Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 December 16

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December 16

Why put the Winter Palace in St Petersburg? Or how did it get that name?

From our article on the Winter Palace it appears that there was also a Summer Palace, designed by Domenico Trezzini, though we don't seem to have much about it (Summer Palace seems to be in China, so probably not the same one). I suppose I would have thought the Winter Palace would have been where the tsars spent their winters, summering in the Summer Palace.

So then Saint Petersburg seems like a natural place to put a summer palace, but the winters look kind of chilly. They could have put the winter one in Sochi or something.

In any case, it sounds like they hung out in the Winter Palace all the time, so it was apparently just a name. But why that name? I don't see it in the article. --Trovatore (talk) 02:21, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Saint Petersburg was built on the orders of Peter the Great, virtually from scratch starting in 1703, to be the new capital of the Russian Empire, so the royal house, and later palaces, there* were intended from the beginning to be the Russian monarchy's primary residences. (*As well as the succession of ever-larger principal residences that came to be called "The Winter House/Palace", there were others in the city almost from the start.)

The question then is why "Winter", and I too have been unable to find a definitive answer. Perhaps it's merely because whichever one the court decamped to in Summer when Saint Petersburg's climate became uncomfortable (the place was built on marshland, and in high Summer the days get very long) was naturally referred to as "The Summer Palace" and the other was retro-named in contrast. Hopefully a Russian historian will come along to enlighten us. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.56.237 (talk) 02:56, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Moscow winters are colder. Even Moscow winter isn't that bad by Chicago standards, if it's an average night, record low temperature is much worse though. And they have less day hours. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:15, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Bear in mind that Moscow has a population about 5 times greater than Chicago (12.5m Vs 2.5m), so the urban heat island effect will distort modern comparisons. Alansplodge (talk) 09:35, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The metro area is 10 million and Moscow city limits are very big, encompassing 12.5 of about 20 million people, so not as much as city limits suggest. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:01, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Ah yes, quite right. Only twice as big then (the metropolitan areas of both cities are about 10,000 sq. Miles). Alansplodge (talk) 15:42, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The Summer Palace of Peter the Great is on an island and would have been inaccessible when the river was frozen, or worse, partly frozen. Later tsars used the Alexander Palace as a summer residence, set in parkland 30 miles (45 km) from the capital; a pleasant enough carriage journey in the summer but a major challenge in a blizzard. The Winter Palace is in the centre of the city and would allow government to function whatever the weather. Alansplodge (talk) 09:11, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The Summer Garden (location of the Summer Palace of Peter the Great) may be technically on an island, but it's not out in the river. It is only separated from the Field of Mars (Saint Petersburg) by a very shallow and narrow canal, the Swan Canal, which has been bridged by the Upper Swan Bridge since it was first dug. This makes it as accessible as anywhere else in St Petersburg, including the Summer Palace itself. --Amble (talk) 17:12, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I stand corrected; many thanks. Notwithstanding, it was on a modest scale and Peter the Great was the only tsar to live there. Alansplodge (talk) 19:31, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

That's right. I believe the tradition is that in the summer you go to your landed estate for outdoor activity, hunting, and outdoor entertaining, and in the winter you go to the city for indoor entertaining. The winter palace therefore needs grander indoor spaces and better heating. The summer palace needs parks, gardens, and ventilation to keep cool. Peter the Great's summer palace is as you say a pretty small affair where the real point is the wonderful Summer Garden just outside the door. Even at Peterhof Palace, which is an incredibly ornate and elaborate summer home, the fountains and gardens steal the show. Unfortunately, I haven't found a great source that sets this all out clearly. --Amble (talk) 21:00, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

• User:Trovatore, Summer Palace (Rastrelli) is the article you need. The older Summer Palace was built of wood and quite unsuitable for harsh winter conditions. So they built the Winter Palace out of brick. The Czars had a summer palace and a winter palace in St. Petersburg even before 1720. Ghirla^-трёп- 08:33, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

That may be, but we're talking about the Tsars. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:40, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Why was ethnic nationalism less popular outside of Europe?

Why was ethnic nationalism less popular outside of Europe? In Europe, there have been various nationalistic movements to unify various peoples into a single country; examples of this include:

• Italian unification
• German unification
• Yugoslavism
• Czechoslovakism
• The unification of the Kievan Rus lands by the Russian Empire (only partially successful) and later the Soviet Union (successful).
• The rebirth of Poland
• The unification of Transylvania with Romania. Ditto for both Bessarabia's and Bukovina's unification with Romania.

