Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 March 1

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March 1

I have a history question about Black Canadians

I have interesting question on the last day of black history month: In the Slavery in Canada article on wikipedia says And I quote a small part of the article: "The historian Marcel Trudel estimates that there were fewer than 4,200 slaves in the area of Canada (New France) and later The Canadas between 1671 and 1831. Around two-thirds of these slaves were of indigenous ancestry (2,700 typically called panis, from the French term for Pawnee) and one third were of African descent (1,443). They were house servants and farm workers. The number of Black slaves increased during British rule, especially with the arrival of United Empire Loyalists after 1783. The Maritimes saw 1,200 to 2,000 slaves arrive prior to abolition, with 300 accounted for in Lower Canada, and between 500 and 700 in Upper Canada. A small portion of Black Canadians today are descended from these slaves." My question is, what percent of Black Canadians are descended from those slaves and would they be considered Indigenous Black Canadians? 2001:569:58BE:D400:7D5A:C953:8652:A9BF (talk) 04:58, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the percentage of Black Canadians who are the descendants of former slaves in Canada today, but it must be quite small as the was majority of Black Canadians comes from two other sources: escaped former slaves from the U.S. who settled in Canada before or shortly after the U.S. Civil War, who came through the "Underground Railroad"; and more recent immigrants from the Caribbean and (more recently) Africa. However, according to the definition of "Indigenous Black Canadians" given in the linked article, they would qualify. That said, I had never heard the term before, and I would expect it to be quite controversial, since in Canada "Indigenous" is normally reserved for persons with First Nations or Inuit origins. Nobody talks of "Indigenous White Canadians" for example. Also note that Marcel Trudel's numbers are cumulative (i.e. 1,443 persons in total over 160 years, and not 1,443 living in 1831) so the number of potential ancestors is extremely small. Xuxl (talk) 15:03, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

The question is valid, but may not be answerable by the data, at least not easily. Demographics of Canada is the relevant Wikipedia article, and uses the data collected by the Canadian government as part of the 2021 Canadian census. Unfortunately, it does not directly distinguish between recent-immigrant Canadian black people, and those whose ancestry extends back several generations. So I'm not entirely sure where one would extract the relevant data from, if no one took such data. --Jayron32 15:27, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

A question on a similar vein but relating to Europe brought up this quote about the apparent disappearance of black people brought to Spain in the 16th to 18th centuries:

"For those maintaining that there was no integration the answer to the mystery of where this African population went lies in demographic trends... many Africans had no descendants or their descendants died at a young age. This may have happened because slaves were not encouraged to marry or reproduce, and many Africans were freed when they were too old to bear children." [1] Alansplodge (talk) 17:03, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Black ladino deals a bit with Spanish black people. es:Hermandad de los Negritos (Sevilla) deals with a Catholic brotherhood in Seville that, according to the text, admitted only black people until the mid-19th century. The article says that there are still some black brothers. I doubt that they are related to the earlier members but I may be wrong. I watched a documentary about them and I seem to recall that a big part (most?) of the current members are Gitanos. --Error (talk) 10:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

One or two years ago I saw a newspaper article on this topic, concerning Turkey: there are descendants of African slaves living there more or less in obscurity. I can't remember exactly where. And did J. Baldwin, who has lived in Istanbul for a (short?) time, I think, mentioned this?--Ralfdetlef (talk) 11:51, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Repatriation to Vichy from the UK

In the course of researching Georges, Vicomte de Mauduit I have come across newspaper reports that suggest that after serving his sentence in the UK for spreading alarm and despondency, he was repatriated to the Vichy zone of France, perhaps via a third country. How common were such repatriations? How were they administered? Could any French person request it? Was repatriation ever used to insert double agents or saboteurs, etc? Thank you. It did not work out well for the Vicomte, after a period as a "French Haw Haw" he ended up in Dachau, where he was murdered in February 1945. DuncanHill (talk) 22:13, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

General details of Red Cross Repatriations between hostile nations are here. Not sure about this case because de Mauduit wasn't a POW and Vichy France wasn't technically a belligerent, although it was fully occupied by the Germans in November 1942, so perhaps that counts. Alansplodge (talk) 09:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

