Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Compensated emancipation

:{{la|Compensated emancipation}} – (View AfDView log)

:({{Find sources|Compensated emancipation}})

The article has existed for a number of years, and is still completely unsourced. The second paragraph begins with the statement "Nearly all countries that eliminated slavery did so through some form of compensated emancipation", and then discusses emancipation in the US, with the implication that emancipation without compensation to the slaveholder only occured in the US after the Civil War in the South. It then lists a number of countries claimed to have paid slaveowners for emancipation; this is not true in the case of Chile nor in most Latin American countries, who generally had laws providing that all slaves born after a certain date would be free, or freed after several years of service. Emancipation in the British Empire was long process, and I can find only one ocassion in which it was paid. I don't know much about the French, but given the previously mentioned inaccuracies, I don't have much confidence in the article on that point either. My source -- Hinks, Peter P. and McKivigan, John R.,(2007) Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition Westport: Greenwood Press PoloJoe (talk) 05:06, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

:Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. —Tom Morris (talk) 06:53, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

• Keep I would have to think this is an article that needs improving, rather than deleting. The topic itself seems article-worthy, and there are thousands of Google Scholar hits, 10s of thousands of GBooks. Agricolae (talk) 09:32, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
• Comment if the topic is truly noteworthy but the contents are unsourced, then two alternatives would be to stub it down to a single sentence, in the hope that someone might find sources and fix it, or to redirect it to an article on the more general topic, like Emancipation, where it might grow organically.   Will Beback  talk  10:48, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

• Delete This is really a dictionary definition. Should be covered in Emancipation as Will said. Info on specific instances should have individual articles, as the Washington DC case (the only one in the article with substantial coverage) already does. Steve Dufour (talk) 10:51, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

• Keep Far more than a dictionary concept per [http://books.google.com/books?id=4X44KbDBl9gC&pg=PA239&dq=compensated+emancipation+act&hl=en&ei=kt5cToXZGdGztwfrmsXkAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=compensated%20emancipation%20act&f=false] which has an entire chapter thereon, [http://books.google.com/books?id=ATq5_6h2AT0C&pg=PA181&dq=compensated+emancipation+act&hl=en&ei=kt5cToXZGdGztwfrmsXkAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=compensated%20emancipation%20act&f=false], [http://books.google.com/books?id=9DRYSx29JfUC&pg=PA217&dq=compensated+emancipation+act&hl=en&ei=kt5cToXZGdGztwfrmsXkAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=compensated%20emancipation%20act&f=false] debate in Congress thereon about Missouri, [http://books.google.com/books?id=Sxb4G8A7eJ8C&pg=PA218&dq=compensated+emancipation+act&hl=en&ei=M99cTt73GMOUtwfI7I3LAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBTgK] and so on -- all specifically dealing not with a "definition" but with actual historical events. In short - a notable topic, and one which can be fully sourced. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:03, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

:I agree that the historical events should be well covered in WP. I don't quite see how the readers are served by an article putting the events together because they are all examples of compensated emancipation. For instance we wouldn't have articles on "close election," "short war," or "broken treaty" even though these are important things in history.Steve Dufour (talk) 17:50, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

::See Landslide victory which ends up being a list and article combination. So Wikipedia would not have such an article? Not. See Close elections. Smile. Collect (talk) 19:50, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

:::I stand corrected on those points. However I am still not sure that an article on compensated emancipation is really WP-correct if all it says is that it is emancipation that is compensated and then points to examples. I would say the same about landslide victory and close election. Still I don't think keeping the article is such a bad thing. It is a very interesting topic, I say as an American with a stong feeling for the importance of history. Steve Dufour (talk) 23:11, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I have added some refs and some rewriting. Agricolae (talk) 19:18, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
• Keep--looking at Emancipation, that page basically seems to be a disambiguation page. The best targets for a merge, IMHO, would be either manumission or abolitionism. But neither of those seem to be a great target, since compensated emancipation has important differences from both (although you could argue that it's a substrain of abolitionism). The rework done by Agricolae shows pretty clearly that this is a distinct concept that's best handled in its own article. Meelar (talk) 19:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
• Keep: The problem with sourcing has been fixed (mostly by Agricolae), and notability is not a concern given the number of Google Books / Google hits. jonkerz♠ 02:22, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• Keep Big improvements. Good work.   Will Beback  talk  10:51, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

:The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.