There have been some nationalistic movements to unify various peoples into a single county outside of Europe as well, but those were much more likely to be unsuccessful:

• Korean reunification
• Pan-Arabism
• Somali unification

Vietnamese reunification and Yemeni unification were successful, but they weren't exactly the rule outside of Europe. Some nation-states do exist outside of Europe, but they either have a long history (such as China, Japan, and some of the Southeast Asian countries) or were created rather artificially without that much initial local support, such as the Central Asian countries. Exceptions exist, of course, such as Israel, but even there the Zionist movement was initially established by European Jews.

So, Yeah, why did ethnic nationalism become more popular and more successful in Europe than it did in various other countries? Futurist110 (talk) 07:29, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Systemic bias? They're probably just less well known to us Westerners. I can think of the Moros who want to split from the Philippines, the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda, Papuans who want the west island to split from Indonesia and join the country of Papua New Guinea, those people I forget their name who want to split from one of the ex-Trust Territory countries, Tamil Tigers, Thai Muslims near Malaysia, do you not count multiethnic Singapore? They split from Malaysia. And Quebecers but they're European. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 08:36, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

SMW, the 'split' of Singapore from Malaysia was not significantly due to ethnicity. Singapore along with Malaya and several other states joined together in the new Federated States of Malaysia only in 1963; Singapore's expulsion in 1965 was mainly due to political and economic disagreements between the other state's leaderships and Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. Malaysia remained multicultural, with only about half of its population being ethnically Malay; Singapore was of course always multicultural. [Disclosure: I lived in Singapore in 1964/5, and my Mother and I missed being killed in the MacDonald House bombing only through being a few minutes late for an appointment on the 3rd floor.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.56.237 (talk) 00:29, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I think that the European one just became notorious due to its dark past. Non-European nationalism is probably less prominent in that regard, but see Template:Ethnic nationalism, there are many non-European ones. Chinese nationalism, for example, exemplified by Bruce Lee movies. Japanese nationalism is also of note, with its assassination of Inejirō Asanuma, symbolically with a samurai sword. Brandmeister^talk 08:57, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

It is somewhat of a western bias to fetishize the history of non-Western cultures as somehow more ideal and less violent or whatever. The past was equally as dark in other places, and it continues to be so. You can find examples of ethnic cleansing of the type shown in European history, ancient and recent. To hold up non-Western cultures as idealized and more pure is no less problematic than to hold them up as base and barbaric. To look at history with an objective lens is to see humankind with a history of good and bad, and to simply report evenly on all of it. Back to the OP's question, you can find examples of non-Western oppression of minority cultures and colonization all throughout the world. Ethnic nationalism can be a symptom of an oppressed ethnicity wishing to get out from under the yoke of an oppressive power, and it can also be an oppressive power wishing to assimilate and eliminate the separate cultures of those whom they have power over. For every bit of Chinese nationalism, you have groups like the Uighur and the Tibetan people. That shit is pretty "dark", and it's not all that "past", to use your phrasing. The OP should not be taking the perspective "Why is the history of the West so different than other parts of the world" but "Why has my education not helped me understand other parts of the world to the level I understand my own". --Jayron32 11:31, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

