Talk:Jean Abraham Grill/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Iselilja (talk · contribs) 09:54, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

• Hello, I am starting a review on this.

• Some suggestions:
• Lead sentence doesn't read quite well to me; partly because of sentence structure and partly because I don't think the family background belong there; as the family relations per se is not what makes him notable. I would prefer something like "Jean Abraham Grill (21 July 1736 – 12 March 1792), sometimes called Johan Abraham Grill, was a Swedish merchant,..." Then mention the Grill Family background when you start the resumé of his life; something like "Born into the Grill family, he..."
• Last sentence in lead: I would prefer to skip "all" and simply say "His notes, correspondence, accounts etc." and change "or" between the libraries to "and".
• I have some other potential issues with the lead, as well, but will go through the body of the article before commenting more on the lead
• I am not totally happy with the early life and family section; as I generally prefer chronological biographies and therefore would prefer his death and the widow's take-over of the industries to be in a section at the bottom (could be combined with the archives section). One reason for this, is that the factories she takes over, hasn't really been mentioned in the articles previously (except briefly in the lead). But I understand, this is partly subjective preferences, so you may see it differently.
• More to come later

Hello Iselilja! How nice that you do the review of this article, we met briefly on Carl Michael Bellman where you did an excellent job. Just looking at your suggestions I can agree with you about the changes. Staring too long at an article makes you go blind to mistakes (that is why we have reviewers :) ), also this article was first part of the larger Grill (family) and made into a new article once it became apparent that there was so much info about him. Some things from the first article are bound to tag along.

Tonight I am just going to wrap up two other drafts, but by tomorrow I will be able to give this GAN my full attention. Best, w.carter-Talk 15:29, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I have started by rearranging the section in a more chronological order. I think this works better. Thanks for suggesting it! I was trying to cram all of the family stuff into the "family" section. Will do some further tweaks there. Also try to rewrite the entire lead, looking at it now, it really feels off. Cheers, w.carter-Talk 19:24, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Lead is now rewritten, I hope you find it a bit more "fluent". I took some pointers from Marco Polo, another adventurer and traveler to China who wrote down what he saw. Looking forward to your next comment. w.carter-Talk 20:24, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

• Coming back again. Sorry for being somewhat distracted Thanks for the changes, they mostly look fine. I still don't think the first sentence is perfect as the altenative name needs a comma both before and after in my view; and therefore I also prefer that the date of birth is mentioned directly after his main name. See for instance Voltaire for what I mean.

 Done Ah! I see what you mean.

• As for use of internal links, you seem to prefer to only link a word once, and if linked in the lead not link it again in the body . I often prefer the practice of repeating the link once in the body, when the word is first introduced there. This is particularly helpful in my view with less known words like supercargo and abbrevation that the user may have forgot what refers to (SOIC).

 Done I thought the rule was "one link" unless in the infobox, but your reasoning makes a ton of sense. Links are now duplicated to the body as well

• Early life and family

I would prefer only "early life" as title, but that's in the eye of the beholder

 Done It just lingered since when it was about the wife as well.

The introdution is fine, but you use the word "born" twice, and I wonder if this could be avoided by a slight rewrite, using "birth" or something in the second sentence

 Done Very tricky to get right. The double "born" was a result of your prev. suggestion to start with "Born into the..." I removed the first born instead. Removing the second came out gibberish.

Moving to Gothenburg; I prefer to say "the family" moved, rather than "he"

 Done Of course.

The second paragraph is very similar to a paragraph in SBL, so we may be verging on a close paragraph problem, but it may not be easy to write much more "around" than what has already been done

 Done No problem, my bad. I have revritten the section and taken the same facts, but in different words from another book. With this guy, the same facts are often available in different sources.

• In Canton

To me, the section might be easier to understand, if the sentence "After the shipwreck, Grill remained in Canton as resident supercargo for seven years" was followed by the paragraph that starts "Grill stayed on as supercargo in Canton for the arrival of three more ships.." Then go on to what he did in Canton outside the supercargo duties (He also started a successful private company in partnership with the older and more experienced Michael Grubb). Reading it as it is now, I am a bit puzzled after the first mention of his supercargo; wondering what he actually did as supercargo.

 Done Makes sense. I could not move the sections too far down, or the chronological order might have been broken. The section about the tea buying is also about him being called home as a result of his misconduct and we have to explain what that misconduct was first. :) But I added a small additional explanation about the duties of a supercargo in the "After the shipwreck section". I had assumed that things you can find out about by clicking on a link should not be explained further in the text, but it makes for better reading, so fine by me.

• Ironmaster and estate owner

"The park was a similar, but smaller, version of the park at Drottningholm Palace and the Chinese Pavilion with an orangery" :*This sentence doesn't ready totally well to me and makes me a bit confused about what is meant.

