Talk:Jean Hoeufft

Vandalized material

In doing the translation of a portion of the Biography section, it became obvious that the original article in Dutch has been vandalized by someone who inserted some idiotic nonsense into the article. I wanted to document this first so went ahead and translated it anyway so it can be evaluated by others here in English if desired, before we discard it. (Although some of it doesn't hang together very well in the original and is well nigh untranslatable, but that hardly matters.)

In any case, if you wish to have a look, you can see the text in question in the Biography section: it's the entire paragraph tagged {{dubious}}. (permalink). I'll also go make a note at the Dutch talk page, to alert them as well. Mathglot (talk) 07:42, 17 March 2017 (UTC) Edited by Mathglot (talk) 10:59, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

That rubbish has remained in the Dutch article since the creation of the article by nl:User:T. Tichelaar (nl:talk · nl:contribs · nl:blocks) on 28 Aug 2012. User T. Tichelaar (and his sock nl:User:Taksen (nl:talk · nl:contribs · nl:blocks) ) were blocked for three days on 25 Aug 2016 (notice) for unrelated activity. The Dutch blocking administrator called him out for "using dubious sources and original research" and "acting like a jerk."

User:Taksen/T. Tichelaar have not edited since on Dutch wikipedia, but are present and somewhat active more recently on English WP. See: User:T. Tichelaar (en:talk · en:contribs · en:blocks), User:Taksen (en:talk · en:contribs · en:blocks). It's not clear to me whether their sock status is recognized by en admins; I'll figure out where to notify them about it.
Mathglot (talk) 19:19, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

I have had a look at the sockpuppet investigation related to this, but everything was just a misunderstanding resulting from using different accounts for different wikis and sometimes forgetting to keep them strictly separated. In the end, the user did nothing against the rules. --HyperGaruda (talk) 20:36, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

They may have reached that conclusion on nl WP, but I'm not sure it's ever been looked at here. On en WP, he appears to have three accounts. The good news is, none appear to have activity since that nl sock decision in July, so that's a good thing: still, I thought that on en WP even just having multiple accounts was against policy. The following all have contributions in the past: Taksen, T. Tichelaar and TacoTichelaar. Mathglot (talk) 23:41, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay, it's not rubbish, there really is a source about that. See next section. Mathglot (talk) 00:55, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Who hit who?

The first part of this discussion (box) was moved here from WP:PNT#Jean Hoeufft.

I've gotten stuck on that last paragraph. Not able to work out who hit who first ... any help appreciated! Somej (talk) 03:43, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Who hit who? Simple. A vandal hit the Dutch article. See the new version with my translation, then click the 'Talk' link in the {{Dubious}} tag. Mathglot (talk) 07:45, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to disappoint you, but the story is actually supported by one of the sources, which until recently was unverifiable due to the dead link. The article does need some rewriting to better represent the sources, while references should be moved to more proper locations. --HyperGaruda (talk) 21:10, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

@Somej and HyperGaruda: Thanks for finding that link. I'm certainly not disappointed, and the story is highly entertaining, but only remotely relevant to Hoeufft. At least, that source makes it clear who exactly the characters were that were being discussed in that paragraph of the article, which was very unclear on that point. It is now apparent, that that paragraph was about one of the many scuffles that must have taken place between various parties who claimed an interest in the estate of one of the wealthiest men of the time. By the time that incident occurred, Houefft had been dead six years.

Nobody really cares who fought whom for scraps of his immense fortune years after his death. This seems to suffer from a reliability issue to say the very least; how would "young Dutch travelers" even know about this, other than hearsay, because everybody in Paris was talking about it; it would be like some European tourists to America in the 1970s going home and writing about the immense fight about the billionaire Howard Hughes estate that dominated the news for a long time. You could probably pad out many stub bios on WP with details of inheritance fights, but rarely is that worth more than a few lines, if at all, especially in such a short article. It's a great story, and that "Voyage of two young Dutchmen" is a great find, but there's nothing I've seen on the six pages with references to Hoeufft that will improve the article. If there were thousands of references about Hoeufft like there are about Howard Hughes, maybe the inheritance scuffle would rate a sentence or two, but given the impoverished state of the article, it just isn't relevant, and should come out. We could leave a link to it at See also or Further reading, that might be a good place for it.

The guy is actually very interesting, and was very important in his time. I've been looking for ways to improve the article, and have found three references so far, which I've incorporated into the article. A couple of those, have lots more information that can be mined for additional expansion of the article. That's where my efforts are focused. Mathglot (talk) 00:55, 18 March 2017 (UTC) Edited by Mathglot (talk) 03:39, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Agree with removing that section; the post-mortem brawl is hardly relevant to the subject. --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:48, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

I'll wait a decent interval before removing it to see if there's other comment, but I expect we can do so in a week or two. (Somej, feel free to leave your opinion about this.) Meanwhile, I'm finding this guy more and more interesting; the richest man of his time, hugely important in financing countries, kingdoms, and wars, important contributions to European diplomacy though not a politician, not to mention a major factor in the hydraulic engineering of the marshes of western France. Very interesting guy, and he seems "underreported" in comparison to his influence. Would be nice to have a really decent article here about him. Mathglot (talk) 20:53, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks for sorting the confusion in the Dutch article - it was way beyond my Google-assisted translation capability. I found Hoeufft because of his sister Anna, and the von Gressenich link; but as you say he's an extremely interesting guy both in his own right and as a representative of the Protestant financial networks of the time. Hope others can find other sources! Somej (talk) 19:57, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

@Somej: Absolutely he is. I'm working on more refs and beefing up the article. In the meantime, Hoeufft's story led me to another Dutch/French banker and swamp-drainer, Barthélemy Hervart which I just translated from the French article so please go check that out, it can use some improvement of the same type. One area I'm having trouble sourcing is the whole "remittance corridor" thing; how did people "subsidize" financial operations or move money around at all in those days, especially at the level of Kings financing wars, and that sort of thing? I know from History of Banking about letters of exchange and that sort of thing but it doesn't go into much detail or cover France much. So, if you want to help out some more either on Hoeufft or Hervart, see if you can go after the financial angle, and what was it they actually did, that was so valuable in helping out royals and generals that they ended up filthy rich from it? That would be a big help.

