Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 August 21

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August 21

Emigration restrictions before the Soviet Union?

Did any countries ever practice any emigration restrictions before the Soviet Union introduced its own emigration restrictions in the 1920s? 68.4.99.100 (talk) 19:50, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Japan and China come to mind. DOR (HK) (talk) 20:06, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

I recently read [1] about how India and the UK "colluded" to prevent emigration of lower caste and lower "class" people from India. While that is long after the Soviet Union's restrictions, as the article mentions the practice predated India's independence. There some discussion e.g. on [2]. While these generally weren't strict emigration restrictions in that the affected people weren't completely prevented from leave British India, I'd argue they were effectively some mix of emigration and immigration restrictions since effectively people were denied documents which would allow them to be accepted in a number of places. I'd note also that if documents are required by many countries but obtaining these documents require payment which will be difficult for a subset of the population, or only available from some far off place which you might not need to travel to to emigrate, or required documents e.g. birth certificates which a subset of the population may not have, these also effectively act to restrict emigration from those affected. Again while these people may not be legally prevented from leaving, their ability to leave has been restricted by their government preventing them from obtain documents which will allow them to be accepted. Nil Einne (talk) 00:11, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

There certainly were emigration restrictions during the French revolution (see The Scarlet Pimpernel). I also recently learned about the origin of the Volga Germans - whose recruitment was (in part) stopped because Austria and other countries forbade emigration. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:36, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

What percentage of the Italian males who were born in 1899 died in World War I?

What percentage of the Italian males who were born in 1899 died in World War I?

According to my own rough calculations, it should be less than 5%. Italy had slightly over 1 million births in 1900, so the figure should almost certainly be the same for 1899: [[3]]. Since around half of all births are male, this should mean slightly over half a million male births in Italy in 1899. Meanwhile, the data here suggests that slightly less than 18,000 Italian men born in 1899 died in World War I:

https://www.cadutigrandeguerra.it/CercaNome.aspx

(I found that link through here: https://gianlucarusso.github.io/data_projects/wwi_cas/ )

If we're talking slightly over half a million Italian male births in 1899, well, 1% of this would be slightly over 5,000. So, around 3-3.5% of all Italian males born in 1899 (again, slightly less than 18,000 of them) would have perished in World War I. If we want to limit our calculations to those Italian-born males who lived to adulthood, then just a rough estimate, but maybe 2/3 (67%) of all Italian males born in 1899 lived to adulthood, in which case you'd do 3%/67% (0.03/0.67) or 3.5%/67% (0.035/0.67) and get around 5%, or 0.05. So, I would presume that around 5% of all Italian males born in 1899 and who lived to adulthood perished in World War I.

Anyway, do you see anything wrong with these calculations of mine? 68.4.99.100 (talk) 19:59, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Italy's child mortality rate in 1900 was 323.09/1000 live births: I honestly didn't know actuarial data around the world was this good (and maybe I should because I've looked at death rates before): Child mortality rate (under five years old) in Italy from 1865 to 2020. Unfortunately to get the sources for that site you need to subscribe, but I should hope they're not completely reckless and have at least some oversight process. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:12, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

So, I was right. About 1/3 of Italian children back then died during their childhood. That said, though, since it's only to age five, it could be a little bit higher if one extends this data up to age 18. Still, probably not a cardinal difference since AFAIK most child mortality happened in infancy back then. So, Yeah, my estimate that around 2/3 of Italian males who were born in 1899 ended up living to adulthood is probably (more-or-less) accurate or at least close to being accurate. 68.4.99.100 (talk) 21:54, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Child mortality (< 5 yrs) in the UK was 228 per thou in 1900 [4], France 219, but for Germany (in 1905) it was 352 [5], so Italy doesn't look too bad by comparison with the latter. Alansplodge (talk) 20:34, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Not answering your question directly, but see also Deaths and survivors in war: The Italian soldiers in WWI, which includes a breakdown by military branch (joining the Bersaglieri was the most hazardous). Alansplodge (talk) 20:22, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Page 607 in your link appears to roughly match up with my estimate above here: As in, about 5% of the Italian men born in 1899 who lived to adulthood ended up dying in World War I. 68.4.99.100 (talk) 21:54, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Plattenseeaktion??

In a German-language source I came across a mention of a 'Plattenseeaktion', which by context of the book would have been some sort of military or political move by Hungary around Lake Balaton roughly 1920s. Any further info on this incident, any wikipedia article in other language wiki? --Soman (talk) 21:16, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

So we're not talking about WW2's 1945 Operation Spring Awakening. Reading Lake Balaton, I wonder if this has anything to do with Hungary's "first biological research institute being built on its shore in 1927." This being not too far from Austria, in an area where national borders had previously been somewhat fluid, perhaps it (and the general opening up of the area), had implications for germanic thoughts of future expansion. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.209.121.96 (talk) 22:29, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