The rumour of Grill being poisoned is sourced solely to a family member's informal memoir; not a traditionally reliable source. I think we can keep it, but make clearer that this was some internal family speculations (we don't have sources that indicate it was a widespread rumour of interest to historians etc).

You may consider expanding the photo caption for the iron nail photo a bit to make the connection to Grill

 Done Park-thing detangled (good point), family story now officially family's, and nail nailed.

All good and valid points, my comments in italics. Best, w.carter-Talk 23:28, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Back again

• This looks very fine. I am now mainly going to go through the grammar, and you may remember from the Bellmann review, that this is where I don't feel totally confortable myself. In addition, I will take a bit more look at the sources (looking for close paraphrasing and that they back up what the text says) and photo licences. But hopefully, the latter won't turn up issues. As for close paraphrasing; be aware that it's not always enough to change wording, the structure of the story shouldn't be too close easy. That's why I was somewhat about the last paragraph in the "Early Life" section. But it's mainly basic facts which isn't so easy to write around, and you indicate that there aren't much variations in sources for these years.

• This one is tricky since, as you say, they are basic facts that happened in a chronological order and not much you can do about it. I don't think there is a copyright for the order in which things happen. Otherwise any text containing the basic "born-grew up-went to school-lived-had children-died" would be copyrighted. There are of course all the documents from this period in the The Digitala arkivet at the Nordic Museum section "3.1 Utbildningsåren" where you can read all about it, but that would be considered primary reaseach.

• UPDATE: Hah! Some very intense digging led to a new Dutch source. Using that I could "break" the section from the SBL. It also provided some more exact info on the years in France that were not in the previous source and some insight in why he became such a money-hungry snob later. I think this is sufficiently far from the SBL now. The new source could also be used to provide extra refs in a couple of other places + it led to a new (English) book to add to the Further reading section, and since English is always preferred here that was a huge plus.

Do you write any particular standard of English?

• Not to my knowledge. ;) Since English is not my native language, I am never 100% sure about that part. The article has been copy edited by an experienced British editor who helped me with the language.

Journey to Norrköping. It says he died on a journey to Norrköping, while at the same time, he had attended a Riksdag there. This may indicate that he died on his way home from Norrköping. Could we phrase this somewhat differently, or am I just making a problem of nothing here?

• Very good comment. The "on a journey" was just flowery speech. He actually died in Norrköping, and the next sentence explain why he was there. I have re-written it. Also removed the statement that the Riksdag was in Norrköping, since I can't find any reliable sources about the location. It might have been in Norrköping or Gävle, but travelling from Godegård to Gävle, you go via Norrköping.

In the two latter sections, you write "Godegårds" a couple of time. Like "Godegårds Church" and "Godegårds archive". This seems to me like it may be a "Swedism" and that we should say either Godegård Church or Godegård's Church.

• Ah, the eternal typo! I blame the fact that I live on Gotland where the "s" sometimes becomes a part of the name itself rather that just the 's-part. See the last sections of Gotland Museum. Fixed.

"a ironmaster". Should this be "an ironmaster" ?

• Of course. :) Fixed.

Last sentence: I would suggest a punct after 2003, followed by "They are available". And replacing "his" with "Grill's"

• Much better. Fixed.

New issues addressed. Comments in italics. w.carter-Talk 07:37, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Continuing

• I consulted the extra source you used for his stay in France, and saw this " He stayed in China for seven years alternated by three voyages between Canton and Sweden there and back, as second supercargo in 1762-1763 and in 1765-1767 and finally as first supercargo in 1767-1769". Our article says "He was supercargo for the arrival of three more ships of the SIOC: the Stockholms Slott (outward journey) in 1762, the Stockholms Slott in 1765 and the Cron Prins Gustaf (journey home) 1768." So, I was wondering if these sentences match each other; or if your source (Lindquist) is more reliable? Also the sentence in the article may seem a bit contradictory when it says he was supercargo for the arrival of three ships, while the last ship is a journey home (allthough I guess he could have been supercargo when she arrived). Should we remove "there and back"

•  Done I have clarified this according to my comment below.

The source also mentions that Grill commissioned porcelain with own motives which may be interesting to include in the article; though not necessary for GA status

•  Done Thinking about it a bit more, it makes sense to at least mention it since we have such a good source. :) I can add the "Grand" porcelain thing later. Good catch!

Born "Johan Abraham" says the infobox. Was he? Note 2 says he used "Jean Abraham Grill Abrahamsson" until 1973. (I know there is much inconsistency in spelling of names in earlier times)

•  Done I expanded the note a bit explaining about the name things. A noteworthy this is that in the Dutch article he is called "Jean Abraham Grill, son of Abraham", so there's part of the explanation. If you want to see a real horror when it comes to the spelling of names, check out the Ref. #2 in Puankhequa, Grill's buddy ...