See also Nation state § History and origins; while there is a chicken-and-egg question concerning the two notions of nation and nation state, that section reports that most theories see the emergence of the nation state as a 19th-century European phenomenon. Stimulating cultural nationalism in general, and ethnic nationalism where possible, offered the state a way to increase its strength by summoning unity from its citizens – note that the notion of citizenship as a formal relation between an individual and a state is also relatively recent. So, inasmuch as the concept of nation state was a European creation, ethnic nationalism may have been a concomitant, originally European development.  --Lambiam 14:56, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I think that ethnic nationalism is probably as strong outside Europe as it is in Europe and all over the world it mostly splits up nations rather than creates them.from constituent parts. Occasionally there may be both aspects together so that two states lose portions of land and a third state is created. However I can't think of anywhere offhand where that has happened except Poland. Apart from Germany and Italy I can't think of a large state that has been created from smaller ones through ethnic nationalism. Yugoslavia was part splitting of .Slavic nations from Austria-Hungary and combining them with Serbia and of course it was not ultimately succesful. France, Greece, Denmark and Bulgaria have largely escaped ethnic tensions as have Japan and Ethiopia (so far as I'm aware.) Czechoslovakia and,Sweden/Norway split up peacefully whereas Yugoslavia split up more violently as has Sudan (which split into two parts) and UK (where part of Ireland split off after "troubles") Also Nigeria split up on ethnic lines before it was reunited by force. Like China as noted above Spain has remained intact but there have been problems between the Spanish and the minority Basques and Catalans. Two "settler nations" outside Europe have had ethnic problems. There have been arguments between Quebec and the rest of Canada but the country remains complete. There were two wars between the English and Afrikans parts of South Africa but they were before full independene from the British Empire (arguable in the case of the Afrikaners). Most of Africa and large parts of Asia were divided into different countries with largely artificial boundaries in the 20th century and it remains to be seen how long it will be before more re-adjustments occur. South America I think had most of its problems in the 19th century.Spinney Hill (talk) 17:23, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The Americas have a very different situation from Africa/Asia with regards to colonization, largely because through a combination of disease (accidentally and deliberately spread) and other forms of what we today would call "ethnic cleansing" or more to the point "genocide", many parts of the Americas were essentially depopulated before the modern states came in and formed; terra nullius was only a thing because the colonizers made it a thing. As just one case study; prior to contact, New England was fairly densely populated; while there were no recognizable cities in the European sense such that there were many smaller, fairly closely spaced, well-organized settlements, but as a region it was well settled with all the signs of established civilization (agriculture, trade, specialization of labor, concentrated settlements, use of technology, etc.) The problem is that disease travels faster than people. Starting in the 1500s, European fishermen made contacts with the various peoples of the New England area, establishing small temporary settlements and trading with the locals. And they spread diseases like smallpox and others to those locals; such that when the real efforts at formal colonization happened in the early 1600s, so many people had died off and abandoned their settlements that it was like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The first Europeans in the area didn't clear the wilderness so much as simply take over village spaces that had only been recently abandoned due to the raging pandemic of the previous decades. As a classic example of this, Plymouth Colony was settled on the ruins of Accomack, a native Patuxet village that was one of the largest in the area; as recently as only 1614 (6 years before the Pilgrims) Captain John Smith had visited the area and reported a bustling urban environment. By 1620, it was a ghost town; one of the last remaining residents of Accomack was Squanto (Tisquantum), who had only survived because he was kidnapped into slavery several years before and had missed all of the disease and death. The few native peoples who remained were forcibly removed in the wake of King Philip's War, such that by it is estimated that 60-80% of the native population had been either killed or evacuated by the end of the war; that's 60-80% of the natives that remained long after the devastating plagues killed most of them a half-century earlier, so if you compared the native population of New England from, say, 1550 to say 1700, in 150 years it would have been like, what, 1-2% of what it had been? That case study is repeated up-and-down the Americas, from Newfoundland to the tip of Tierra del Fuego, and while not every story is identical to that, it largely mirrors it. What native peoples that did survive to modern times are almost without exception the scant remnants of what had been thriving cultures 500 years ago. Some great books to read that cover this well are, for the New England case study, Nathaniel Philbrick's book Mayflower, and for the more general case across the Americas, the companion books 1491 and 1493 by Charles C. Mann. I only take us on this tangent to say that the process of creating a modern nation state in that environment, whether we're talking Argentina or the US or Canada or whatever, looks very different than it does in places like Africa or Asia, where there was no history of such widespread depopulation. The story of colonialism in Africa is quite different than the history of colonialism in the Americas. --Jayron32 17:50, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

South Africa and Israel? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:50, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Much of what perhaps looks like ethnic nationalism in Africa is more appropriately analyzed as tribalism, in which for many tribes a common language and cultural heritage is a defining and unifying factor. Their roots stem from a long time before the current African countries were created, largely by colonizing European powers. The allegiance to the tribe is much more powerful than the allegiance to any nation.  --Lambiam 12:57, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

"Tribe" in the context here is what Western paternalists use to downgrade the significance of non-Western ethnic groups. In other contexts, such groupings of people based on a common language and cultural heritage would be called a "nation". It would be more proper to say that modern states were created in Africa without regard to existing national boundaries between ethnic groups. A state and a nation are different things, and a nation-state is a state which is delineated around a cohesive singular national identity. --Jayron32 15:09, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I take it that you consider scholars such as the author of the article "From Tribalism to Nationalism in Africa", the author of the book chapter "Theories of Ethnicity, Tribalism and Nationalism", and the author of the book Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back in all to be Western paternalists.  --Lambiam 10:46, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Congratulations! You can google words and post links to what you found! Your mother must be so proud of how well you've turned out... --Jayron32 12:43, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

I think this is the point I was tryng to make. I don't think there is any essential difference in the "nationalism" of the Irish in the pre-1922 UK and the "tribalism" of the Sioux of the US in the 19th Century and the Igbo of Nigeria in the 1960s. The nationalism of the Scots and the Catalans of the present is similar but has not gone to such extremes.Spinney Hill (talk) 21:52, 17 December 2020 (UTC) .

