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Scorched earth

A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy of destroying everything that allows an enemy military force to be able to fight a war, including the deprivation and destruction of water, food, humans, animals, plants and any kind of tools and infrastructure. Its use is possible by a retreating army to leave nothing of value worth taking, to weaken the attacking force or by an advancing army to fight against unconventional warfare.

Scorched earth against non-combatants has been banned under the 1977 Geneva Conventions.

"It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive."

Origin of the term
The term was found in English in a 1937 report on the Second Sino-Japanese War. The retreating Chinese forces burned crops and destroyed infrastructure including cities to sabotage the logistics of the advancing Japanese forces.

Military theory
Clausewitz wrote in Principles of War: "In defensive just as in offensive warfare, it is necessary to pursue a great aim: the destruction of the enemy army, either by battle or by rendering its subsistence extremely difficult. Thus we shall disorganize it and force it into a retreat, during which it will necessarily suffer great losses. Wellington's campaign in 1810 and 1811 is a good example."

Clausewitz wrote in On War: "All that the country yields will be taken for the benefit of the retreating army first, and will be mostly consumed. Nothing remains but wasted villages and towns, fields from which the crops have been gathered, or which are trampled down, empty wells, and muddy brooks.The pursuing army, therefore, from the very first day, has frequently to contend with the most pressing wants."

Historic examples
Notable historic examples of successful scorched-earth tactics include the failed Swedish, French and German invasion of Russia, Sherman's march to the sea during the American Civil War, Kit Carson's campaign during the Navajo Wars in 1863 and Lord Kitchener's methods in the Anglo-Boer War.

European Scythian campaign
The Scythians used scorched-earth methods against the Persian Achaemenid Empire, led by King Darius the Great, during his European Scythian campaign. The Scythians, who were nomadic herders, evaded the Persian invaders and retreated into the depths of the steppes after they had destroyed food supplies and poisoned wells.

March of the Ten Thousand
The Greek general Xenophon recorded in his Anabasis that the withdrawing enemy burnt up the grass and everything else that was good for use in front of the Ten Thousand.

Second Punic War
During the Second Punic War in 218–202 BCE, both Carthaginians and Romans used the method selectively during Hannibal's invasion of Italy. After the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene, Quintus Fabius Maximus instructed those living in the path of the invading Carthaginians to burn their houses and grain.

Third Punic War
After the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BCE, the Roman Senate also elected to use this method to permanently destroy the Carthaginian capital city, Carthage (near modern-day Tunis). The buildings were torn down, their stones scattered so not even rubble remained, and the fields were burned. However, the story that they salted the earth is apocryphal.

Gallic Wars
The system of punitive destruction of property and subjugation of people when accompanying a military campaign was known as vastatio. Two of the first uses of scorched earth recorded happened in the Gallic Wars. The first was used when the Celtic Helvetii were forced to evacuate their homes in Southern Germany and Switzerland because of incursions of unfriendly Germanic tribes: to add incentive to the march, the Helvetii destroyed everything they could not bring.

The second case shows actual military value: during the Great Gallic War the Gauls under Vercingetorix planned to lure the Roman armies into Gaul and then trap and obliterate them. They thus ravaged the countryside of what are now the Benelux countries and France. This caused immense problems for the Romans, but the Roman military triumphs over the Gallic alliance showed that the ravaging alone was not to be enough to save Gaul from subjugation by Rome.

Roman invasion of Persia
In the year CE 363, the Emperor Julian's invasion of Persia was turned back by a scorched-earth policy:

"The extensive region that lies between the River Tigris and the mountains of Media ...was in a very improved state of cultivation. Julian might expect, that a conqueror, who possessed the two forcible instruments of persuasion, steel and gold, would easily procure a plentiful subsistence from the fears or avarice of the natives. But, on the approach of the Romans, the rich and smiling prospect was instantly blasted. Wherever they moved ... the cattle was driven away; the grass and ripe corn were consumed with fire; and, as soon as the flames had subsided which interrupted the march of Julian, he beheld the melancholy face of a smoking and naked desert. This desperate but effectual method of defence can only be executed by the enthusiasm of a people who prefer their independence to their property; or by the rigor of an arbitrary government, which consults the public safety without submitting to their inclinations the liberty of choice."

First Fitna
During the First Fitna (656–661), Muawiyah I sent Busr ibn Abi Artat to a campaign in the Hejaz and Yemen to ravage territory loyal to Muawiyah's opponent Ali ibn Abi Talib. According to Tabari, 30,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed during that campaign of the civil war. Muawiyah also sent Sufyan ibn Awf to Iraq to burn the crops and homes of Ali's supporters.

