Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Wife selling (2nd nomination)

Some notes
To avoid cluttering the main discussion, I'd like to pass along some notes from my attempt to verify that "wife selling" exists as a topic outside England and China.
 * "Germans." What I'm finding is that English scholarship in the 19th century (as here and here and even Havelock Ellis here) asserts that the practice of wife selling was brought to the fair shores of Albion by the "Saxons." The kind of 19th-century scholarship that we can still use as RS on Wikipedia cites its sources, but these are essays making broad, morally burdened claims. What this indicates is that "wife selling" among the English, which is meticulously documented at Wife selling (English custom), had become disreputable and embarrassing, and "decent" Englishmen wanted to blame foreign influence. One of them in particular is asserting a nationalist theory that privileges Celts over Germans, if you're familiar with that ethnic chestnut regarding British origin. If you read out into the context, you'll see some fairly nasty anti-German rhetoric, and assertions of English superiority to "the savage". At any rate, these sources are talking about the "Germans" or Saxons who settled Britannia, and not the earlier Germanic peoples the Romans called Germani. I haven't given up finding whatever Schmidt was basing the claim on, but so far I've been unsuccessful. The Germanic stereotype among the Romans is that German women were strong, even fierce, and well respected in society: the locus classicus for this is Tacitus, Germania 8. In general, Tacitus paints the "Germans" as vice-free warriors like the Romans used to be in the good old days before imperial decadence and luxury.

Which brings us to the issue of ethnic stereotypes. One reason to insist on meticulous documentation (which is available through abundant RS for the English and Chinese customs) is to avoid perpetuating specious or unduly generalized claims that "wife selling" was characteristic of a group. Having spent my morning and early afternoon researching this topic, I have a grand total of two potential refs to wife selling other than English or Chinese:


 * As this modern source indicates, "wife selling" was one of the ethnic slurs against immigrants stemming from "moralists' apprehension that the integrity of the family was decaying": "The Slavic immigrants of the 1880s and 1890s were notorious for odd cases of wife selling and near polyandry." The "odd case" indicates that incidents recorded in court records and newspapers should be approached with caution: do these incidents reflect the responses of individuals to extraordinary circumstances, or do they represent a practice or "custom" within the individual's social or ethnic group? Or mere immigrant bashing?


 * This source describes an attempt at wife-selling in 19th-century France, and takes note of a few others atributed to reports in the London Times. But again, how are these instances to be understood? As a standard practice that was acceptable within a certain social group, or as aberrant behavior that made the news because it was exceptional? Was the Times expressing the revulsion of the decent, as were the English scholars above, and pointing a finger across the Channel? Generalizing that "the French do it too" on the basis of a few exceptional cases?

Again, there is extensive documentation for the English custom (though I note that the article does not include this criticism that "only ten cases can be instanced in the period 1690–1750") and for the Chinese custom; but where is the evidence for other societies? I've spent hours looking for it; I'm assuming those who have voted to keep the article have made an effort to verify at least some of its disputed content, and I hope they're willing to share the scholarship they found to support their "keep" opinion. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:05, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The English article does now contain the ten instances between 1690 and 1750 and expands on it slightly. Thanks for that. Malleus Fatuorum 22:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I want to avoid semantic disputes as much as I can here, because I think that is not truly a problem. Just nuances in definitions. I just want to add some sources I found quickly that discuss explicit bride selling practises in other cultures beyond the "wife-selling" articles for England and China. I don't think it matters so much that "bride selling" presumably refers to unmarried women sold into marriage, versus "wife selling"=already-married women sold into another marriage; it's all about selling women or girls as chattel. Any of these countries, and scores of others, could have standalone articles on their national variations on this theme:
 * Truiqui (Mexican indigenous):
 * Afghanistan:
 * Bangladesh:
 * India's current issues with the practise are discussed in Bride-selling, but could be a standalone article too
 * Zambia child brides being sold:
 * Yemen and India: and

OttawaAC (talk) 00:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps they could, but none has any relevance to wife selling. And looking just at wife selling in England, it wasn't about selling chattels, it was about divorce. Malleus Fatuorum 01:00, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

So confining wife-selling to already married women: That's it for the moment, but I'm sure that other examples are out there waiting to be properly sourced. A lot of this practice seems to have taken place among the less affluent social classes, so probably not copious amounts of historical documentation of it; still, if there's legitimate documentation that can be sourced, why not an article? OttawaAC (talk) 01:58, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * One in Australia 19C: and also from a source in the original Wife selling article: ["So Gross a Violation of Decency": A Note on Wife Sales in Colonial Australia, in Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 84, Jun., 1998, pp. 26–27]
 * Japan/Hawaii:
 * Colonial America! Gasp, horror. : and
 * Slavic immigrants to United States in 1880s-1890s, which leads me to think there must be evidence of a long tradition in some areas of Eastern Europe:
 * France, same period as England:


