Talk:Battle of Jianwei

Renaming the article?

If there was any armed combat in the vicinity of Jianwei county, it would be minimal compared to Wudu (capital of Wudu commandery), and Chen Shui did not face much resistance neither, so I'm inclined to believe the current title of this article (Battle of Jianwei) can be changed into "Battle of Wudu" to better reflect Zhuge's goal to take Wudu commandery. P.S. The concept of battle is different to that of armed combat, but I just suppose the majority of readers may not be professionals who understand and appreciate blurrying military terminology; hence suggesting a change.--EkmanLi (talk)

I created this article's title based on the phrase from Zhuge Liang's Northern Expeditions, which called it "open battle at Jianwei" before taking the commanderies (see here); I did not choose the title based on an academic usage, and so it is subject to change. However, from what I gathered from the sources, the battle took place at Jianwei, and I could find no record of major struggles at Wudu and Yinping (which, to my understanding, were evacuated by Guo Huai before the occupation). If this is true, I cannot agree with that name change, since battles should be named after where they were fought and not what was conquered in the aftermath. Am I mistaken in that, and if so, do you have a source to correct this? Benjitheijneb (talk) 08:29, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Let's start with some technical issues. First, Guo Huai was within the vincinity of Wudu Commandery, but his exact location is not specificed by SGZ, so changing the title into "Battle of Wudu (Commandery, omitted)" would not raise controversy. On the other hand, Guo Huai had never engaged Zhuge Liang in open battle at Jianwei, hence I will reword the phrase for Zhuge Liang's Northern Expeditions. Second, saying the major struggles happening in the vincinity of Wudu cannot be wrong, because Jianwei was just a county within Wudu Commandery. Let's say we must limit our use the of name Wudu as only referring to the capital city of Wudu Commandery (sometimes the capital city and the commandery of Han Dynasty were given the same name, Wudu is just one such example), will the statement be much more controversial than a statement limiting the struggles happening at Jianwei? Generally speaking, for Three Kingdoms period (as well as other dynasties of ancient China), crack troops would be assembled in the capital city in face of an invasion; thus, it would still be better to say the major struggles happened at Wudu.

Now, let us simply consider English construction. Saying the major (adj. used to compare) struggle did happen in/ at Wudu would include struggles happening at Jianwei but would obviously not exclude the possibility of struggles happening at Wudu City or within Wudu Commandery. However, saying the major struggle happened at Jianwei, which is a county, would exclude other possibilities.

At last, conquering Wudu and Yinping is not the aftermath but the main purpose of Zhuge Liang's operation. The retaliation of Cao Zhen is the aftermath.--EkmanLi (talk) 10:19, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with the idea of naming the battle Wudu if the major struggle (and yes, I do use that term, the rationale being that if other struggles in Wudu City and Yinping were equally significant, they would be mentioned) occured in Jianwei specifically, even though Jianwei is within Wudu Commandery. I also don't think a battle is to be named after where the troops were stationed (since, by that definition, the state of Wei would be full of battles!) as opposed to where they actually fought. By that definition, this battle could also be considered the "Battle of China", since it occured in what is considered to be China; while that is an extreme example, it at least shows why a more specific location of Jianwei is preferable to Wudu Commandery as a whole. If fighting had been at roughly consistent levels throughout the commandery, I would agree (eg. Battle of France featured a spread of similar-sized conflicts across the country); but there is a discrepancy here between the towns of Jianwei, Wudu and Yinping (of which, the latter two were evacuated before the Shu Han forces entered).

While I do accept that some conflict may have occured in Wudu and/or Yinping, I still believe that if the fighting in these places were little more than small skirmishes (and I have as of yet no reason to believe anything larger did, due to Guo Huai's evacuation of said areas), it should be named after the place with the majority of combat. My rationale for this is that many historical battles use the name of the main location of combat around which smaller skirmishes occured (eg. the Battle of Xiaoyao Ford, which includes the conflicts occuring at the Hefei fortress itself), and I do not see why low-intensity fighting should be given the same ranking in terms of names as the location of the greatest fighting ("Battle of Jianwei, Wudu City and Yinping"?!).

As shown by the Xiaoyao Ford example, a single location in the title does not exclude other sites; but it is far more concise than pointing out EVERY location where conflict occured [especially assuming that additional fighting may have occured at other locations FURTHER than Yinping and Wudu, making the potential list implausible]. This would be appropriate for battles where roughly even levels of combat occured simultaneously (eg. Battle of Komaki and Nagakute), but seeing how Wudu City and Yinping would be empty, I do not think this is the case.

Finally, being the main purpose of an operation is not the same as being the location of the operation. If a conflict takes place at Jianwei, and Wudu and Yinping are occupied without resistance as a result, they are the aftermath, not the battle.

I eagerly await your response. I really wish this didn't look sarcastic; it wasn't meant to be. Apologies for the misrepresentation. Benjitheijneb (talk) 17:57, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I guess I got your point, but the examples given are from Wikipedia rather than a history book, and we are the ones who gave those titles; hence they are subject to change, if appropriate. Let's just briefly look at your examples, for instance, the rationale we give Battle of France such a title is similar to why we titled the article Zhuge Liang's Northern Expeditions. There are different campaigns mentioned in the articles, and we do have seperate articles with different names for those campaigns. We can notice that the two titles do not specifiy a place, but Battle of Jianwei is different as the latter do specify.

I don't wanna be off-topic, but I guess I might need to discuss a bit on Battle of Xiaoyao Ford, too. Indeed, it would be better to change the title to Battle/ Campaign of Hefei; the reason we didn't do that is because the combat occured at Xiaoyao Ford is most memorable for the mass (this is just like the case of Battle of Mount Qi, where the majors battles were all not fought atop that mount). Readers can directly search "battle of Xiaoyao Ford" and land on the article, without encountering an ambiguity (there were campaigns raised to wrestle control of Hefei). As of now, we haven't perceived a must on changing that title.

In conclusion, I can only tell you that there are different ways to name a historical military conflict, and just as you say, naming a conflict after where major combat was fought is one norm. However, if you would look at the records, there's no mention of any armed combat happening at Jianwei. Hence I pointed out in the begining: If there were any major struggles, if any, they would not happen at Jianwei. Below is an original quote from SGZ: 魏雍州剌史郭淮率眾欲擊式，亮自出至建威，淮退還 (...Guo Huai wanted to attack (Chen) Shi, (Zhuge) Liang travelled to Jianwei, (Guo) Huai withdrew)

P.S. if you would go back to earlier discussion, you would notice I never suggest naming this article after Zhuge's purpose.--EkmanLi (talk) 00:50, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Aftermath

I agree that the simple inclusion of the 2 depopulated commanderies is not a great accomplishment, but I can't agree that one single invasion drained resources greatly (as current version of the article says), provided Shu Han could carry out constant incursions into Wei for time to come.--EkmanLi (talk) 14:24, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I said this because the rest of the so-called "expedition" was not spent invading Wei, but defending from the Wei counter-offensive. My intention was to show that the resources for the third expedition itself were drained, not Shu Han's resources as a whole. I will try to reword it. Benjitheijneb (talk) 08:32, 29 August 2012 (UTC)