghai. (See Shanghai massacre.) Kalidasa 777 (talk) 10:34, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I fixed all the contraditions from this article to align with original source. Chinese history during that time is very confusing, with KMT and CPC in alliance to expel warlords but plotting to back-stab each other at the same time... DCTT (talk) 16:32, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. Consensus clearly supports "Nanking" over "Nanjing". On the capitalisation front, while Dicklyon makes a good argument, it has been adequately refuted by those who state that few of the "Nanjing incident" books are actually discussing this topic and there is also a clear numerical advantage in favour of capitalising. That said, no prejudice a new RM that solely discusses either the capitalisation or adding "(1927)", but please don't do them both at once (it gets messy). Jenks24 (talk) 15:46, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

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Nanjing incident → Nanking Incident – This article was earlier moved from "Nanjing Incident" to "Nanjing incident". Although, browsing through the first ten pages of googlebooks for "Nanking incident" 1927 [2] and "Nanjing incident" 1927 [3] shows me that, in fact, "incident" is capitalized most of the time at both "Nanjing Incident" and "Nanking Incident", thus the names are proper nouns. The latter appearing the most, which is the common name. --Cold Season (talk) 00:51, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

• Support the use of the old form is consistent with Nanking Massacre (was Rape of Nanking) (1937), but to be honest I'd prefer Nanking Incident (1927) as most people will immediately think of 1937. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:50, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
• Rename to Nanking Incident. -- 70.49.127.65 (talk) 04:19, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose – According to book n-grams, there have been many recent years in which the modern Romanizatin Nanjing exceeds the traditional Romanization Nanking, and years in which lowercase incident exceed capitalized Incident. The evidence therefore does not support the idea that "Nanking Incident" is a proper name (per proper noun, he probably meant "proper name", not "proper noun"). Per the criterion in MOS:CAPS, we should leave it lowercase: "Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is a proper name; words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in sources are treated as proper names and capitalized in Wikipedia." It would be hard to claim that this one is "consistently capitalized in sources". As for the question of traditional versus modern Romanization, I'm less sure what WP style policy is; I could go either way, but I'd like to see a better case made if we're going to move it. An as for adding the (1927), I'm ambivalent; could be useful, but since the 1937 event is usually called the Nanjing massacre, not strictly necessary. Dicklyon (talk) 18:14, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
  • When removing the word "the" from the N-gram search, it shows that the proposed "Nanking Incident" is predominant, although it is even predominant with it included too. "Nanking Incident" meets MOS:CAPS per literature. Also, the current title "Nanjing incident" is the lowest of all per N-gram searches, there's not even a doubt (!). For "Nanking incident", I see a very low N-gram graph line with two sudden and quick outliers. From the N-gram, I can tell that the proposed "Nanking Incident" is predominant over the whole time period and that "Nanjing Incident" is gaining recently but not surpassing as of now, maybe over few years and maybe not. Notwithstanding that the N-gram searches may refer to the Nanking Massacre and is not that trustworthy at all. (And whether something is a proper name or proper noun is a matter of overlapping semantics, which I don't care about.) --Cold Season (talk) 20:30, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
    • Removing the lowercase "the" is a good way to pick up all the uses in titles and headings. Not really useful for what we're trying to look at. And if any significant proportion refer to the massacre, you should be able to find an example or two by clicking through and looking at books; for example, this 2007 book talks many times about the "Society to Study the Nanking Incident" and other such group names, which appear to be about he 1937 incident; but it's part of a title, capitalized for tha reason, so shouldn't be counted anyway; so knock down the caps count some more; and knock down the Nanking count some more. And the fact that two different incidents are referred to as the Nanking incident is further reason to conclude that it's not a proper name. I'd add the (1927). Dicklyon (talk) 21:19, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
