Talk:Unequal treaties

Chinese and Japanese Unequal Treaties

It's also used concerning the Japanese unequal treaties (1854 and the following years) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.238.177.66 (talk)

Chinese wiki has a featured article on unequal treaties and more info can be translated from there. Wareware 01:03, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Peking Treaty of 1880

Apparently China and the USA signed a treaty in 1880 that dealt with imported labor and the trade in opium. The treaty was later reneged upon by USA. Is this treaty discussed anywhere in Wikipedia? --Slashme 18:22, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand the Sino-Portuguese Treaty problem. China always had more than enough power to put Portugal out of China, meaning that the Portuguese were in China with the full support of the authorities. This has to be sorted out.

Who uses this term?

The article begins by saying "The term Unequal Treaties, mainly used by China, ..." Is the term mainly used by China, or is it mainly used to refer to Chinese history, by Anglophone or other Western scholars? LordAmeth 12:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Use of Asian characters

Do we really need the names in Chinese, etc, when these names easily can be found in the articles on the treaties themselves?--Niohe 17:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Page move

In my studies of China, I have found the unequal treaty practice to commonly be referred to as a "system", for example in Fairbank's "China:A New History". For this reason, I moved the page to the new title. However, I now realize that I may have acted too quickly, so if there is any objection to the move, notify me on my talk page, and we can move it back to the old title. --Danaman5 02:07, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, regardless of whether or not we keep the "system" in the title, I think "Treaty" should be uncapitalized, as it is not a proper noun. This is per the Manual of Style. --Danaman5 02:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this was a badly considered move for many reasons. Please give people a chance to respond before you move an important article like this.

As far as I know, Fairbank talked about the "treaty port system" or the "treaty system", which is something quite distinct from the treaties themselves. I have never heard about the "Unequal treaty system" before. Please give me a page reference.

I tried to reverse the move, but it didn't work. I suggest that you talk to administrator and ask him or her to move the page back.--Niohe 02:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you're right. I should have been much more thoughtful before making such a rash move. On the bright side, however, I seem to have been able to reverse the move without any trouble, though I am not an administrator. I also went through and corrected all redirect issues stemming from this incident, so I think everything is back to the way it should be. I may have been thinking about the "Treaty century" or some other treaty related term in Fairbank. One thing, though: Surely "Unequal Treaties" isn't a proper noun? Shouldn't the "t" in treaties be lowercase? I also think that the title should be singular, rather than plural. (i.e. Unequal treaty) Once again, though, I apologize for my foolishness. Sometimes I get a little overeager to apply knowledge from my chosen field. Like I said, I think I fixed all the redirects, but let me know if you spot any problems, and I can take care of them. --Danaman5 03:14, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I actually have heard of the "treaty system", probably from Fairbank, but I agree that the treaty system is distinct from the treaties themselves. As for Treaties being capitalized, it's to differentiate this specific term, as it pertains to East Asia in the 19th-20th centuries, from any treaties that anyone thinks were unequal or unfair. That makes sense, right? LordAmeth 08:56, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Anony ref

Some user 68.194.103.128 just goes around tagging a number of articles as need reference. I don't know what is so controversial about this page at the moment. How about tagging a sentence or two and not the entire article. Especially since only a few treaty articles are fully ready. Benjwong 00:54, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-Asian Treaties

The whole concept of calling these Asian treaties "Unequal" is a bit odd! History is full of treaties entered into by willing and unwilling parties. Without seeking to represent any case for the so called "Central Powers" at the end of the Great War in 1918, what was the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the other treaties involving those powers if not Unequal?! (The Germans referred to it as the "Diktat" of Versailles well before Hitler) And there are plenty more examples from around the world besides! - Sunbeam16 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sunbeam16 (talk • contribs) 15:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Looking at the title, the Versailles treaty was the first that I thought of when it came to "unequal". KyuuA4 (Talk:キュウ) 22:47, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Recent Studies

Unfortunately I have not now the time to do it myself, but this basically sound and useful article could be fleshed out with two recent studies: Dong Wang, China's Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005) and Michael R. Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). ch (talk) 03:58, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

Unequal Treaties → Unequal treaty — This was originally tagged as {{db-housekeeping}}, but I'm bringing it here because it could potentially be a controversial move. See this section on my talk page for more background. This is a procedural WP:RM request, so I am neutral. Cunard (talk) 05:39, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

• Support - I requested the deletion. It does not appear from the article that "Unequal Treaties" is the proper name of a specific set of treaties, rather it refers to a type of treaty. The article - except for one occurrence of "Unequal" in the second para of the Overview section and what appears to be a miscapitalized section header - consistently uses "unequal treay" and "unequal treaties". Since this is not a proper name the article should be moved. Otto4711 (talk) 05:50, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
• Partial oppose It should be unequal treaties, since it covers (in principle) all of them. But the capitalization should be fixed. (This is effectively a proper name, since there have been treaties which were unequal before and since; but idiom is lower case.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:19, 3 September 2009 (UTC)