 * What is that you don't understand? How can a wife not be already married? Why your insistence of things like bride selling? In any case, wife selling in the British colonies is already covered in the English article. Malleus Fatuorum 02:03, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I merely supplied sources citing examples that fit the wife-selling definition only, to exclude information that would include all forms of selling a woman into marriage (which would include both the previously-married and the not previously married). In any case, the British colonies aren't England and would only belong in that article tangentially. No reason why the U.S.A or Australia wouldn't warrant standalone articles, regional distinctions may well have existed, and even if they didn't, there's still France, the Slavic cultures, Japan, Hawaii....etc. OttawaAC (talk) 02:15, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Unless you can demonstrate that significant regional differences did exist, the colonies wouldn't warrant standalone articles. Furthermore, an article with "English custom" in the title would cover goings-on in English colonies, as these colonies were obviously imbued with English culture and custom. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:38, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Baloney, factual and historical baloney -- there were certainly a lot of people living in British colonies who were not of English ethnicity; French descendants outnumbered the English speakers for quite some time before and after Canadian Confederation in 1867, as one example, and there were loads of Gaelic speakers, native groups, etc., who may well have had their own wife-selling traditions; pending further research, which I shall undertake, I don't think you should be so confident of your claims to the contrary). OttawaAC (talk) 11:52, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Which it does, and says explicitly that the custom in the colonies was exported from England. Malleus Fatuorum 02:40, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly. (As an aside, it would be very helpful for participants in this discussion not fully conversant on the topic to read both articles involved). Nikkimaria (talk) 03:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

That is a perfect example of the problem with cultural bias in Wikipedia -- refer to the Triqui link I had up above, there have been recent examples within the past few years, still persisting in California -- why would that belong in an article on England's customs? World history as written by the imperialists doesn't provide the full picture by a long shot does it? I'm going to create a Barnstar of Invisibility to give out to folks trying to purge Wikipedia of information that doesn't support a global-north, British Imperial phallocentric worldview, I think it could aid the anti-bias efforts. (j/k) OttawaAC (talk) 12:01, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Also that information is historically and factually incorrect in the case of the United States in the post-colonial period, following the Revolution, when the historical record shows Slavic immigrants who imported the practise in their own traditions (see source cited in list I provided). The United States is no longer a colony since about 1776 or so, so anything happening after that would not belong in an article on England's customs I would think. OttawaAC (talk) 11:49, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I am clearly more conversant in the topic than the folks who want the "Wife selling" article deleted, as I have cited historical research showing that the practice existed in at least 4 other countries beyond England and China. OttawaAC (talk) 11:49, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My comment was a general one, though the placement of your reply made it appear it was directed at you - please don't do that, it makes the conversation hard to follow. If Slavic immigrants brought the custom to the US, then create an article on the Slavic custom and include its presence in the US. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:48, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * On scope: the article bride-buying already exists; "wife selling" has to be about the selling of a woman who is already a wife, or it's an illegitimate content fork. And it has to be distinguished from trafficking in general as having some peculiarity to the legal status of a wife. As for the Slavs, I lack confidence in the reading of some of my fellow editors here: if you're talking about the source I cited, it did NOT say that this was something they brought from the old country, and can't be used to make that assertion; perhaps it was, but perhaps it was purely situational, a response to circumstances in the new environment. The source explicitly says "odd cases," meaning scattered reports, not a well-documented and characteristic practice, and all the material the source gathered about other groups and practices in that passage was to show anti-immigrant sentiment, and the ways that "decent" people derided immigrants as less moral in their "family values," a phrase that ought to bring a chill. That said, if someone had full access to the book, you could investigate the sources that were cited in the notes. But one isolated mention is insufficient to go enshrining "wife selling" among the Slavs as encyclopedia-worthy. Wish I hadn't eaten my breakfast yet, because that makes me a bit sick. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree with the interpretation that it was not brought from Europe; chattel marriage and polygamy have very old roots in Europe, and I think the wife-selling branch in England are not that far removed from the Slav immigrant practice in the USA; Germany, France and the Irish all had similar pagan marriage practices is what I've gleaned from some reading. More research needed, for sure, but I don't necessarily draw the same conclusions. OttawaAC (talk) 18:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)