As to abuse of the system; Ion Ferguson was a Irish doctor imprisoned in Oflag IV-C at Colditz Castle, who along with two other British officers, feigned schizophrenia and was repatriated by the Red Cross. Alansplodge (talk) 16:02, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Jones and Hill (no relation) tried the same thing in the Kaiser's War. DuncanHill (talk) 16:08, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I can't answer the question definitively but I suspect "repatriated" was a euphemism for "deported", in the modern sense of the word. At the time it often meant "to an extermination camp". By analogy: Repatriation of Cossacks after World War II and the work in progress at Collaboration with the Axis powers, section entitled "Collaboration by country in the Middle East and Africa#French colonial empire#Syria and the Lebanon (League of Nations mandates)":

After the Armistice of Saint Jean d'Acre, on 14 July 1941, 37,736 Vichy French prisoners of war survived, who mostly chose to be repatriated rather than join the Free French.

Did he perhaps have a brother or cousin named Antoine, or possibly more than one first name? "Mauduit" is not a common name at all. I have never seen it and would remember if I had, since I keep reading it as a variant spelling of maudit, "damned". French Wikipedia implies it's a single family: [2]. Note that present-day French citizens are required to have three first names; I don't know how recent that law is, however. If "Antoine" is relevant there is additional interesting detail here: [3]. Apparently he joined the Foreign Legion and was taken prisoner, then released because he promised to fight for Vichy in Syria. I haven't researched that link for RS as in publisher and error correction policy, etc, but I am absolutely positive that it is authoritative. I am at the end of a very long day and will be offline for a good bit, but let me know if you don't read French and Google Translate isn't giving you readable text. I am kind of curious and could dig deeper in French Wikipedia and/or the archive databases. The French keep meticulous records and if Georges existed he should appear in the records somewhere no matter how obscure he was. Elinruby (talk) 00:45, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Where did you find this requirement of three first names? It seems implausible to me. There is a special rule for giving a name to an unnamed child whose parentage is unknown. In such cases the civil registrar picks three given names, say Alice Bernadette Cerise, after which the third given name will serve as a stand-in for the foundling's surname; from then on, she will be "Cerise, Alice Bernadette". ("Cerise" is a popular pick for this purpose since it is both an accepted French given name and an existing French surname.)  --Lambiam 11:21, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Not sure about three names, but before 1993, French parents had to choose forenames from a government-approved list. [4] So much for la liberté. Alansplodge (talk) 13:28, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Aha, it's changed. My source for this is anecdotal but rock-solid: some people I know well had a child born in France before 1993, and yes the reason was that since the first names had to come from a list of names approved as sufficiently French, you had to pick three to reduce the number of instances of "Jacques Boulanger" for example. Specifically, the powers that be refused to issue a birth certificate for "Robin". Another interesting factoid: despite being born in France, that male child is not a French citizen since he neither speaks French nor did he perform his military service. Obviously this is not wiki-RS, but I was only speculating on avenues of research.

I did take a quick look at Gallica; it knows about the books but that's all. The BNF is worth a look if somebody feels so moved. This ties in somewhat to something I am currently looking at, collaboration in World War 2, so I may look into this a bit further later on. I remember seeing stuff about his alleged grandfather in Google hits, but it may only have come from the books. I didn't click them because I hadn't yet noticed the question about the grandfather. Re French records: it's possible to trace land ownership back into the Dark Ages so it seems strange he would not appear in any records if that turns out to be the case. Nom de guerre perhaps? Elinruby (talk) 21:04, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Actually, on re-reading Lambiam, perhaps it's not as rock-solid as I thought; for all I know those people adopted and didn't want to say so. Or misunderstood something; they don't speak French all that well. It would be rude to ask, so I won't ever know and don't really care; the fact is, at the moment I can't substantiate this man's existence unless he is Antoine, about whom French Wikipedia doesn't seem to know much either. I guess if I look into this further I should start with the links in the en-wiki article. Elinruby (talk) 21:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

is Green Party Taiwan part of the Pan-Green Coalition?

