Talk:Abolitionism

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2022 and 5 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bmduncan2 (article contribs).

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Never-winter-erica.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:15, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Insurrection and tactical abolition

@021120x: The section is a subsection of "Ancient times". So, it doesn't make sense to have information about the French revolution in that section. The first sentence is an introduction to the rest of the section, which doesn't speak about an insurrection against an occupying power. That's why I deleted those parts. I don't know what "existing slaves" is supposed to mean, the opposite would be "non-existing slaves". --Rsk6400 (talk) 19:56, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Rsk6400, this particular subheading is entitled "Insurrection and tactical abolition", and the portion which was removed from the subheading was prefaced with the statement, Tactical offers of abolition would not end in antiquity. If the concern was that this was chronologically out of sequence, a better solution would have been to move it to the relevant part of the page, rather than delete it from the article. The other deletions of contextual information cloud the meaning of the material (for example, "existing slaves" was used in contrast to "revolting slaves"). If the details came across as unclear, Editshmedt could have shed light on them through discussion or by rewording them. 021120x (talk) 11:37, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

As you said, the 1794 abolition in the French colonies is already mentioned below. It was surely not intended to have a direct influence on the power struggle in France, since there were no slaves in metropolitan France. Also, it is not clear how it should be connected to Napoleon's rise to power, since in 1794 he had no influence whatsoever.

WP is a collaborative effort, every editor can change something, no need to wait for the original author - personally, I'm happy if someone improves things that I write.

I don't remember ever seeing the term "existing slave" in any book or article. --Rsk6400 (talk) 19:53, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

"It was surely not intended to have a direct influence on the power struggle in France" The cited source clearly stated that it could be seen as a form of tactical abolition.

"since there were no slaves in metropolitan France" This is a factually incorrect statement, there were several thousand African slaves in continental France in the 18th century, possibly as many as 5,000. There were also no measures of implementing the 1794 decree, which is one reason that it was so easy to overturn a few years later.

"WP is a collaborative effort" Which is why it would be better to collaborate with the editor as opposed to unilaterally changing something that he had only recently written and had provided sources for. Such behavior could reflect a feeling of ownership - WP:OWN. The initial objection was that the quote was out of place, but you are now shifting this, which implies that the removal was perhaps not done for honest reasons. 021120x (talk) 15:36, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

@021120x: Thank you for finding the article by Chatman. The details of the legal situation of slaves in France were new to me. Still, this doesn't support the claim that the abolition was tactical: They comprised 0.025 per cent of the population, the emancipation had nothing to do with the rise of Napoleon, nobody says that slavery was re-established in mainland France in 1802. I didn't read Scheidel, so I'd like to ask you if he is really talking about mainland France or about the colonies, especially Haiti. However, that doesn't matter much, since he doesn't focus on slavery in France, so WP:RSCONTEXT greatly reduces his value for the article. --Rsk6400 (talk) 10:30, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

An afterthought: For Haiti, there were certainly tactical motives to abolish slavery, but to establish that we'd need a source focused on the complex relationship between the various contending powers in Haiti and in the French National Convention. --Rsk6400 (talk) 10:43, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

References

"Pre-Modern abolitionist views" section

User Editshmedt (talk · contribs) has been blocked indefinetly for sockpuppetry. The section "Pre-Modern abolitionist views" (formerly "Precursors") was written nearly entirely by them. Furthermore, I doubt that the section is relevant for this article about a movement that started in the 18th century, and not in biblical times. Literature about the abolitionist movement normally doesn't discuss early Christian or Stoic writers in detail (except in cases where individual abolitionists were directly referring to these writers). That's why I deleted the section. Feel free to comment. --Rsk6400 (talk) 06:41, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

My comment is only that if not here, it would be useful to have information about pre-modern abolitionist views somewhere on wikipedia. LastDodo (talk) 16:43, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Netherlands

@Carib98: Sorry for reverting you again, but the section you created is supposed to be about the abolitionist movement in the Netherlands, while most of your additions were about the process of abolishing slavery in the Dutch empire. Aphra Behn, being an Englishwoman, surely was not part of a Dutch movement (and, at the time when she may have lived there, Suriname was an English colony, and her enslaved hero was from Africa, not from Suriname. There even is a theory that her intention was not abolitionist, but Jacobite). Rsk6400 (talk) 14:03, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

@Carib93: Got your name wrong, hope it works now. —Rsk6400 (talk) 14:07, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

@Rsk6400: Yes it did. Thank you for your comment. The text only stated though that the book was influential in starting the early anti-slavery debate in the Netherlands, not that Behn was part of a Dutch movement. The text also made no statements about whether Suriname was a Dutch or English colony or whether its enslaved hero came from Africa or Suriname. Behn's intention was indeed criticized, but only much later, in the 20th century. But I'm happy to leave her out and I will expand the text with more information about the abolitionist movement in the Netherlands, thank you for the clarification. What I did notice is that more sections on this page ought to be removed based on the criteria "abolitionist movement in a certain country". I wrote the text in line with these sections so this is somewhat confusing.