The closest thing I can find is that Charles I of Austria (article quoted below) was briefly imprisoned on the shore of lake Balaton (at Tihany Abbey) in 1921, before being shipped over the Danube and eventually to Madeira. The article doesn't say, but it would make sense that a military vessel escorted him over the lake and then through the Sió river:

"After the second failed attempt at restoration in Hungary, Charles and his pregnant wife Zita were arrested and quarantined at Tihany Abbey. On 1 November 1921 they were taken to the Hungarian Danube harbour city of Baja, were taken on board the gunboat HMS Glowworm, and there removed to the Black Sea where they were transferred to the light cruiser HMS Cardiff." - Lindert (talk) 22:44, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Could be linked with the biological institute thing. Text in ref (talking about an individual born 1907, German nationalist in Czechoslovakia) "...Spitzenmitgl . der Aktion des Grenzschulheims Boberhaus in Löwenberg / Schlesien ( gegr . 1926 , Erwachsenen- und Fortbildung ) scharfe Stellungnahme gegen die sog . Plattenseeaktion der Ungarn ". See Boberhaus. --Soman (talk) 11:06, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

I think it is saying the person in question was a "critic" of the battle (scharfe Stellungnahme means something like "sharp opinion"), which is entirely possible if he lived past 1945. But my German is very rusty. We'd need someone who spoke it natively to translate better than me. --Jayron32 14:22, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

If it's not about the battle (a bit a doubtful position in the circumstance IMO) it's about a wider Hungarian influence in the area rather than merely the biological institute specifically and then the sentence is linking his belonging to the Initiative regarding the educational movement in Silesia (see de) with a contemporaneous contradicting influence. --Askedonty (talk) 16:18, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Could be. AFAIK, the area has always been in Hungary, even when it was part of the Dual Monarchy; being an integral part of the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen/Transleithania, and I'm not sure there were ever German nationalist designs on the area; this is different from Silesia, which had always been a cultural crossroads, and changed hands between countries many times throughout history, and which various German and Austrian states had claimed numerous times. --Jayron32 18:18, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Swabian Turkey and from Danube Swabians: After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the First World War, the settlement areas of the Danube Swabians were divided into three parts by the Allied Powers. One part remained with Hungary, the second part was allocated to Romania, and the third part fell to the newly established state of Yugoslavia. In this atmosphere of ethnic nationalism, the Danube Swabians had to fight for legal equality as citizens and for the preservation of their cultural traditions. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany promoted National Socialist ideas to the Danube Swabians and claimed the right to protect them as part of its reason for expanding into eastern Europe.. fiveby(zero) 19:08, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

The last part sounds like what Vladimir Putin is doing with ethnic Russians in the Near Abroad today. 68.4.99.100 (talk) 00:54, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Well there you go. I was unaware. --Jayron32 12:51, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Auto-translation of the Hungarian in this article isn't to great, but better for a German summary:

The youth representatives from the Danube countries had lively discussions about the problems in Southeast Europe in the youth center "Boberhaus" of the Silesian youth team in the small Silesian town of Löwenberg. Ivan Boldizsär reported about it in the November issue of Magyar Szemle (1934). The head of the Hungarian Institute at Berlin University, Professor Gyula Farkas, who had had good connections with the Silesian youth team for a long time, was also involved in the implementation of this “Southeastern Europe College”. Guided by him, those wandering groups of Silesian German youths came to Hungary year after year, which caused the Bethlen government more concern through their German nationalist agitation than other similar German groups. Their völkisch agitation mostly took place under the cloak of agricultural advice for Hungarian-German farmers. In Hitler's Germany, these 'wandering birds' of the Weimar period were already 'all members of the National Socialist Party, most of whom are in the civil service, quite a few hold leading positions,' Boldizsär notes in his report. He characterized their speeches as rhetoric that “almost puts the words in brown uniforms”. "The student leaders of several German universities were present at this college, who today in Germany are almost equal in power and rank to the rector". The interesting report describes how the German idea of ​​the Reich was propagated by the German side, which was the "eternal mission of Germanness and even more than duty: the reality inoculated into the blood". Due to geopolitical circumstances, this program is primarily oriented towards south-eastern Europe.

The action in question might not be a battle, but rather some kind of incident with Hungarian police or government. These organized trips had been happening since at least 1922 when 50 youths visited a scout group at the lake then marched to Swabian Turkey.[6] It's hard to tell without more information or a link to the source, there might be other possibilities if looking outside 1926-37. I don't know why anyone would care to make a "sharp statement" about Balaton Limnological Institute. fiveby(zero) 02:37, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

One of these mystery questions hiding info that would help with the answer. The text is from Mads Ole Balling's biographies collection, here regarding Adalbert Gabriel's biography. The German source text is somewhat ambiguous, especially regarding the word "Aktion" seemingly referring to an elder (or Danish?, or Socialist?) useage. It might mean a collective movement like in Antifaschistische Aktion. The complete absence of the term Plattenseeaktion on the web and its use together with an introductory sog[enannte] (so-called) leads me to think that it was so-called only in Adalbert Gabriel's circles. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 06:40, 25 August 2022 (UTC)