      • The graph is still roughly the same shape and my full statement before (in reference to both N-gram searches) still stands, including the one that the current title "Nanjing incident" gives the lowest hits of the four and "Nanking Incident" the highest per the N-gram graph. That the Nanking Massacre is sometimes referred to with something similar is not a good counter-arguement that "Nanking Incident" is not a proper name for this event, one does not exclude the other. All it would change, if common enough for the massacre article, would be to rename to "Nanking Incident (1927)" instead as suggested above and dab this page and related redirects (which I'm not against per se.)--Cold Season (talk) 23:37, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
        • What we have are two independent issues; MOS:CAPS seems clear on keeping "incident" lowercase. As I said before, the issue of whether we prefer the modern or traditional Romanization of the city name is something I'm not sure of, and don't have a strong opinion on. My point about the n-grams is that there is plenty of usage of all variants, so that should not be an impediment to sticking with WP style. Make that three: we can add the (1927) if the term is otherwise ambiguous. Dicklyon (talk) 00:12, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
          • The issue is "what's the common name in English for the event?" It is "Nanking Incident". I vote against capitalization of descriptive titles per guidelines, such as at Sino-Xiongnu War. However, proper name "Nanking Incident" meets WP:NOUN, WP:COMMONNAME, WP:CAPS, and MOS:CAPS, although the last one has a current talkpage discussion about its interpretation, coincidentally related (You participated there, so you know... Clear? I beg to differ.) Guidelines favor "Nanking Incident", a proper name and the common name. --Cold Season (talk) 01:12, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
            • It's hardly a WP:COMMONNAME issue, but rather WP:MOS issues; as I said MOS:CAPS is clear, in spite a few people advocating to change it. As for which Romanization to use, as I said, I'm less sure what the guidelines say about that. Dicklyon (talk) 01:43, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
              • WP:NOUN (because majority had it capitalized),
              • WP:COMMONNAME (appears most often in sources as the proposed name),
              • WP:CAPS (proper nouns are to be capitalized) and
              • MOS:CAPS (determined by sources, consistent use of capitalization indicates a clear proper noun; sources overwhelmingly use the proper names--that is, "Nanking Incident" and its synonym/alternative "Nanjing Incident"--over the decapitalized one per the N-gram graph above, thus WP:COMMONNAME should be applied).--Cold Season (talk) 02:01, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
                • You seem to be hallucinating the "consistent use of capitalization". The n-grams or any perusal of books shows the opposite, that lowercase is nearly about as common. Dicklyon (talk) 02:47, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
                  • I clearly explained it at my first comment (books search) and my first reply to you (n-gram graph; also, smoothing the graph just shows that capitalized is high and decapitalized not), so I'd like you not to be incivil by attacking me. Thank you.--Cold Season (talk) 03:09, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
                    • Nothing personal, but your claim "determined by sources, consistent use of capitalization indicates a clear proper noun" seemed to be a hallucination. That was intended more as a comment on the claim, not on you, but I agree I could have phrased it better. Dicklyon (talk) 03:19, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
                      • Oh ok, I misinterpreted your comment. Sure thing, that's no problem. --Cold Season (talk) 03:30, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support capitalized version per nom, i.e. WP:UCN. A dab date is not needed; the hatnote takes care of it. —  AjaxSmack  02:22, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
  • UCN is not about how to style the name; see MOS:CAPS for that. Dicklyon (talk) 06:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
    • Let me clarify, then. I support the move to Nanking per nom. i.e. WP:UCN. I support Incident for purely aesthetic reasons. Despite the efforts of many here to make English look like Slovenian, proper names look better with initial caps. —  AjaxSmack  04:18, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support – This article is about one particular incident, not about incidents in Nanking in general. The name of the incident is "the Nanking Incident", which I believe is a proper noun. The MOS:CAPS policy says "For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper noun that would always occur capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence" (emphasis added). The names of particular events are considered proper nouns. For example, the Franco-Prussian War and the Whiskey Rebellion are capitalized, although "war" and "rebellion" ordinarily would not be. Example from MOS:CAPS: "Spiritual or religious events are capitalized only when referring to specific incidents or periods (the Great Flood and the Exodus; but annual flooding and an exodus of refugees)." See the recent discussion at Talk:Pine Tar Incident. —BarrelProof (talk) 06:31, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