@Mathglot: Thompson describes huge shipments of coin - 450 000 livres ! - as well as trade in copper, all based on settling (bank) accounts with relatives in other countries, such as Mathieu Hoeufft in Amsterdam. Somej (talk) 09:33, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Some more on the specific 'remittance corridors' used by the Dutch bankers at this time is on pg 71 of this book:

https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=R2epBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA196&dq=Erik%20Thomson%20%E2%80%9Choeufft&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q=hoeufft&f=false .

Is that the kind of detail you're looking for? Cheers, Somej (talk) 07:53, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

The other angle that interests me, is the marsh-drainage story, and Herwart was involved in that, as well, but in the south of France in his case. It's starting to seem like all the hydraulic engineering in France was done by Dutch ex-pats, which would make a certain amount of sense, of course, but if true is kind of a hole in Wikipedia and maybe a whole area of inquiry to be developed. So that's another area to help out, if you're interested in that. The reference by the Comte de Dienne (currently, ref [7]) seems the logical place to start for that. Mathglot (talk) 21:14, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Back to the who-hit-who topic: if it isn't already obvious about how sketchy that "Voyage of Two Young Dutch Travelers" story is, two things jump out at me: the incentive to exaggerate or invent, and the time lapse involved.

As to the former, the work reads like a picaresque novel, involving stories about in-fighting among heirs to the estate of the richest non-royal in Europe, and people clobbering people with wooden legs. Sounds like one of Jan Steen's paintings about wild carousing. Plenty of people had axes to grind at that time, and I'm sure would say or do anything to get a piece of the pie. Not that events couldn't have happened that way, but inventing stories or exaggerating them would have been in the interest of certain parties. Do we even know that the "two young Dutch travelers" ever existed?

Secondly, the tome reports events that supposedly took place around 1658, and the book was published in 1899. That's over 240 years. To keep that in perspective: this would be like two young Dutch tourists visiting Philadelphia in 1787 and picking up gossip about James Madison and Benjamin Franklin writing the U.S. Constitution, and then their story gets printed for the first time, in.. wait for it.. the year 2028. Can you spell D-u-b-i-o-u-s? Mathglot (talk) 21:35, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually, reading through the prefaces, the 1899 book is just one edition of the original 1862 print, which in turn is based on a manuscript found in The Hague. --HyperGaruda (talk) 19:42, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

• Huh? I don't want to get to deep into this but I am stuck on "stabbed himself in the stomach". Seems unlikely. Why fight if you're suicidal, and if you are why the stomach? Not a fun way to die. Just saying. You guy sure about this? Elinruby (talk) 01:24, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Elinruby: not only did he stab himself, but he cut his own throat. It says so on page 397 of that book ("et Beck (...) se tüe soy-mesme en se donnant un coup de cousteau au ventre et en s'esgorgeant."). --HyperGaruda (talk) 05:18, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

That sounds like an early example in Europe of harakiri, quite notable. The two "tourists", where the grandchildren of François van Aerssen. The Van Aerssen belonged to the richest families in the Republic. If I had not read their account I would never found out about Jean Hoeufft. There are documents in the National Archives about this heritage, so tracing the heirs was important. There is probably a list of what he belonged in France and how much it was estimated.Taksen (talk) 07:58, 21 March 2017 (UTC) I will give up, why don't you look for yourself. Conversations you have not witnessed are more reliable?Taksen (talk) 20:24, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

What? Can you repeat that last post at 20:24 in Dutch or French, I don't get your meaning, here. Or, expand in English: What about the heirs is important, other than perhaps as a footnote to his biography? Who cares what was in his estate, it's already been stated he was one of the richest non-royals in Europe, it's to be expected that he has a huge estate. And what do you wish to say about the National Archives about the heritage, and why are the heirs important? Mathglot (talk) 23:24, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

References

Relatives and Associates

Mattheus Hoeufft (1606-1669), the nephew and a banker with whom Jean cooperated, was estimated as one of the richest people of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century; his estate was more than a million guilders. It is likely Jean invested money in his brothers and nephews bank and business. Taksen (talk) 07:29, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks @Taksen:, this guy Mattheus Hoeufft sounds interesting and relevant. Have you got any sources we could cite or other articles we could link to about him? Cheers, Somej (talk) 02:26, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is full with strange people, who delete whatever they can. If they have not heard of it, it is probably not true or unnecessary for the article. The guy has no sense of history, he prefers lies. This is a big problem on Wikipedia. Byebye. Taksen (talk) 04:12, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Please assume good faith of fellow editors, named and unnamed, and use the talk page here for discussing how to improve the article, not for making personal attacks. Mattheus does sound interesting; Somej's suggestion for finding some sources for the material about him is exactly the right way to proceed. Mathglot (talk) 10:42, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi @Taksen:, is this your webpage? http://tacotichelaar.nl/wordpress/jean-hoeufft/ An impressive amount of research! Somej (talk) 06:55, 2 May 2017 (UTC)