Currently if civilians die in war it gets a lot of flak from the public, but in other wars they did it on purpose, like in operation meetinghouse (the tokyo firebombing) that killed 100k civilians in one night, by burning them alive. In the American civil war the north had a “grazed earth” policy and would burn civilians houses and whole cities down even after they captured the city.
I think you should rather ask “At what point did civilians being targeted in war become acceptable?”. It’s a fairly recent development if I understand it correctly.
I don’t think you do understand it correctly.
Even assuming you leave out wartime theft, destruction of property, and rape, as well as post-war enslavement of captured populations, there’s quite a history of failing to separate civilians from military when fighting.
Certainly in the wars of colonial conquest, entire populations were subject to combat. For example, Wounded Knee in 1890, but there’s quite a few other massacres in Wikipedia’s List of Indian Massacres. It seems more like a pattern than a collection of dozens of isolated incidents. I would be surprised if that type of combat had arisen in the 16th century especially for the New World.
We’re going to have to define what “targeted” means, as well as “civilians”. Does it mean explicitly trying to kill civilians? Or does it mean incidental killings in the course of enslavement, looting, and rape? Because the latter has happened during every siege and subsequent sacking going back to the Stele of Vultures. As for the former, Genghis Khan was not known for mercy towards inhabitants of cities that resisted his rule. Sending artisans off to slavery, while killing the other 80-90% percent of the populace, strikes me as a clear case of targeting civilians. As to how many actually were killed, it’s impossible to say with precision. This blog post examines some of the claims by contemporary historians of the conquest, such as Sayfi Heravi.
Did any prior cultures have a written history of explicitly killing most civilians, as opposed to killing those that took up arms or otherwise resisted? My impression was that the use of the enemy’s citizenry was one of the treasures that wars were fought to secure, and so killing them directly interfered with the reasons ancient cultures went to war in the first place.
I think it is more like “when did Europe, after developing a bit of a tradition, if not entirely a reality, of limited war when fighting within itself, give that up?”
I can’t speak to its correctness but a recent Hardcore History podcast about the start of WWI talked about how it started to end with post-Revolution France and a change in how armies were raised (scale and technology).
I mean that apart from being looted and forced to furnish the armies passing by the innocent bystanders were in many ways left to their own devices while battles were fought between armies. The practice of shooting them and bombing their houses etc is a late development in warfare as far as I understand.
In terms of law, the earliest written protection of non-combatants that I’m aware of is the Lieber Code, which was directed by Lincoln during the Civil War. That regulation states:
Pretty strict stuff. The obvious point that it was not adhered to is readily conceded.
The Lieber Code was the basis of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, though those international treaties did not specifically list protection of civilians, but it was implied by some provisions, such as in the 1899 text:
There may have been earlier written laws or policies to this effect, and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least of such orders from the late 18th century. I just can’t identify them.
It depends a lot on the conflict. Generally, civilian casualties are more acceptable when they happen to the other side than when they occur to your side.
The only real difference I can see is the development of aerial bombing.
The first recorded use of artillery was against a city. In the days before World War I, however, the people in invaded territories were able to run away trying to find somewhere safer. But in 1912, the very first bomb dropped by an aircraft was targeted at a railroad station, and the Germans were attacking English towns (obviously a great distance away from the front lines) beginning in 1915.
Civilians have never been exempted from warfare at any point in history. As mentioned above, they were routinely raped, looted, and pillaged to feed the armies. The entire point of being a soldier prior to the modern era was the chance to sieze treasure and plunder to fund your retirement. Further, civilizations all throughout history have routinely massacred their enemies, man, woman, and child. Check out the Romans punishing Judea or the Mongols sacking… well… everybody. The Viking raiders in Medieval Europe were the same way. They would do trade, accept a bribe, or slaughter everybody in sight depending on what mood they were in. It was a totally common and normal part of warfare.
I would argue that the idea of targeting civilians has never emerged as anything more than an ideal practiced by a minority. There were always advocates who wanted to protect the people from abuses, even in ancient Rome. This didn’t get codified in international treaties until post-WWII.
However, the Geneva Convention has gotten about as much respect as a fire hydrant at a dog show. Western armies like the US at least make an effort to abide by the ideals (even if it doesn’t always work out) but many guerilla forces and insurgencies flagrantly and willfully violate the conventions ideas as a strategem for inducing fear. We still see terrorists routinely and deliberately target civilians rather than combatants, so I would argue that for a great many people the idea of protecting civilians hasn’t caught on at all.
It’s always particularly galling to see someone post obviously unfactual things in this forum… especially when a post recounting a couple historical provisions of the laws of armed conflict can be clearly read just three posts prior to yours.
Even in the so-called Age of Chivalry, knights practised chevauchee; basically an armed rampage to weaken the enemy wherever you see fit. Not a million miles away from the Second World War and the total war mentality of causing carnage and ‘dehousing’ to weaken the enemy.
Officially the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949 further cleared up the matter, although unofficially I think it has more to do with increased precision in applications of ordinance. A bombing run in WWII was bound to do what we now call ‘collateral damage’ (to begin with, proponents of air warfare talked big about precise strikes, until by the end of the war entire cities were appropriate targets), in these days of cruise missiles, drone strikes and smart bombs there’s a lot less tolerance of what war used to inevitably cause.
Incidentally I’ve heard but can’t cite that one of the reasons the Spanish conquest of Mexico was so successful was their import of siege ideas; which implicitly targeted civilians. The Aztecs, of all people, preferred to keep the women and kids outside of any warfare and were unprepared for the European way of war.