And the Irish felt bullied by the more numerous Brits and Emerald Isle's Scots felt bullied by the more numerous Irish, I don't favor one or the other but interesting nonetheless. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:32, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Are you sure that is an entirely fair assessment? I've no doubt that the term was misused in the past due to prejudices, and I know it is deprecated in modern use for that reason. But it doesn't automatically follow from that that every thing that was described as a tribe was actually a nation. Especially as the preferred term for what were called tribes (at least according to the Oxford Dictionary) is "community" or "people" (or in an older print version I own, "ethnic group"), rather than "nation". I know tribe can be a pretty vague term (which is another reason for not using it), but I've always assumed it refereed to a group that was smaller or less organised that that which would constitute a nation, or in some cases a subdivision of a nation (e.g. the Twelve Tribes of Israel that made up the Nation of Israel, or the various Germanic tribes that settled in Britain and eventually coalesced to form first several small kingdoms, and then eventually one kingdom and nation). Iapetus (talk) 13:57, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Julian/Gregorian date

In this source (page 8) and all other sources I've seen about that event the date of the event is 15 August 1663, but per this Russian source it looks like the date is Julian, not Gregorian (related excerpt from primary Russian source: "в нынешнем де во 171[Имеется в виду 7171 год "от сотворения мира", отвечающий 663 году современного летосчисления] году Августа в 15 день, в субботу" ("in this year of 171 (that is 7171 Anno Mundi, i.e. 1663), on August 15, Saturday"). Also, Julian calendar currently says that the Etos Kosmou was used in Russia until 1700 where the year started on 1 September. The converter yields 25 August as the Gregorian equivalent. Should we take 25 August for the purpose of Old Style and New Style dates? Brandmeister^talk 08:46, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, 15 August 1663 in the Julian calendar fell on a Saturday, while 15 August 1663 in the Gregorian calendar is a Wednesday. If the point of the question is how to present the date of the event in a Wikipedia article, then MOS:JG applies. The context has some relevance, but the safe solution is to give both; see {{OldStyleDate}}.  --Lambiam 14:21, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

If I put 15 Aug 1663 into the converter you linked, I get a Gregorian date of Friday, Aug 24, 1663. According to Gregorian_calendar#Difference_between_Gregorian_and_Julian_calendar_dates, the difference should be 10 days, so I believe your calculation is correct and the result I'm seeing is incorrect. Is the calculator working for you and not for me? Or am I misunderstanding something? --Amble (talk) 17:43, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

It works fine for me. I get 25 August 1663. I always work out J/G dates manually anyway. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:03, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Very odd. Your manual calculation and your online result are certainly correct. I'm just puzzled that I'm getting something different (and incorrect) from the online calculator. --Amble (talk) 07:03, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Chinese restaurant in 1900 Paris

At the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition, there was a Chinese restaurant (Chinese section, near the Trocadéro palace and Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway panorama).

What would you have been able to eat there -- apart from bird's nest soup which was already (in)famous as an expensive luxury? Can anyone find a menu or a contemporary report? Cheers ⌘ _hugarheimur 20:03, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

An American journalist was unimpressed: "The Chinese restaurant was picturesque by reason of the variegated architecture and its pig-tailed waiters, but the native cooking was altogether inferior. The bamboo shoots which I ate there were evidently canned, and as tough as bits of paper mache, while the sauce they were served in was ordinary palm oil, not caster oil with shrimps, ova, as it should have been". Food Timeline FAQs (scroll down about three-quarters of the page) Alansplodge (talk) 22:21, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

After wading through The Paris Exposition of 1900 : a vivid descriptive view and elaborate scenic presentation of the site, plan and exhibits, I found: "On the left, a bridge connecting the Chinese and Russian section was the exact reproduction of a famous gate on the route to Siberia, in an annex of the great Wall, 33 miles north of Pekin. It bears an inscription in six languages, one having never been deciphered. A Trans-Siberian train ran over this bridge, and on alighting the traveller found a Chinese restaurant, where, if he felt so inclined, he could taste swallow-nests and other marvels of Chinese cookery" (p. 530). The American author was rather more taken with "the American corn kitchen" where "the United States Commission had established and fully equipped a large kitchen, employing the most approved culinary appliances, with the object of preparing and distributing free to visitors, daily, samples of the numerous articles of diet prepared from maize" (p. 546). He didn't record the reaction of the French visitors. Alansplodge (talk) 22:21, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

