The question about Dan Carlin got me thinking. What do we think about Extra Credits (Extra History) videos?

Right, so as /u/scarlet_sage has mentioned (thanks for bringing this to my attention BTW), I did a pretty comprehensive takedown of their First Opium War series over the course of July and August, but given that they've done at least a dozen series and numerous standalones, take what I say with a relative pinch of salt – most of my criticisms are based on either my own experience on the Opium War series or /u/Chamboz's criticism of the Suleiman series.

The first and most egregious failure is that they never publish citations, and, even worse, never publish bibliographies, by conscious, deliberate choice and despite being called out on it (~~see the link to the Suleiman criticism~~ see this link, again to Chamboz on r/badhistory). This means that they are basically engaging in a massive act of plagiarism every time they make a video.

Secondly, a common feature between the First Opium War and Suleiman series is that both relied largely on a single secondary source. Not only that, these secondary sources were deeply flawed. In the case of the Suleiman video it was André Clot's Suleiman the Magnificent (1989), in the case of the First Opium War it was – almost certainly, although I have yet to confirm it definitively – W. Travis Hanes and Frank Sanello's The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another (2004). To briefly summarise what Chamboz said, Clot was not a historian and could not read Turkish, and so what sources he used were European, and thus inherently likely more hostile to Suleiman, leading to a general distortion in his account, and in turn Extra Credits'. Neither Hanes nor Sanello could read Chinese, and, even worse, weren't even finding primary sources independently. Rather, all their quotes were taken from secondary works – those of Fay (1975), Waley (1958), Hurd (1967) and, most frequently of all, Beeching (1975) (who makes up over 50% of all citations) – combined with their own spin, to the point where their own book becomes a caricature of postcolonialism based solely on the perspective of the imperialists. As you may have noticed, all of these were written 29 years or more before Hanes and Sanello, which means, given their lack of original research, it at most acts as a more hostile version of Beeching augmented with a few other bits of other people's work, and this ends up being repeated by Extra History.

Thirdly, the degree to which they actually plagiarise is so obvious that you can tell very easily what their sources are. Entire passages will be lifted from another source, and the wording and perhaps syntax heavily tinkered with, but the sequence of events and in some cases the specific language used will be completely identical to their main secondary source. There's also a kind of 'paper towns' effect, as erroneous statements found in their flawed sources emerge in their videos. These range from minor to seriously egregious: in their version (and Hanes/Sanello) Elliot swims to Hong Kong after being shipwrecked, in reality he was wrecked nearer to Canton and had to buy passage to Macao from local fishermen; in their version Palmerston demanded the legalisation of opium, in reality he was persuaded by the opium lobby not to do so (as their business model revolved around the drug's illegality). (Hanes/Sanello cite Beeching for Palmerston's alleged stance in favour of forcing opium's legalisation, who in turn cites nobody and could either be pulling it out of his arse or out of context.)

Fourthly, when they aren't using their main secondary source it would appear that they simply refer to Wikipedia. And they can't even do that right. To quote Wikipedia on the Second Battle of Chuanbi:

In total, 38 British were wounded, many from an explosion of an extensive magazine after capturing the Chuenpi fort. Commodore Bremer credited the Chinese for fighting "with the greatest credit and devotion" in the batteries and reported their losses at 500 to 600 out of a force of 2,000 men. Chinese records indicate 744 casualties (277 killed and 467 wounded). The high Chinese casualties were due to the impression they had that British troops would give no quarter. 100 Chinese prisoners who laid down their arms were released the next day.

This, in Extra Credits' version, becomes:

... many hopelessly fought on to the death until their battalions were in tatters and their dead outnumbered their living. By in the morning the British flag flew over the Chinese battlements. 600 Chinese lay dead; a meager 100 were captured. Among the British only 30 were wounded and those not even from enemy fire but because of their pieces of artillery overheating and exploding.

So basically, if you can't even plagiarise Wikipedia accurately...