R EPARATIONS
Carl P. Parrini and
James I. Matray
If popular wisdom holds that prostitution is the oldest profession, and spying only a slightly younger occupation, then surely reparations—a country demanding payment or indemnity from another in land, goods, or money for damage inflicted as a result of war—also dates from a very early point in human history. Modern practice on indemnities or reparations has its origins in the late nineteenth century, when statesmen at Hague conferences in the Netherlands began to rewrite the rules for warfare, to limit armaments, to encourage peaceful settlement of international disputes, and, by such indirect means, to fashion a definition of what constituted "a just cause" for war. Indemnities or reparations as a concept developed from the idea that there were clear "laws of war" arising from treaties, conventions, and other international agreements. When in the course of warfare a nation, including all institutions legally subordinate to it, violated these legal norms and brought about "wrongful injury to life, body, health, liberty, property, and rights," that nation must make pecuniary indemnification to the injured persons. It is important to emphasize that in its origins, reparations was conceived of as indemnification for violations of existing international law, rather than for actions contrary to the current "moral" precepts of society.
Germany's Second Reich under Otto von Bismarck established a modern benchmark for indemnities when it collected nearly $1 billion from France in 1871, at the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War. That same year, the Treaty of Washington provided for arbitration to settle U.S. claims against Britain for the destruction that Confederate privateers built in British shipyards had inflicted on Union merchant ships during the American Civil War. The United States at first requested not only indemnification for direct damages but also $8 million in "war prolongation claims" for all Union costs after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. The settlement provided for British payment of $15.5 million in Alabama claims, while the United States would pay $1.9 million for illegal wartime acts against Britain, such as property seizures and imprisonments. In 1885, France wanted an indemnity from the Qing dynasty to end its war against China, but later dropped the demand. Japan was not so lenient after its victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, extracting 200 million taels of silver from China in the peace treaty.
During 1900, the Boxer Uprising resulted in Chinese rebels killing the German minister and trapping the diplomatic legations of Japan and other Western nations, including the United States; foreign business people; and thousands of their Chinese servants and Christian converts in prolonged sieges at Tianjin and Beijing. After a multinational military force liberated the captives, China signed the Boxer Protocol, which required payment of an indemnity of $333 million to eleven nations. The American share was $25 million, but in 1908 Washington remitted all but $7 million to cover private damages. The U.S. government used the remainder to fund a program that sent Chinese students to schools in the United States. Meanwhile, Japan had won the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 and wanted Russia to pay an indemnity. However, bowing to pressure from President Theodore Roosevelt, Japan dropped its monetary demand and accepted the southern half of Sakhalin Island. In 1907, when another conference convened at The Hague, the statesmen had not contemplated a long war that would result in the partial crippling of the economic life of nations. They had envisaged wars of short duration, in which the civilian economies of the belligerents would hardly be touched. But World War I would cause enormous destruction, shaking the foundations on which the "legal" conception of reparations was based.
See also A LLIANCES , C OALITIONS, AND E NTENTES ; C OLD W AR O RIGINS ; F OREIGN A ID ; I NTERNATIONAL L AW ; L OANS AND D EBT R ESOLUTION ; S UMMIT C ONFERENCES .