A somewhat longer list from L'École du Trocadéro found at the French Wikisource: On vous y offrait des « nids d’hirondelle, » des « ailerons de requins, » et des « beignets de pigeons. » ("There they offered you 'swallow's nests', 'shark fins', and 'pigeon beignets'.") This selection from the menu was surely informed by its exoticness.  --Lambiam 23:16, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

If like me, you've never heard of a beignet, it's basically a posh fritter. Alansplodge (talk) 23:54, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Only in the sense that their both fried pastries. Beignets (pronounced bin-YEA) are made from pâte à choux and thus have a very different texture/construction from other fritter. That the Wikipedia article states (until I change it) that it is the same as a fritter is incorrect. It is a type of fritter in the sense that they are both fried and both pastries, but it is more akin to a deep-fried profiterole. There are lots of things called fritter, such as conch fritters, apple fritters, or corn fritters that would never be described, in French or English (or any other language) as a beignet.--Jayron32 12:44, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Although I wonder whether any Chinese cuisine includes Choux pastry. Alansplodge (talk) 18:17, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

That's a fair point. I'm sure the French were using whatever word best approximated the concept of whatever dimsum it was, likely some kind of squab dumpling. --Jayron32 18:58, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Much as "fritter" best approximates whatever "beignets" are. DuncanHill (talk) 19:01, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Delicious is a much better description. --Jayron32 19:15, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

This is a postcard of a watercolour by Pierre Vignal reportedly showing a corner of the restaurant.  --Lambiam 23:29, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Who is William Pym?

I've been reading the letters that John Adams wrote under the pen-name "Earl of Clarendon" to a certain "William Pym". I'm trying to figure out who that is. Our article William Pym is about a different person. The letters can be read here. --Puzzledvegetable^{Is it teatime already?} 21:03, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

"In 1765, a London newspaper printed four letters on the Stamp Act crisis by an author writing under the pseudonym of William Pym. (The writer had actually mistaken John Pym’s first name for William.) ... The historical John Pym and the Earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde) were two of the most respected statesmen of seventeenth-century England. Pym the parliamentarian and Clarendon the royal advisor were rival advocates of mixed government and of drawing the English monarchy into a constitutional balance with Parliament".

C. Bradley Thompson (editor), The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams (p. 45 or 63/351 of the pdf file). Alansplodge (talk) 21:42, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

​So the identity of the writer is unknown? --Puzzledvegetable^{Is it teatime already?} 22:00, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, as far as I can tell. Probably wise, because seditious libel was a charge still in regular use. Curiously, Adams himself enacted the Sedition Act of 1798 which imposed similar strictures in the Land of the Free. Alansplodge (talk) 22:43, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Signed it, you mean. How much role did Adams have in drafting it? —Tamfang (talk) 04:18, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

The buck stops here? (It's a fair cop, I hadn't done my homework on that one. Apparently he was bullied into signing it by his wife. Cherchez la femme). Alansplodge (talk) 09:13, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

"a famous gate on the route to Siberia... 33 miles north of Pekin"

@Alansplodge:'s answer to a question above quotes The Paris Exposition of 1900 : a vivid descriptive view and elaborate scenic presentation of the site, plan and exhibits, "On the left, a bridge connecting the Chinese and Russian section was the exact reproduction of a famous gate on the route to Siberia, in an annex of the great Wall, 33 miles north of Pekin. It bears an inscription in six languages, one having never been deciphered." I would like to know what/where is/was the gate, what were the six languages, what the inscription said, and has the undeciphered one since been deciphered? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 22:37, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

This seems to be the Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass "about 60 kilometres (37 mi) northwest of central Beijing"; the inscriptions are described in our article. Alansplodge (talk) 22:54, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 23:12, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The Cloud Platform article doesn't say so clearly, but the then-undeciphered inscription was in the extinct Tangut language written in Tangut script: this is explicitly stated in the article Tangutology. The inscription's language and script had actually been correctly identified (though not deciphered) by one scholar in 1899, but this would not have been generally known, and significant progress in studying the script and language was only made from 1900 onwards. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.56.237 (talk) 00:55, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 19:02, 17 December 2020 (UTC)