Talk:Fiume question

Copy Edit

SilkPyjamas (talk) 17:55, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

GA review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Fiume question/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Tomobe03 (talk · contribs) 06:05, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 14:57, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I'll have a look at this one. General comments/suggestions, along with image review, to follow first: once I've got your view on those, we'll do sourcing. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 14:57, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

General comments

• I made a few copyedits: in particular, adding the before nouns that require them, like "provisions of the Armistice of Villa Giusti, which allowed the victorious Allies of World War I.
• Suggest picking a form between Italo-Yugoslav border and Italian–Yugoslav border.
• Likewise, suggest choosing between "eastern Adriatic" and "Eastern Adriatic".
• Suggest briefly introducing D'Annunzio in the lead and when he comes up in the body.
• Major powers did not recognise the new state before June 1919: who are we talking about here, and how did this change?
• MOS:PEOPLETITLES: capitalise e.g. "Empress Maria Theresa of Austria". I've done a few of these.
• There were a few cases where Corpus Separatum was not in lang tags: I think I've got these now. Make sure that other non-English languages (particularly Italian) have the same treatment.
• On 3 November, Grossich dispatched a delegation to Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel in Venice: I think it would be worth giving a sense of what di Revel's official position was.
• the council investigated civil servants, dismissing and expelling undesirable ones: we should clarify what is meant here. Do we mean those considered "undesirable" or similar?
• clashed with French Annam troops: better as "troops from French Annam". We wouldn't say "clashed with America troops" or "defeated Germany soldiers".
• The problem of establishing the border between Italy and Yugoslavia—referred to as the Adriatic question—including the Fiume question became major points of dispute at the Paris Peace Conference: this sentence could do with a rewrite for flow and grammar.
• US President Woodrow Wilson opposed their demands and put forward his Fourteen Points, which favoured a solution that relied on local self-determination: were the Fourteen Points really such a direct response to the Italians?
• Instead, Wilson proposed a division of the Istrian peninsula along the Wilson Line that largely corresponded to the ethnic makeup of the population: this one isn't quite grammatical either.
• Italian right-wing politicians were considering the possibility of a coup d'etat: as in, they were considering launching one, or worried that someone else might be about to do so?
  • Rewrote. Meluiel (talk) 19:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
• A particular obstacle to any agreement was D'Annunzio's occupation of Rijeka, which caused the Italian government to reject a draft agreement submitted by the United Kingdom, the United States, and France: I don't really understand how part B followed from part A.
• they were instructed by the Allies to settle the issue ... provoked the French and British to threaten to enforce the Treaty of London unless they supported the allied proposal: should Allied be capitalised here?
• In Italy, contemporaries interpreted D'Annunzio's march as a symbolic revival of the spirit of Garibaldi's 1862 march on Rome and as a foreshadowing of Benito Mussolini's 1922 March on Rome.: how could they, in 1919, have interpreted it as a foreshadowing of the 1922 march? I assume this is a retrospective judgement: that should be made clear. We also probably need to say at some point that D'Annunzio enthusiastically threw his lot in with Mussolini and had a lot in common with the fascists.
  • Rewrote paragraph to expand and clarify. Meluiel (talk) 19:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
• His capture of Rijeka is deemed a symbol of Italian fascism, and it is a formative event: I'm not sure what this means.
  • Rewrote Meluiel (talk) 19:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
• D'Annunzio left the city after the street fighting resulted in 53 killed and 207 wounded legionnaires: and any civilians, or anyone on the other side?
  • Sources seem to vary on the number of casualties. Kirchner Reill (The Fiume Crisis, p.8) gives 32 deaths: 5 civilians and 27 soldiers, of whom 10 fought for D'Annunzio and 17 for Italy; Hughes-Hallett (The Pike, pp. 564-565) 33 deaths; Bali, Gulyas (The Fiume Question, p. 150) 53 deaths, 207 wounded; Woodhouse (Defiant Archangel, p. 349) 56 deaths, 150 casualties, "evenly divided on both sides". Meluiel (talk) 19:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
• Pavelić declared the Treaties of Rome, including the territorial changes agreed under the treaty, void: is this just the 1941 ones? Clarify if so.
• Note a is huge. Do we really need all of that detail -- and if so, should it all be in a footnote?
• Croatian sources indicate that the 1918 census data were collected under duress and falsely recorded.: assuming that other sources don't agree, MOS:SAID applies here, and we need a verb that doesn't implicitly endorse this idea.
• indicating 79% Italian majority in the city: does this mean that Italians had a majority of 79% (that is, there were 79 percentage points more Italians than any other group), or that the Italian population was 79% of the city?
• Contemporary Italian sources did not contest the numbers, but denied that Sušak was an integral part of Rijeka: this is cited to a 1919 source. Unless that source explicitly says that contemporary Italian sources did not contest the numbers (rather than just being an example of one that didn't), we can't use it to hold up this claim, per WP:OR.
• A minor point, but in general, references should only appear after punctuation: if one reference only supports the start of the sentence, you can use the refn template to bundle them together and explain (e.g. {{refn|{{harvnb|Smith|2020|p=19}}. For di Maggio's military rank, see {{harvnb|Jones|2024|p=322}}.}}.

