Talk:Nerbudda incident

Battle?

As some British advocated the annexation of Taiwan, in 1841 during the First Opium War, the British attempted to attack in failed efforts three times against Keelung on the northeast coast of the island. [1][2][3][4]

I suspect we have a case of, erm, "Chinese whispers" derived from Yao Ying and Tahunga's fabricated reports of defending a military invasion. It seems the so-called attempts refer to the following:

• The first two from the Nerbudda and Ann shipwrecks from bad weather. No shot was fired but Yao falsely reported the first as a victorious military defence from the shore batteries, and the second as caused by fisherman milita.
• The third 'attempt' seems to be from Capt. Pearse who was sent to find survivors but after learning they were sent to the south as prisoners, bombarded the harbour and destroyed its cannons. This is the only military attack on Taiwan during the war that I've been able to find. It looks like a retaliatory action, not an attempt to capture or occupy Taiwan.

While there was talk of the East India Company occupying Taiwan and establishing a trade monopoly, I've seen no evidence of any military action done for this purpose as it never seems to have happened at this point. BTW this isn't the first time the Chinese made false reports; in the Battle of Kowloon (and later battles), the Chinese commander also falsely reported victory and fabricated the casualties they inflicted. Sinologist Arthur Waley explained in The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes that military actions - whether successful or not - were often followed by a scramble to get mentioned in the official Chinese report to the throne in order to receive a decoration, promotion or other reward, and the number of casualties reported was often based on what they thought would entitle them to the reward they had in mind. Here, Yao and Tahunga were rewarded but later admitted to sending false reports and were jailed by the emperor. Disingenuous reports became such a problem in the war that the emperor even appointed a third-party governor to give independent accounts. Anyway, the point is that unless there's sources on the supposed attacks or battles themselves, I've removed it for now. Spellcast (talk) 05:20, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

There is a Qing account of the incident over here 大安之役.Rajmaan (talk) 21:55, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Unsourced though. My browser's garbled English translation suggests it's using Yao and Tahunga's self-admitted false reports. I'm open to sources detailing the military actions of the alleged battles themselves instead of vague assertions about the British trying to capture the island. But so far, there is none, perhaps because it never happened, at least not at this point. Spellcast (talk) 11:17, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

"Taiwanese"?

The use of "Taiwanese" (e.g. "Taiwanese governor") in this page might not be appropriate. Taiwan was part of China in 1842, and any high-level administrative role would probably have been held by Chinese (as in "not born in Taiwan") people. I suggest we replace sentences like "Taiwanese governor/authorities/officials" with "Governor/authorities/officials of Taiwan". Klod (talk) 08:32, 8 August 2019 (UTC)