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For 1777, I find "rather than approaching the city through the Delaware Bay, which there was a heavy Continental Army presence". That is not good wording, so try changing "there" tu "had", Carlm0405 (talk) 05:28, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Dubious source for la Gabrielle plantation experiment in the beliefs section
The source is a college with Lafayette as a namesake's decrepit, unsourced website page so old that it could legally buy alcoholic cider in Germany. It's a popular version of the events. The book La Guyane sous la Révolution française (https://archive.org/details/laguyanesouslare0000beno/page/n9/mode/2up) directly contradict this source (the plantation is said as being again in the State's possession in late 1790 - two years before the claimed confiscation), but it only tangentially deal with the la Gabrielle plantation and doesn't directly rebut the popular version of the event except in specifying that these experiments did not actually take place.
It would be nice to get a better source - specifically, one that doesn't simply repeat the popular version of the events but take a look at them backed by primary sources. Bastobasto (talk) 03:07, 1 October 2025 (UTC)
I don't see how what you've written justifies a dubious tag. What do Lafayette's biographers say about it? Wehwalt (talk) 17:18, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
... there are these statements on this page. They're not supported by anything except a shaky source (not Lafayette's biographers). I've got a source contradicting parts of their content and dismissing most of them as unscholarly popular history. I'm not sure how I could make it much clearer.
To cite the dubious template page:
to point out uncertainty over conflicting sources (Here; between the Lafayette college source and Guyane sous la révolution)
to question the veracity, accuracy, or methodology employed by a given source (Here; not a serious scholarly work, doesn't give its sources)
to express concerns that the source may have been misinterpreted
to alert editors that additional sources need to be found, to ascertain the statement's validity (Here; better source, such as, for example, a biography)
In other words; my problem isn't necessarily with the general information that Lafayette bought a plantation with the intent of "humanizing" the slaves, but with 1. the source giving it (bad quality, contradicts better quality source in many points) 2. everything else around it.
On a quick search, Unger mentions it and implies that it was actually put into action, but this relies on very shaky sources (a letter written the year prior to the sale, a book published 70 years after the fact by Lafayette's daughter who would have been a newborn when the plantation was bought).
Also, another error with the Lafayette college source is the year of the sale (it was bought in 1786 according to La Guyane sous la révolution)
So what I'm asking is; do we have any better source for any of these claims, or can we just remove all of this part from the article and leave a simple "He bought a plantation in Guiana in 1786 to experiment to humanize the slaves. The experiment did not seem to have been implemented" based on La Guyane sous la révolution and Unger to specify the experiments. Bastobasto (talk) 19:29, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
Requested move 15 December 2025
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move reviewafter discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette → Marquis de Lafayette – This is by far the WP:COMMONNAME for the Marquis. While WP:NCPEER normally suggests titling the article "Personal name, peerage name", there are a couple of strong reasons to not follow that norm here. The first is that NCPEER also says that there is an exception to this rule "when one holder of a title is overwhelmingly the best known", which is true in this case. Marquis de Lafayette already redirects here, and the only competitor we have would be his father Michel du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, who is much much less important. This change would match the article with a number of others, including Lord Byron, the Marquis de Condorcet, Lord Mountbatten, the Marquis de Custine, Lord Kelvin, and the Marquis de Sade. The second reason is that this article is written in American English, as the subject has strong national ties to the United States. That's the reason we use the American spelling "Lafayette" in the article and not the standard French spelling "La Fayette". In the United States, the use of "Gilbert du Motier" is incredibly obscure; as you can see here, "Marquis de Lafayette" is about ten times more common in books, and this is including sources that just mention "Gilbert du Motier" and then proceed with "Marquis de Lafayette". In fact, the name is so sufficiently obscure that including it in the title harms searching, as Lafayette does not show up at all when you type "Marquis" into the search bar, when it should probably be either right before or right after Marquis de Sade. "Marquis de Lafayette" is effectively treated as his full name in nearly all cases, and most are unaware that he has another name at all. Ladtrack (talk) 00:22, 15 December 2025 (UTC)
[Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette]] → Lafayette I would move this instead to Lafayette, presently a disambiguation page. "Lafayette" is instantly recognizable as this person. I would move the present disambiguation page to Lafayette (disambiguation) --Wehwalt (talk) 02:06, 15 December 2025 (UTC)
Just Lafayette is better than Gilbert du Motier, and I do agree that Lafayette should probably point here (he gets about 60% of views out of the dab page), but I feel Marquis de Lafayette is better as an article title. Unlike with the name "Gilbert du Motier", he is commonly referred to as both the Marquis de Lafayette and as just Lafayette, and usually "Marquis de Lafayette" at least on first mention (see sources 1, 2, 3, 4). I think it's probably the more formal version, sort of like how we use Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart even though just Mozart is probably a tad more common. Ladtrack (talk) 06:39, 15 December 2025 (UTC)
Support per nom. Thanks, Glasspalace (talk) 11:42, 15 December 2025 (UTC)
Support, I think that Ladtrack has put good reasoning for the change of name. However, I do not agree with Wehwalt as renaming to just "Lafayette" could get confusing with the "Lafayette (name)" article. ~2025-33855-51 (talk) 21:33, 15 December 2025 (UTC)
Support as proposed, definitely the common name and more concise, only possible competition is the variation Marquis de La Fayette. Mdewman6 (talk) 01:31, 16 December 2025 (UTC)
Oppose for encyclopedic accuracy. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:58, 16 December 2025 (UTC)
Could you explain what you mean by accuracy? Do you feel that the title "Marquis de Lafayette" would be inaccurate? Ladtrack (talk) 18:02, 16 December 2025 (UTC)
What I mean is that we should clarify if we mean the Hero of Two Worlds or his father. I should also mention an alteration I made to the article’s basic information template to comply with standards of addressing an aristocratic military officer: An aristocrat who holds a military rank is addressed by their title, which is preceded by said rank and succeeded by any post-nominal letters they bear. For example, rather than “Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington,” Napoleon’s defeater is styled in military context as “Field Marshal His Grace The Duke of Wellington KG GCB GCH PC FRS.” S1r Gawa1n 2004 (talk) 18:23, 16 December 2025 (UTC)
Support. Marquis de Lafayette is already a redirect to this article and his common name. He is overwhelmingly the most notable person to have held the title and is referred to as such directly in the literature. (And this is saying something coming from me, as I'm very skeptical of title-only references usually - but the likes of this topic, Lord Byron, etc. are the exceptions.) SnowFire (talk) 19:26, 16 December 2025 (UTC)
Support: Too true for this article, plus nobody is gonna search up his first name. KreamoNoBrainos/Kreamy/Fat Man (talk) 17:31, 18 December 2025 (UTC)
Support per nom. Also because his article doesn't have a name section: was Gilbert his most commonly used first name? The German and Polish article call him "Marie-Joseph, Marquis de Lafayette" for example. Normally article titles and infoboxes make it clear what their common name was (like Dick Cheney), but in case of historical figures its sometimes hard to tell, especially if the article is just their title. — jonas (talk) 19:42, 19 December 2025 (UTC)
Support per nom and others. Jessintime (talk) 19:56, 19 December 2025 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Bgmaple, Tiramisu7.
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