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Concept
War reparations
Summary
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war.
Making one party pay a war indemnity is a common practice with a long history.
Rome imposed large indemnities on Carthage after the First (Treaty of Lutatius) and Second Punic Wars.
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 adopt the gold standard; the 230 million silver taels in reparations imposed on defeated China after the First Sino-Japanese War led Japan to a similar decision.
There have been attempts to codify reparations both in the Statutes of the International Criminal Court and the UN Basic Principles on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims, and some scholars have argued that individuals should have a right to seek compensation for wrongs they sustained during warfare through tort law.
Following Napoleon's final loss at the Battle of Waterloo, under the Treaty of Paris (1815), defeated France was ordered to pay 700 million francs in indemnities. France was also to pay additional money to cover the cost of providing additional defensive fortifications to be built by neighbouring Coalition countries. It was the most expensive war reparation ever paid by a country (in proportion to its GDP).
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. The indemnity was proportioned, according to population, to be the exact equivalent to the indemnity imposed by Napoleon on Prussia in 1807. German troops remained in parts of France until the last installment of the indemnity was paid in September 1873, ahead of schedule.
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 compelled to permit oversight of its public finances by an international financial commission.
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