Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 August 3

= August 3 =

British capture of slave ships
A thread above mentioned the alternate history conjecture that if the US had lost the Revolutionary War, the British might have freed the slaves sooner than their US emancipation in the Civil War. The article Slavery Abolition Act 1833 says that the British stopped their lucrative shipping of slaves to the Americas and freed the few legally enslaved in the UK proper, then they used the fleet to interdict the Atlantic slave trade by other countries in the early 1800s. West Africa Squadron says many of the slaves were carried to the British to Sierra Leone, Africa. Slavery Abolition Act 1833 says some of the slaves were carried on across the Atlantic to British Jamaica where plantation workers were needed: "They resettled many in Jamaica and the Bahamas". The British allowed slavery in their colony there until 1833. The article does not say what happened to the Africans.When a slave ship was captured, did the British naval vessel put a British prize crew on board and take the entire cargo back to Africa or on to Jamaica or Barbados? Did the physical conditions for the Africans, such as being chained in an overcrowded, disease-ridden hold, improve under British management on the trip over? Were they just allowed to go ashore in Jamaica and find a job, were they offered passage back to Africa, or were they auctioned off as slaves or "indentured servants?" What happened to the slave ships? Were they sunk, converted to other purposes such as general cargo, or auctioned to new owners who again used them for the slave trade? Edison (talk) 15:38, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I found This Article used as a source at Abolitionism in the United Kingdom. It might lead you interesting places.  -- Jayron 32 17:30, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage by Toyin Falola (p. 80) says that the colony of Sierra Leone was founded in 1787 as a refuge for freed slaves who had fought for the British in the American War of Independence, and after the Slave Trade Act 1807 became a place where liberated slaves could be released. The End of Slavery in Africa and the Americas: A Comparative Approach by Ulrike Schmieder, Katja Füllberg-Stolberg, Michael Zeuske (p. 50) says in a footnote that "Between 1819-1846, the Royal Navy liberated about 65,000 [freed slaves] in Freetown, 10,000 in Havana and 3,000 in Rio de Janeiro". Alansplodge (talk) 19:40, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * See also Should 1807 really be celebrated as the end of the slave trade? from the UK National Archives. Alansplodge (talk) 19:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Again, is there a scholarly account of what happened to the Africans from the slave ships who were "liberated" in Havana, Rio, Barbados or Jamaica? Did they get sold into involuntary servitude as slaves, or as some papered-over form of involuntary servitude such as contract labor or indenture, or were they free to farm or work for hire? Edison (talk) 12:26, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Are there maps like this of other regions?
Very funny. Ones that try to make everywhere look bad. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:00, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Lots, though I don't know if there's a specific name or search term for them. Here's a collection from a few different perspectives. clpo13(talk) 17:05, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * My new favorite: clpo13(talk) 17:09, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * In a slightly different vein, there's a London Underground map with renamed stations that did the rounds recently. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 07:52, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

What the hell is going on in Duterte's Philippines?
In the run-up to the inauguration of Rodrigo Duterte, I read statements that sounded like he was advocating just killing people on the street, but I wasn't sure if it was some kind of rhetoric or reality. Now I'm reading a news report that 700 people have been killed without any kind of due process. Even more strangely, somehow 170,000 were intimidated into "turning themselves in", apparently after being arbitrarily placed on some sort of list, again without evidence or process? And our article Philippine Drug War says it's more than 500,000.

... I found something at WSWS, which I have the impression is at once one of the most radical and one of the more sensible news sites to be found. It argues both that a system of concentration camps has in fact been proposed, and that John Kerry was on scene recently saying that


 * "US Ambassador to Manila Philip Goldberg, who was present at the meeting, told the press that Duterte’s inaugural speech and State of the Nation address revealed that the president was committed to “following due process and respecting human rights.” This is a flagrant lie. The two speeches repeatedly endorsed, in the most vulgar language, the murder of individuals accused of crimes, and granted immunity to the police and vigilantes who carried this out."