Several articles such as Pan-Green Coalition and Green Party Taiwan say "The Green Party Taiwan is not to be considered as part of the Pan-Green Coalition", "The party is not a member of, and should not be confused with, the Pan-Green Coalition." However, Pan-Green Coalition then does list Green Party Taiwan as a current member of the coalition. Is it a member of the coalition or not? None of the statements in either direction are sourced. -sche (talk) 23:46, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

ChatGPT shoud NEVER be used as a source or to answer questions here
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Compliments of ChatGPT: Certainly! Here are some reference sources that confirm the Green Party Taiwan's membership in the Pan-Green Coalition: "Taiwan's 'Green Party' struggles to win hearts and minds" by Deutsche Welle, published on July 17, 2020. In this article, the author notes that the Green Party Taiwan is part of the Pan-Green Coalition: "Since its inception, the Green Party Taiwan has been an active member of the Pan-Green Coalition of political parties and civil groups that advocate for Taiwan's democracy, human rights, and self-determination." "Green Party Taiwan" on the Global Greens website. The Global Greens is an international network of green political parties and movements. On its website, the Global Greens lists the Green Party Taiwan as a member of the Pan-Green Coalition: "The Green Party Taiwan is a member of the Pan-Green Coalition, a political alliance in Taiwan consisting of the Democratic Progressive Party, Taiwan Solidarity Union, Taiwan Independence Party, and several other social movement groups." "Green Party Taiwan" on the Green Party International website. The Green Party International is a global federation of green political parties. On its website, the Green Party International notes that the Green Party Taiwan is "part of the wider Pan-Green Coalition in Taiwan, which seeks to promote democracy, environmental protection, and Taiwan's sovereignty." Make of that what you will. 41.23.55.195 (talk) 06:58, 2 March 2023 (UTC) These all seem to be complete fabrications (or hallucinations). I cannot find any such piece from Deutsche Welle, and though Green Party Taiwan is listed at https://globalgreens.org/member-parties/, there is nothing there about it being in the Pan-Green Coalition. As far as I can tell there is no such thing as a 'Green Party International'. Also, if you look up those quotes verbatim (by maintaining the quotation marks) in a Google search, you will find that the only place where they appear is this very page. Shells-shells (talk) 09:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC) ChatGPT makes stuff up. It is not only NOT a reliable source it is actively unreliable and should NEVER be used to answer questions here. I am going to collapse this part of the thread containing it. DuncanHill (talk) 13:44, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I know very little about Taiwanese politics, but I think one of the issues may be that the pan-Green Coalition is lose grouping of parties that cooperate especially in the legislature and to some extent in legislative elections. It does not sound like there is any formal coalition so there's no formal membership. See e.g. [5] So precisely who you want to consider a member of the 'coalition' is likely to vary. The Green Party has cooperated with and is much more ideologically aligned with the DPP who dominate the pan-Green coalition. An additional factor may be that the Green Party has I think only once had a member as part of the Legislative Yuan and only for a short time and this is where I think the coalition is most significant as it sounds like cooperation as councillors may be more limited. (And I'm not sure they tend to have that many councillors anyway.) Nil Einne (talk) 10:09, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I should clarify that it's possible there were formal coalitions of all parties with agreements etc after elections. But from what I can tell if these did occur they were only after the elections I think only involved the Legislative Yuan so I'm not sure the Green Party was ever part of them even if they might have had they actually won any seats. Nil Einne (talk) 10:16, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Did ChatGPT just make up the DW article mentioned above (in the collapsed/hatnoted section)? Googling either the title or fragments of the quote turn up nothing except this RefDesk page. If it were a real article, I would've checked it to see if it could be used to cite the claim in our article that the Green Party is part of the Green Coalition, and to revise the claim (also in our article!) that the Green Part is not part of the Green Coalition. In a brief search for other, real sources, atop the brief search I made before I initially posted this question, I haven't been able to find any, so our article continues to have two unreferenced and contradictory statements in it. -sche (talk) 02:31, 9 March 2023 (UTC)