Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 June 20

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June 20

Elections where one party won the most seats but didn't get first stab at forming a governing coalition?

Which elections were there where one party won the most seats but didn't get first stab at forming a governing coalition? So far, I could think of the 2009 Israeli election and the 2010 Iraqi election. However, what other examples of this have there been? Futurist110 (talk) 01:42, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Are you interested in semipermanent coalitions? In Australian federal elections, I suppose Labor normally gets the largest number of seats, since it's opposed to a two-party coalition. For example, the federal House of Representatives currently has 15 National members, 61 Liberals, 68 from Labor, and 6 miscellaneous. Since the majority (76/150) were from the semipermanent Liberal-National coalition, they formed the government, even though Labor had the most seats. Nyttend (talk) 02:35, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that would certainly count for this. Futurist110 (talk) 03:33, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Also, there is the 1996 Israeli elections. Labor won the most seats in the Israeli Knesset in the 1996 Israeli parliamentary election while Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu won the Israeli Prime Ministership in the 1996 Israeli prime ministerial election. Back then Israel's Knesset and Israel's Prime Minister were elected separately--a practice that was abolished in 2003. Futurist110 (talk) 03:35, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

In the 2017 New Zealand general election, the National Party won a plurality of the seats, but lost its support parties. There were negotiations with the smaller New Zealand First party but the latter chose to enter a coalition with the Labour Party instead. I recall subsequent reports that NZF was only using the talks with National to gain themselves a better position with Labour, possibly because National ministers had embarrassed their leader earlier in the year.-gadfium 04:19, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Very interesting! Futurist110 (talk) 04:31, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

July 1932 German federal election.--Wehwalt (talk) 06:29, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Good one! Seriously. Futurist110 (talk) 16:30, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

It's common in many countries with proportional representation which tends to give many small parties and no dominant parties. In 2015 Danish general election, the third largest party formed a one-party government. It did have political support from the second largest party but not the largest. In 1990 Danish general election, the largest party had more than twice as many seats as number two which formed a government with number three, supported by several other parties. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:30, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

In elections to the Irish Dáil, before 2011 Fine Gael had never been the largest party, and yet had formed a government on six occasions between l948 and 92 (plus after the 2011 and 2016 elections. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 21:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Well, then, February 1974 United Kingdom general election, Labour got the most seats but Heath tried to form a coalition first. But that's probably not uncommon, an incumbent in a close election sounding the smaller parties about a possible coalition or some looser arranagement in the immediate wake of the election.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:11, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Books written by pioneers/settlers about their experience

What books or other written works have there been which were written by pioneers/settlers about their experience? For the record, I am thinking not only of American pioneers who settled westwards, but also Russian pioneers in Siberia, the Far East, and Central Asia, Canadian pioneers who settled westwards, Zionist Jews who settled in Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Brits who settled in Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans who settled in North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Eritrea, et cetera), Europeans who settled in other parts of the Americans when they were sparsely populated, et cetera.

Anyway, any thoughts on this? Futurist110 (talk) 19:04, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

• Ezra Meeker wrote a considerable quantity of books about his experiences, and given he lived to be 97, he had plenty of them. His current biographer is on his fifth book about Meeker, I reviewed a few of the chapters some months ago but haven't seen it out yet.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:00, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this information! Futurist110 (talk) 02:00, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

For the Pacific, there are a lot of missionary perspective . In Hawaii, there is Hiram Bingham I with Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands: Of the Civil, Religious, and Political History of Those Islands, Laura Fish Judd with Sketches Of Life In The Hawaiian Islands and the French perspective from Charles de Varigny Fourteen Years in the Sandwich Islands, 1855–1868. In Tahiti, you have The History of the Tahitian Mission: 1799-1830 by missionary John Davies (missionary) (although published a century later) and missionary and diplomat George Pritchard (missionary) wrote The Aggressions of the French at Tahiti: And Other Islands in the Pacific, Queen Pomare, and Her Country and The Missionary's Reward: Or, The Success of the Gospel in the Pacific. KAVEBEAR (talk) 04:04, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Not too far west for Canada, but Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill wrote about settling in 19th-century Ontario. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:38, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Plenty of books have been written about the opening of the American West, including classics by Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Also interesting is the novel cycle The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg about the experience of Swedish pioneers in Minnesota. Xuxl (talk) 12:17, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Death of Matthew Flinders

What was the cause of death for Matthew Flinders? KAVEBEAR (talk) 20:42, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Apparently an undiagnosed kidney infection leading to renal failure (or so says the Flinders Memorial website, [1]). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:03, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Professor Kenneth Morgan (Brunel University, London) says it was "a severe bladder complaint" in this article.

The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders, R.N. (London, 1914) by Ernest Scott, says that it was "a recurrence of the constitutional internal trouble which had occasioned some pain in Mauritius" (p. 395). Alansplodge (talk) 21:52, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Strange to see much speculated and disagreed about his cause of death but its absence for the Wikipedia page. KAVEBEAR (talk) 21:54, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps neither he nor his widow wanted his urinary tract discussed in public. Alansplodge (talk) 21:59, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

No comment on the wikipedia article issue, but worth remembering this is someone who died in 1814. This was for example, before the Germ theory of disease was widely accepted. I don't think some uncertainty over the cause of death is that surprising especially if you are looking at different sources over long time periods (and so probably vastly different levels of understanding of human health) and with uncertainty over precisely what sources they looked at to come to their respective conclusions. According to [2], the plan was to look for evidence for his cause of death after his body was rediscovered earlier this year, but I couldn't find anything that came from that. I suspect what's left of his remains aren't going to provide that much clue anyway since we seem to know enough that we're already confident his death wasn't violent. Nil Einne (talk) 06:56, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

I have now amended the article to read: "Flinders died, aged 40, on 19 July 1814 from a urinary tract infection,[30] on the day after the book and atlas was published". I used Stephan Schulz's reference as it has more detail. Good work team. Alansplodge (talk) 09:13, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

I had more spare time than I thought so I also added his London address - now somewhere under the British Telecom Tower - and also Scott's anecdote about how the newly published books were laid out on the bed covers so that the unconscious Flinders could touch them. Alansplodge (talk) 10:13, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Do we really have enough to say UTI? A gravelly complaint sounds like kidney stones to me. DuncanHill (talk) 14:11, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Both the modern sources use the word "infection", and both bladder and kidneys form part of the urinary tract. I don't think you can die from kidney stones, although admittedly they hurt like hell (original research). Alansplodge (talk) 17:15, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

"The number of deaths due to kidney stones is estimated at 19,000 per year being fairly consistent between 1990 and 2010" according to the article to which I linked. DuncanHill (talk) 17:21, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I stand corrected. Alansplodge (talk) 17:56, 21 June 2019 (UTC)