WHY IS A WHITE FLAG
USED TO SURRENDER?
G'day folks,
I love finding out about odd things. Hope you do to.
Soldiers have been using white flags to signify
capitulation for thousands of years. The ancient Roman chronicler Livy
described a Carthaginian ship being decorated with “white wool and branches of
olive” as a symbol of parley during the Second Punic War, and Tacitus later
wrote of white flags being displayed as part of the surrender of Vitellian
forces at 69 A.D.’s Second Battle of Cremona.
Most historians believe blank
banners first caught on because they were easy to distinguish in the heat of
battle. Since white cloth was common in the ancient world, it may have also
been a case of troops improvising with the materials they had on hand.
The
white flag later became well established in Western warfare, but evidence shows
it also arose independently in China during the Eastern Han dynasty in the
first three centuries A.D. The color white has long been associated with death
and mourning in China, so its soldiers may have adopted white surrender flags
to show their sorrow in defeat.
In more recent history, the white flag has become an
internationally recognized symbol not only for surrender but also for the wish
to initiate ceasefires and conduct battlefield negotiations. Medieval heralds
carried white wands and standards to distinguish themselves from combatants,
and Civil War soldiers waved white flags of truce before collecting their
wounded.
The various meanings of the flag were later codified in the Hague and
Geneva Conventions of the 19th and 20th centuries. Those same treaties also
forbid armies from using the white flag to fake a surrender and ambush enemy
troops.
Clancy's comment: Well, did you know that?
I'm ...
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