To some extent the wars and rebellion caps are specifically sanctioned at MOS:MILHIST#Capitalization, though it doesn't really stray much from what MOS:CAPS says. To be capitalized it must be "accepted" as a proper name; MOS:CAPS says to use consistent capitalization in sources, and the MOS:MILHIST says to work it out on the talk page. In the case of the Nanjing incident, there's far short of anything that could be construed to be consistent capitalization in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 06:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I believe you have more Wiksperience than I do. I notice the same issue popping up in current requests to rename specific concert tours for the Red Hot Chili Peppers (at Talk:Blood Sugar Sex Magik tour, Talk:One Hot Minute tour, and Talk:Californication tour), and I notice that the articles on tours for the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd seem to end with a capital "Tour". I was about to submit a move request for the USS Liberty incident. Anyhow, I would also like to say that I also like In ictu oculi's suggestion to append "(1927)". —BarrelProof (talk) 06:57, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support – The ngram isn't very informative here, because of the ambiguity of the term, e.g. on the first page of Google books hits for "Nanjing Incident", 8 are about the Nanjing Massacre, one about an event in the Cultural Revolution, and one about the topic of this article. "Nanking Incident" gets more hits for this topic, but the 1937 massacre still predominates. Of those that relate to this topic, the old "k" spelling seems substantially more common, and the second word is almost always capitalized. Kanguole 22:23, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. I did the move in December, citing that "incident" is not a proper noun. Most media in the English-speaking world have a habit of capitalizing many words that are not really names. Per WP:MOSCAP we should not repeat that here. However, this kind of events have a tendency to be treated more or less like names, just like World War II, which we don't write as world war II, so I abstain. HandsomeFella (talk) 12:26, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 13 February 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) feminist🩸 (talk) 15:54, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

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Nanking incident of 1927 → Nanjing Incident (1927) – Recently published (21st century) sources clearly prefer "Nanjing Incident" over "Nanking Incident". As noted in the last move discussion, Google ngrams is unhelpful here because it's impossible to filter out results for the 1937 event, so I've listed some examples below.

• Gunboats, Empire and the China Station by Matthew Heaslip (2021)
• Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China by Hilary Spurling (2011)
• "Revolution Deconstructed: Chiang Kai-shek and the Northern Expedition in the Japanese Press, 1926-28" by Andrea Revelant (2017)
• "Christian colleges amid political changes: The University of Nanking’s reorganization and registration (1927-1928)" by Baolin Jiang (2016)
• "Exploiting Anti-Imperialism: Popular Forces and Nation-State-Building During China's Northern Expedition, 1926—1927" by Michael G. Murdock (2008)
• News Under Fire by Shuge Wei (2017)
• China’s Greatest Statesman by Roy McKall (2015)
• Japan at War and Peace by Ryuji Hattori (2021)

Notably, the vast majority of the sources that do use "Nanking incident" use Wade-Giles throughout (i.e., they aren't treating "Nanking incident" as an accepted common name like "Chiang Kai-shek"). Some examples:

• "British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914–1941" by Antony Best (2002)
• "The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600-2000" ed. Ian Nish and Yoichi Kibata (2000)
• Power of Freedom: Hu Shih's Political Writings by Hu Shih (2022)

SilverStar54 (talk) 18:18, 13 February 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 14:52, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. Revisionism. The city was always referred to as Nanking in English-language sources of the time. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:22, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

  It's true that English sources of the time referred to the city as Nanking, but per WP:ZHNAME and MOS:PINYIN, pinyin romanization of geographic names should be used even in historical contexts. That's what nearly all historians of China do. SilverStar54 (talk) 07:18, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• Weak oppose per Necrothesp and also WP:NATURAL. As far as I know, no one would seriously use "Nan*ing incident" by itself to refer to a time period other than 1937–38 except in some highly in-context discussion. There was also a prior RM discussion that appears to have rejected a similar change. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:57, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  I'm fine with "Nanjing incident of 1927". My main issue is with the use of Postal Romanization instead of pinyin, since it violates WP:ZHNAME and MOS:PINYIN. SilverStar54 (talk) 07:20, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  I claim no special expertise on the romanization question; the comments from Necrothesp just looked good to me as a first impression. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 03:28, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

• Weak Oppose i prefer this article to be renamed as 1927 Nanking incident over the proposed title, giving that "Nanking" is the official English spelling of the city prior to the implementation of Hanyu Pinyin. 2404:8000:1037:469:89:36B7:FCE7:9C48 (talk) 00:33, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• ​​​I'm curious why opposers oppose pinyin in light of the article on the 1937 Nanjing Massacre article being in pinyin? "Nanking" was equally official in 1927 and 1937. —  AjaxSmack  01:34, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
  • Simple. That article should not have been renamed either. That too originally used Nanking and it was strenuously argued there too that it should not be renamed. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:52, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Oppose per necrothesp. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:23, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above 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.