I believe the "retrieved" sentence should be removed with regard to the Lindquist book and other off-line sources; as I think only online sources are "retrieved".

•  Done All "retrieved" removed from books.

Hopefully, this is it ;)

I will take a further look at all of this later today and really sort out all the back and forth from China. The fact is that they are both right! He was second SC in the way to China in 1762, but he stayed in Canton and did not return with the ship, he then was resident SC in Canton for the second ship and finally he went back with the third ship leaving Canton in 1768 as first SC and arrived in Sweden in 1769. Thank you for your ce! About the fashion thing, I just wrote it like that since there was no evidence that he had been interested at all about it before that. So from zero to something is "more" in mathematics. I should stop being such a nerd! :) And yes, he was born "Johan Abraham Grill". His father's name was Abraham so when he learned to write, he could add that to his signature to honor his father (and make himself seem more important since his father was important) in the fashion of the time. (He really was a brat, in the "Do you know who my father is!?!" -kind of way) The same fashion also made the socialite use French forms of their names, hence he was called "Jean" instead of "Johan" pretty quickly. Should this be included in the note? And you are quite right about the "retrieved" for the books. It was just added since I am so used to add it for everything else. Will sort it out. Until later, w.carter-Talk 14:01, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Lead "Grill journeyed to China twice as the representative for the SOIC. He lived in Canton (now known as Guangzhou) as well as Macao for almost ten years". Does this include his trip as very young? Btw. when I asked to remove the Grill Family connection from the first sentence; I didn't mean to indicate that it shouldn't be in the lead at all. That's your choice.

•  Done I have clarified this by adding "a total of". The sentence starts with "Grill journeyed to China twice" that means his first journey was the one as a youngster lasting about 2 years and the second longer stay later in life for 8 years. No need to mention the family directly in the lead, it's ok to do that just in the "Early life" section even if this family was the 18th century equivalent of the Kennedy family (I took a look at Robert F. Kennedy and the family is mentioned in the lead, but not at the top of it, so not that important.)

In Canton "he is said' to have smuggled "considerable quantities" from India to Macao". Per WP:Weasel this should preferably be attributed. But if difficult; we can live without it.

•  Done Oooops! My bad. My poor wordings. This is a documented and undisputed fact since the receipts still exists. The only unknown factor is just how large this smuggling operation really was. We only know that is "considerable" according to the books. If you look at the one shipment containing 150 chests and compare it with the total import of opium to China being 787 in 1650 and 1,181 chests in 1775, even that one shipment is large.

And now, I really should be finished. I have done a spell check for most of the articles which didn't reveal any significant problems. I might not have been able to pick up every grammar issue since I don't have English as my first language; but I guess the prize to pay for just having one reviewer. (No hurry for my sake; (only that I would preferably have it wrapped up before 28 April). Have a nice week-end.

(edit conflict)@Iselilja:About the porcelain. This article is only one in a series of articles I am/have written/worked/working on about the SOIC. The others are Swedish East India Company, Grill (family), Puankhequa, Whampoa anchorage, Supercargo, Götheborg (ship), Chinese export porcelain and some others. I have not gotten to the Armorial ware and Canton porcelain yet (as you can see), but this is a huge and important part of the trade from the Swedish point of view, so I would rather have those articles ready before introducing it to the existing articles. There are some more aspects of the trade lurking in my sandbox that will also be added. So a bit of a project ... Best, w.carter-Talk 14:27, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Iselilja: All the things are fixed according to your comments. You are doing a great job even if English is not your native language. :) I don't trust my own skills enough to do GA reviews yet! Just let me know if there is anything else you can think of. All the best, w.carter-Talk 18:22, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

So there we are. I made some last copyedits, just copyedit back any changes you don't like. I noticed the ship Frederic Adolf is spelt differently in the text and note, so make that consistent if you like, but there appears to be multiple spellings in the sources. I also added a translated from Swedish template at the talk page; the history of this article is not totally clear, but the article certainly seems to have been translated/inspired to a large degree by the Swedish version. And it's important to have a credit to the Swedish version to avoid copyvio problem. Now of course, the article has been much changed, so it's not really a translation of the Swedish article anymore, so if you find other ways to credit the Swedish version, you can remove the template.

• ✓ Pass Fine article, nice balance between text, infobox and photos. And with a GA sign it should look even better. Congratulations. Iselilja (talk) 20:03, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank You! Couldn't have done it without you! Cheers, w.carter-Talk 20:16, 25 April 2015 (UTC)