Did British Colonial America really exit until 1981?
The current places database shows British Colonial America as being a legitimate standard place until 1981. That really doesn't seem right:
https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?focusedId=263&text=British%20Colonial%20America
This odd date seems to be reflected on all standard place names that use the "British Colonial America" suffix.
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Given that British Colonial America is a concoction by FamilySearch that doesn't map onto any single thing in the real world (current or past) 1981 seems as good as any nonsense date!! The actual entry for BCA in the Standards database describes it as a Colony from 1607 to 1981. "A" colony, in the singular is absurd. It also says: There is no historical information for this place. The citations give 3 Wikipedia articles referring to things ending in 1776 and 1867, so the sources surely can't justify the end date of 1981.
There is a comment against the citation for the place that says "This place is used as a means of describing areas of the United States and Canada before their independence from English control" If that really is the description of BCA, then the end date should be 1867 - when Canada gained its independence (whatever that means - it was actually a process, not a single event). (PS - the usual adjective is "British", of course.... Sigh)
Now, not for the first time I feel like I'm defending FS with no help from FS. I can see 2 possibilities for the 1981 date. (But the most likely is a 3rd - see below)
If BCA truly refers only to what became the USA and Canada, then there is a final date for the completion of Canadian independence in (March) 1982 when the Canada Act 1982 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Act_1982 removed the ability for the UK Parliament to amend the Canadian constitution. This date is (a) nitpicking in the extreme for genealogical purposes and (b) wrong because it doesn't match 1981!
The other possibility is that if BCA is actually intended to refer to all British "possessions" (whatever that means) in the Americas, then 1981 is the point at which British colonies were renamed "British Dependent Territories". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_colony "The term Crown colony continued to be used until 1981, when the British Nationality Act 1981 reclassified the remaining British colonies as "British Dependent Territories"" - now British Overseas Territories.
So it may be that this 1981 refers to that date - although 1981 is the date of the Act not the date of implementation. But, the use of BCA outside Canada and the USA seems incredibly thin, making this end date almost irrelevant. For instance, Bermuda isn't in BCA, nor the Bahamas, nor the Cayman Islands, nor British Guiana / Guyana. All these should have been BCA if that is meaningful.
The only non-Canadian/USA usage of BCA I've found is British Honduras, now Belize. There may be others - I thought I could use the map or filtering to find the BCA usages but it didn't show British Honduras for me. British Honduras stopped being BCA (in FamilySearch) when it became Belize in 1981. So maybe that's the reason for the date!!
Would be nice to know the real answer instead of me retro-engineering reasons.
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Can someone from the FamilySearch Places team explain the 1981 date?
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Adrian Bruce is correct in that British Colonial America is an attempt to organize and describe things that were British colonies before they became more autonomous entities. We (the Authorities Team at FamilySearch) realize that it is an imperfect solution. As yet, we have not introduced a better solution.
The description for British Colonial America is intentionally vague and generally inclusive and this goes for the years of its "existence" as well. The years for a given place to be described within British Colonial America are far more important than the years describing British Colonial America itself.
FamilySearch Places describes British Honduras (now known as Belize) within British Colonial America until 1981. That is the reason that British Colonial America is described as a "valid" place in FamilySearch Places until 1981.
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Thanks for the explanation danreeves! That is really revealing. So even though the geo-coordinates for British Colonial America are shown as being next to Niagra Falls for 1607-1981, the standard places for things like the British Honduras, British Colonial America have their own geo-coordinates which essentially override any vagaries in the larger containing region. That seems to be a great way to avoid needing to always track the exact details of boundary changes on the larger region.
But the bottom line is that "British Colonial America" DID still exist in 1981 and British Honduras were located there. B.C. America's borders (and subsequently it's geographical center) were obviously different than before the United States were formed, but it doesn't matter as much since the geo-coordinates of of any place within those boundaries (e.g., British Honduras) replaces the geo-coordinates of the center of the larger area that contains it.
That sounds like a terrific trade off that won't normally affect the benefits provided by the Standards database at all!
I know that a lot of concepts and issues in the Standard Places Database are still being worked, but ever since I first came across it, I've been totally impressed with what it can do and other potential benefits it has. In my personal opinion, this concept has obviously been inspired! 👍
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Thanks Dan. Glad to see I eventually got there with British Honduras being the driver for 1981.
Of course, I could - not entirely seriously - suggest that the description "British Colonial America" is trying to solve a problem that might not actually exist. After all, your places database has "Hong Kong", up to 1997, not "Hong Kong, British Colonial Asia"; "Bermuda" not "Bermuda, British Colonial America" or "Bermuda, British Colonial Atlantic" and as for "American Samoa"! Though maybe the "American" bit is a giveaway there...
Trying to be serious - it is a huge undertaking that you guys are trying to deal with and it's inevitable that views will have changed over some concepts over the years.
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