History
Making the defeated party pay a war indemnity is a common practice with a long history.
Rome imposed large indemnities on Carthage after the First and Second Punic Wars.
The 'unequal treaties' signed by the Qing dynasty in China, Japan, Korea, Siam, Persia, Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan and other countries in the nineteenth century included payments of indemnities to the victorious Western powers, mainly United Kingdom, France and Russia, and later Japan.
Following the Greco-Turkish War (1897), defeated Greece was forced to pay a large war indemnity to Turkey (£4 million). Greece, which was already in default, was forced to agree to see its public finances overseen by an international financial commission.
After the Franco-Prussian War, according to conditions of Treaty of Frankfurt (May 10, 1871), France was obliged to pay a war indemnity of 5 billion gold francs in 5 years. German troops remained in parts of France until the last installment of the indemnity was paid in September 1873, before the obliged date.
Some war reparations induced changes in monetary policy. For example, the French payment following the Franco-Prussian war played a major role in Germany's decision to move on the gold standard. The same holds for Japan's decision to join the gold standard. In this case, it was the 230 million silver taels imposed on defeated China after the Sino-Japanese War which led to the change.
Read more about this topic: War Reparations
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)