...and promised the Philippines $34 million in aid for anti-drug efforts! Is this an accurate representation? Or am I being hit with commie pro-Chinese propaganda after all? Duterte claimed to make his city "safe", but how can a city be safe if there are arbitrary killings going on? What is the situation with large-scale camps, and what is the stated intention for the disposition of the people in them? Wnt (talk) 22:26, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * You're a regular here, Wnt, you know we don't do this. Rojomoke (talk) 22:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * To be clear, I was asking for details about the present situation (or indeed, about the past: was it possible for people to genuinely be "safe" in Davao City while the Davao Death Squad was in operation?). I have made some minor modifications to the text to be more clear that I'm more interested in data about the current situation than guesses about what people decide in the future. Wnt (talk) 23:07, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * What sort of data are you actually looking for? Our article you linked to already have some. Here are some others.


 * BTW, I don't mean to be rude, but your comments in this thread and in previous ones (the Turkey one where you asked if everyone was going to move to the EU a few years back also springs to mind) suggests you tend to have a mentality of only being able to see things from your POV. Making no comment on whether it's rational, there's no reason why people may not feel significantly safer when they perceive that the police are killing drug dealers and users and other criminals or undesirables with impunity which results in a perceived reduction of visible crime which may affect them. (Especially when it's perceived many of those killed weren't murdered but killed when commiting a crime or trying to evade arrest and those who were killed in most dodgy circumstances were major criminals.) In any case, anyone interested in these matters should already know that people's perceptions of crime, risks and statistics are often in stark contrast to the reality. Note I emphasised perceptions etc here since they tend to be what matter as even some politicians are willing to admit . It's not like support for vigilantism (or police vigilantism) is unique to Phillipines, I mean there is the Encounter killings by police in India but even in a place like the US there tends to be some of that. After all isn't that part of the reason for the black lives matter fuss?  Of course as has been seen in many places, it's probably not that hard for things to change from "impunity but that's fine because they're just killing those unwanted other people", to "crap, we're living in a brutal police state where we have to fear the police more than criminals". (Then again it can also easily change back the other way. Consider e.g. where after ousting Mubarak they eventually moved back to something which seems fairly similar.)  Incidentally, while being tough on crime (to the extent of killing alleged criminals in questionable circumstances) may be Duterte's signature most prominent in foreign coverage, as far as I saw it was not the only one in the Phillipines. Notably he promised to be tough on corruption. That's the sort of thing many leaders promise but fail with, still it's a highly attractive promise. (I've commented before on how pervasive corruption fundamentally affects society and it's something a significant percentage of the population encounter. I won't repeat that except to say "if you think imaginging that you're only being ticketed because of some quota, imagine that it's like when you feel you're only being ticketed because the officer wants their coffee money".) Duterte also seemed to ride the anti-politician wave that is been seen throughout a lot of the world. (Notable in the Phillipines where politicial families are far more significant than the Clintons and Bushes.)  BTW, I'm not really sure what Chinese community propaganda has to do with anything. AFAICT, the CCP seems to like Duterte more than other prominent Filipino leaders as he's seems far less confrontational towards them. And I'm fairly sure they're not opposed to wars on drugs (and no more opposed to "concentration camps" than the US).  Ultimately I think you need to expand your reading to far more than the WSWS. For example, if you think a war on drugs is always some US conspiracy and no one will genuinely support such a thing, you need to read a lot more to try and understand why this isn't the case and in fact plenty of people may support such a thing based on their own worldviews, perceptions etc.  Again I make no coment on the rationality of any of these (nor your worldview), simply pointing out that many people see things very differently from you, and unless you're able to see these worldviews (you obviously don't have to agree with them), you're going to continue to make the same mistake you seem to have made many times of thinking everyone feels the same as you and so they're going to do and feel as you would. I mean it's not like you have to go very far for this. Trump scares the hell out of a lot of people, both in the US and especially outside the US with many of the things he's said and done since becoming a candidate (and also before). Yet he's clearly getting a support in the US as well, and not all of it is because people hate Hillary Clinton.


 * Nil Einne (talk) 07:22, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Same old story from 78 years ago. Count Iblis (talk) 20:26, 4 August 2016 (UTC)