Image review

Captions:

• Map of Free State of Fiume: former Corpus Separatum (brown), Free State of Fiume territory (brown and yellow): I'm not sure which bit is which. Is the big orange area part of the Free State of Fiume -- if so, what's different about the yellow area?
  • Both the orange and the yellow (with orange border) areas were part of the post-Rapallo Free State, the difference being that prior to 1918 the orange part was the Corpus Seperatum under the Hungarian crown, whereas the yellow part was administered by Austria. I don't think it's a particularly important distinction for this article: Kirchner Reill, on which this map is based, uses a single colour for the free state and shows the pre-1918 Austria/Hungary border with a dotted line. Meluiel (talk) 19:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
• Rječina River separating Rijeka (right) from Sušak (left); Italian–Yugoslav border (1925) is shown as a dashed white line: the second part of this is a sentence, so should end in a period/full stop, and should start with The.
• Border bridge spanning Rječina between Rijeka and Sušak in 1933: the Rječina, surely?

Some things to look at per MOS:ACCESSIBILITY:

• Images should have alt text added.
• Try to make sure that captions and vital information don't rely on colour (MOS:COLOR) -- for instance, in the first image which talks about the "yellow" are, you could also state that it is to the west

Image licensing:

• File:Free State of Fiume 1920-1924.png: I don't see any source for the underlying information in this image, either on this page or the source image's. Can you find a published source which backs up the information shown in it and add that to Commons?
  • Added source on Commons. Meluiel (talk) 19:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
• File:Promised Borders of the Tready of London.png: this map seems to be quite substantially different from the one given as its source. In particular, the original doesn't mention the Snežnik Plateau, which seems to be marked there simply as part of Austria-Hungary, and seems to suggest that about half the westernmost tan area was only offered after the Treaty of London. Our map also misses a tiny chunk of Albania, apparently promised to Italy as well. A small thing, but there's also a clear typo in the file name.
  • The Commons map is pretty close to this one, which includes the Snežnik Plateau (Monte Nevoso) as "territory promised to Italy but less precisely delineated", as well as the part of Albania that our map misses. To clarify, all of South Tyrol was promised in the Treaty of London — I assume the source Commons uses is talking about concession offers by Austria-Hungary to prevent Italian entry into the war. Meluiel (talk) 19:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
• File:Rijeka Sušak granica 1929.jpg: what evidence do we have that this was published in 1929? We've given its author as a Wikimedian, which seems unlikely on the face of it: we either need to track down some publication info or claim it as fair use.
• File:Granica Sušak Rijeka 1925.JPG and File:Granica između Rijeke i Sušaka 1937.JPG: same situation as above.
• File:Fiume cheering D'Annunzio.jpg: looks fine.
• File:Dannunzio-scudetto.jpg: the only publication info we offer here is 2020, which is at odds with the licence given on Commons.