Well, suppose I’m a king with an army and you’re a king with an army, and our kingdoms are neighbors. I decide to go to war against you, my army fights your army, one of us wins.
Except, why did I decide to go to war against you? For fun? No, I probably wanted to expand my kingdom and conquer yours, or parts of yours. So in that case, massacring peasants and burning down villages and destroying cropland would be counterproductive, since the peasants and villages and lands are exactly what I want as my prize for winning the war.
Plus it could be that we both live in an area with many kingdoms, and these kingdoms form alliances, and my enemy in one war might be my ally in the next war. So wars are fought, not nation against nation, but noble house against noble house. War is not total, because even when I conquer your kingdom I don’t burn down the cities and massacre the men and sell the women into slavery, I instead just become the new ruler of the city. I don’t loot the city, instead I demand that they pay me taxes.
And since we are both noble families who might be allies one day or enemies the next, we often cement alliances by marriages. My son marries your daughter, and our grandchildren might rule both kingdoms. And this happens often enough that every noble family we know is interrelated by blood and marriage to every other noble family through some connection or other.
So in this situation total war doesn’t exist, because aristocrats will have to deal with the aftermath of the war, and the losers and winners on both sides will often still exist after the war is over. This means wars are fought for limited objectives, and everyone cooperates (so some extent) to enforce norms of warfare.
But all this goes out the window when fighting against people outside your sociopolitical milieu. “Barbarian” hordes come in to loot and destroy and enslave, and so those wars become total wars. Of course the hordes might conquer and leave the conquered populace in place as slaves/serfs, totally replacing the previously existing ruling class. And this is what happened in places like Spain vs Mexico, or the Mongols vs China.
So total war occurs when the parties involved have no incentives to engage in limited war.
Indeed. And these days with our technology, if you look like a terrorist or earn the tag “enemy combatant”, total war can be brought down upon your house, and your house only (mostly).
There is no standard definition of “enemy”, so it all just comes down to definition, and lack of morals.
If you take the long view, taking and holding the land is sufficient. Peasants breed, as do other livestock, and lands will recover on their own.
What matters is that for the rest of my (presumably eternal God-ordained) dynasty, that land is mine, by right of conquest.
And that’s obviously far better, but the “worst case” way to win means that the conquered lands become prosperous in my heir’s time, rather than mine. Probably still acceptable.
Cousins and brothers have gone to war against each other. Most of the wars of the middle ages were led by royalty and nobility who were related to each other by blood to the 2nd or 3rd degree, at least. But yes, empire-building by diplomacy and marriage was often as effective and less expensive (of treasure and blood) than warfare.
Devastating limited warfare is as damaging to the civilan population as total war; “limited” is a matter of area, not damage. See also chevauchée, and Hannibal’s strategy on the Italian Peninsula in the 2nd Punic War.
Unacceptable? It’s never become unacceptable, considering that various ICBM armed nuclear powers still target civilian populations. It’s LESS acceptable today to directly target civilians, though of course the weapons are so powerful that collateral damage is still tolerated and even factored into military strikes by countries who care about that sort of thing. Not all countries do or have the ability to care about it all that much, since it takes a great deal of military sophistication, training and discipline to even attempt to seriously mitigate that collateral damage.
It’s definitely not a recent development. Directly targeting enemy civilians has been part of warfare for all of recorded history. I remember reading about the early Mesopotamian conquests of the north that basically wiped out not only the early city states up there but destroyed their civilization and culture…wiped them out by basically killing every man, woman and child in those early cities, which were mostly full of civilians. And this tactic was used throughout history, though to greater or lesser extents. You have to understand that, especially to folks in the distant past, there wasn’t a clear delineation between civilian and fighter, since it’s always been the civilians who enabled the fighters to function. Without the civilians you can’t have an army, since not only do the civilians clothe, equip, feed and provide the resources for training but they also are the ones who provide the population resource pool for future recruits. It’s only been in fairly recent times that society has become less willing to allow the direct targeting of those civilians, and even today it’s not universal, even in the most civilized countries that actually have military’s that do engage in actual combat.
According to Machiavelli, the original self-help guru for the prince on the go, the idea of ‘limited’ war was an idea bound to bite you in the codpiece. “…men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot.”
Before his time the medieval social strata was broadly divided into ‘those who fight’ (the knightly classes), ‘those who pray’ (the clergy) and ‘those who work’ (farmers, craftsmen etc). Since those who fight cannot be expected to grow their own food or smelt their own arms, they were necessarily supported by those who work, who thus rendered themselves targets in warfare through chevauchee and siegecraft.
But the “civilian” population is only a target because it supports the enemy’s fighters. If they instead bow the knee to you, then they support your fighters instead. So they become a target when you are too weak to conquer them outright, and so are reduced to the expedient of denying them to the enemy.
Likewise with sieges of cities. You march your army to the gates of the city, and demand that they open the gates. You don’t want to besiege the city, that is a waste and a loss. Instead you want them to see that it’s hopeless, and open the gates. If the citizens believe that when they open the gates they’ll be massacred, burned to the ground, and the survivors raped and then sold into slavery they will on no occasion surrender. If they think that if they open the gates they’ll just start paying their taxes to you rather than your cousin the Duke of So-And-So, they’re much more likely to surrender.
And so total warfare is a failure of statecraft and military arts. As the man said, supreme excellence in war is not fighting and winning 100 battles, it is winning the war without fighting a single battle.
The idea that civilians should not be targeted is put forward by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. He is often cited as one of the early thinkers on international law.
Also, OP, a slight nitpick: the phrase is razed earth, not grazed earth.
I always thought braised earth was best…with a nice, light vodka sauce and some white wine to go along with it…