Talk:Fédon's rebellion

Latest comment: 3 years ago by Tiredmeliorist in topic Article length
  • Buckley, R. N., Slaves in Red Coats: The British West India Regiments, 1795-1815, Yale UP, 1979.
  • Cox, Edward. Free Coloreds in the Slave Societies of St. Kitts and Grenada, 1763—1833. Knoxville: University of Tcnncsscc Press, 1984.
  • Steele, Beverley A. Grenada: A History of its People. Oxford: Macmillan Education, 2003.

"The stated purpose of the rebellion was to create a black republic as had already occurred in neighbouring Haiti rather than to free slaves, so it is not properly called a slave rebellion, although freedom of the slaves would have been a probable consequence of its success."

As it says, freedom of the slaves would have been a consequence of the success of this rebellion. I don't think it is fair to say that the purpose was to create a republic when maybe some sort of proto state would have been sufficient for most slaves. I think the wording of that quote should be looked up closer. RiccardoPoloni7 (talk) 21:38, 1 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

GA Review

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Fédon's rebellion/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Guettarda (talk · contribs) 16:02, 11 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Having recently worked through Candlin's chapters on this, and read through the article, I'd be happy to do this review. I believe my four small edits (mostly typo-fixes) are minor enough to permit a GA review. Guettarda (talk) 16:02, 11 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

(A start, more to come)

General
  • I think Buidhe's suggestion of a split is well worth considering.
Lead
  • The language as a whole could be tightened. For example
    • Paragraph 2, lead: As a result of Fédon's rebellion, French influence in Grenada was eradicated once and for all - this seems like an overstatement; for example, even today Catholics remain about 1/3 of the population.
    • Para 3, lead: particularly in comparison to that of Haiti, for example - I don't feel like "particularly" and "for example" work together
Background
  • para 1: Late 18th-century Grenada was a 120 square miles (310 km2) island in the western Caribbean - the size and location of Grenada hasn't changed in the last 200 years
  • restricting the King's new subjects - which king, and why is it capitalised? (Phrasing doesn't seem Wikipedia-appropriate).
  • It was a heavy cotton-producing island, and as such was integral to Britain's Industrial Revolution and Economic boom - heavy is oddly vague, and "economic boom" shouldn't be capitalised. The link to "business cycle" also seems less than ideal - surely there must be a link somewhere to a specific boom related to the industrial revolution?
  • para 2: the other half, comments Candlin, were "found cowering in their plantations or discovered aimlessly wandering the island's roads, unsure of what to do" - this shouldn't be credited to Candlin; the first part of this sentence has a very important caveat Indeed, littered throughout the three main sources and countless letters written are repeated references to slaves found cowering.... This attitude to enslaved Africans - that they were like children, incapable of ordering their own lives without the overseer's whip - was a fundamental (and false) rationale for slavery. That sentence could end at joined the rebels and lose no useful information.
  • para 3: 185 British citizens - while Candlin says "and just 185 British", he doesn't say anything about citizenship. Adding the word "citizen", I believe, is anachronistic; "subject" would be the appropriate term, but that would not make the racial and ethnic distinction that Candlin is trying to make here.
Causes of the revolution
  • The opening sentence here is overly long and convoluted.
  • para 3: It appears that the native... - this sentence absorbs too much of the colonialist attitude and transmits it in Wikipedia's voice.
  • para 3: the quote from Candlin is too long, and much of it could be paraphrased without loss of meaning.
  • para 4: the quotes from Dubois and Candlin in this paragraph are too long and too vague. Dubois' quote actually isn't all that helpful since it alludes to, but doesn't explain, what was actually going on in the "nearby French colonies". After all, a lot was going on; presumably this is a reference to Hugues actions, but without a clear time-stamp it's impossible to know.

(more to come). Guettarda (talk) 14:12, 12 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

→ yeah, totally -- it definitely needs some tightening, so go ahead and make these. I was just worried about giant blocks of text disappearing.... Tiredmeliorist (talk) 13:40, 13 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Article length

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The length of this article is pushing 100 kb of readable prose (over 16,000 words), which should be considerably reduced by WP:SIZERULE. Reading time is currently estimated at over 90 minutes according to one online calculator I consulted, so I would suggest that the article would be more readable if some of the content were moved into sub articles. As such I don't think it currently meets GA criteria #3. (t · c) buidhe 00:45, 12 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

  • Also way too many notes. Many contain information that is UNDUE here but may be relevant on sub-articles. (t · c) buidhe 00:53, 12 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
  • Open to your suggestions, but someone spent a lot of time on this, so would be a travesty to lose that. This is also a popular topic (and Wikipedia an important source of information) for school projects in Grenada, where there is a lot of misinformation and mythology around the rebellion. But if you see a way to make it more accessible, without loosing the info, then go for it. Tiredmeliorist (talk) 13:29, 12 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
    Article just goes into too much detail and needs splits / trimming across the board, particularly quotations which seem to be overused. Compare Armenian genocide, which covers a much broader topic (in terms of the scale of the event and the volume of RS that exist on it) but is only 40% as long as this page in readable prose. This is due to appropriate use of WP:Summary style and consignment of less important details to sub-articles. (t · c) buidhe 16:35, 30 June 2021 (UTC)Reply
    Yeah, fair enough -- have at it. Please just indicate what pages things are being moved to, when possible, in order to reassure good info is not being lost. Tiredmeliorist (talk) 12:05, 2 July 2021 (UTC)Reply