Source review

• Ranges, even in source titles, should be marked by unspaced endashes (–), not hyphens (MOS:CONFORM).
• How come the Kirchner Reill source hasn't been directly used for the article?

Thank you for taking this up. I'll try to address the issues you raised shortly. --Tomobe03 (talk) 14:29, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Tomobe03: No rush, but any thoughts here? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 06:37, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist hello and apologies for the delay... RL stepped in and I won't be able to edit significantly this week - I may be able to squeeze in a couple of hours in today though. I think your remarks are very good and I expect to address them quickly. I am sorry for the delay, and I would greatly appreciate if I could ask for just a little more patience. Cheers-- Tomobe03 (talk) 08:37, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

No problem: take your time. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 14:31, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist @Tomobe03 I've made a few changes to the article, some of which overlap with points raised in this review. I don't wish to step on any toes, but as the GAN instructions state that anyone can work on the article during a review, I've tried to improve things where I can. Hopefully the changes are positive — and please let me know if they aren't!

Would it be useful if I replied to some of the comments above? Meluiel (talk) 18:34, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

It would be useful if you could note any where your edits mean that they no longer apply, or if there's something important to add. For what it's worth, I think your query raised on the Talk page is also worth discussing as part of this review, as part of the "coverage of major aspects" component of the GA standards. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 18:54, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Done. Meluiel (talk) 19:58, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

References

"Fiume" or "Rijeka"

Currently this article uses Rijeka throughout, as stated by the hatnote: Multiple geographical names mentioned below changed in the discussed period. The article uses modern English or local names.

I'm not sure this is in line with MOS. WP:MPN states:

For an article about a place whose name has changed over time, context is important. [...] Older names should be used in appropriate historical contexts when a substantial majority of reliable modern sources do the same; this includes the names of articles relating to particular historical periods. Names have changed both because cities have been formally renamed and because cities have been taken from one state by another; in both cases, however, we are interested in what reliable English-language sources now use.

As far as I can tell, modern English sources typically use Fiume rather than Rijeka for the period in question—the Kirchner Reill passage quoted below is particularly useful—with the exception of writing from a particular national perspective (e.g. Bali uses Rijeka when talking about the Hungarian context) Examples:

Macmillan: "In the case of particular controversies at the Peace Conference, I have followed the usage of 1919: [...] Fiume (Rijeka)"

Kirchner Reill: "The one exception is the name for the city the book focuses on: Fiume, which today is known as Rijeka. [...] I use Fiume for historical reasons, not nationalist ones. Early twentieth-century Fiume does not delimit the same city as today’s Rijeka. The Fiume in this book is the semiautonomous city-state and the suburbs it controlled; its official name was "Fiume," as Italian was one of the official languages, while Croatian was not. Today's Rijeka includes this urban space as well as others that in the early twentieth century were administered by different states using different official languages and different laws, such as Sušak and Kantrida. During the period covered by the book, Sušak was a separate town administered by Croatia-Slavonia, and Kantrida was a sleepy seaside village administered by the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire. Fiume was its own city, administered by a mixture of self-made statutes and laws issued by the Hungarian Kingdom of which it was part. To understand the hows and whys of the Fiume Crisis, it is crucial to respect these structural differences of the past. Hence the use of the name Fiume for the period under study. When discussing today's city, I call it Rijeka."

Pizzi: "[The volume] largely, but not exclusively, adopts the toponymy predominant in the literature works examined, namely Italian places-names such as Fiume for Rijeka"

Bali & Gulyás also use Fiume throughout. Meluiel (talk) 11:11, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

References