Viking invasion of England
During the Viking invasion of England, the Viking chieftain Hastein tried to occupy the ruined Roman fortress of Chester in late summer 893, planning to raid northern Mercia from the refortified fortress. But the Mercians destroyed all crops and livestock in the surrounding countryside and expelled the Vikings successfully.

Harrying of the North
In the Harrying of the North, William the Conqueror's solution to stop a rebellion in 1069 was the brutal conquest and subjugation of northern England. William's men burnt whole villages from the Humber to Tees and slaughtered the inhabitants. Food stores and livestock were destroyed so that anyone surviving the initial massacre would soon succumb to starvation over the winter. The destruction is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. The survivors were reduced to cannibalism, with one report stating that the skulls of the dead were cracked open so that their brains could be eaten. Between 100,000 and 150,000 perished, and the area took centuries to recover from the damage.

Hundred Years' War

During the Hundred Years' War, both the English and the French conducted chevauchée raids over the enemy territory to damage its infrastructure.

Robert the Bruce counselled using scorched earth to frustrate the invasion of Scotland by Edward I of England, according to an anonymous 14th-century poem:

Wars of Scottish Independence
A slighting is the deliberate destruction, whether partial or complete, of a fortification without opposition. Sometimes, such as during the Wars of Scottish Independence and the English Civil War, it was done to render the structure unusable as a fortress. In England, adulterine (unauthorised) castles would usually be slighted if captured by a king. During the Wars of Scottish Independence, Robert the Bruce adopted a strategy of slighting Scottish castles to prevent them from being occupied by the invading English.

Crusades
A strategy of slighting castles in Palestine was also adopted by the Mamlukes during their wars with the Crusaders.

Moldavian–Ottoman Wars
Stephen the Great used scorched earth in the Carpathians against the Ottoman Army in 1475 and 1476.

Wallachian–Ottoman Wars

In 1462, a massive Ottoman army, led by Sultan Mehmed II, marched into Wallachia. Vlad the Impaler retreated to Transylvania. During his departure, he conducted scorched-earth tactics to ward off Mehmed's approach. When the Ottoman forces approached Tirgoviste, they encountered over 20,000 people impaled by the forces of Vlad the Impaler, creating a "forest" of dead or dying bodies on stakes. The atrocious, gut-wrenching sight caused Mehmed to withdraw from battle and send instead Radu, Vlad's brother, to fight Vlad the Impaler.

Anglicisation of the Irish
Further use of scorched-earth policies in war was seen during the 16th century in Ireland, where it was used by English commanders such as Walter Devereux and Richard Bingham.

The Desmond Rebellions were a famous case in Ireland. Much of the province of Munster was laid waste. The poet Edmund Spenser left an account of it: "In those late wars in Munster; for not withstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they could have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the wood and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked Anatomies [of] death, they spoke like ghosts, crying out of their graves; they did eat of the carrions, happy where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after, in so much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast."

Great Siege of Malta
In early 1565, Grandmaster Jean Parisot de Valette ordered the harvesting of all the crops in Malta, including unripened grain, to deprive the Ottomans of any local food supplies since spies had warned of an imminent Ottoman attack. Furthermore, the Knights poisoned all of the wells with bitter herbs and dead animals. The Ottomans arrived on 18 May, and the Great Siege of Malta began. The Ottomans managed to capture one fort but were eventually defeated by the Knights, the Maltese militia and a Spanish relief force.

Thirty Years' War
In 1630, Field-Marshal General Torquato Conti was in command of the Holy Roman Empire's forces during the Thirty Years' War. Forced to retreat from the advancing Swedish army of King Gustavus Adolphus, Conti ordered his troops to burn houses, destroy villages and cause as much harm generally to property and people as possible.: "To revenge himself upon the Duke of Pomerania, the imperial general permitted his troops, upon his retreat, to exercise every barbarity on the unfortunate inhabitants of Pomerania, who had already suffered but too severely from his avarice. On pretence of cutting off the resources of the Swedes, the whole country was laid waste and plundered; and often, when the Imperialists were unable any longer to maintain a place, it was laid in ashes, in order to leave the enemy nothing but ruins."

Nine Years' War
In 1688, France attacked the German Electoral Palatinate. The German states responded by forming an alliance and assembling a sizeable armed force to push the French out of Germany. The French had not prepared for such an eventuality. Realising that the war in Germany was not going to end quickly and that the war would not be a brief and decisive parade of French glory, Louis XIV and War Minister Marquis de Louvois resolved upon a scorched-earth policy in the Palatinate, Baden and Württemberg. The French were intent on denying enemy troops local resources and on preventing the Germans from invading France. By 20 December 1688, Louvois had selected all the cities, towns, villages and châteaux intended for destruction. On 2 March 1689, the Count of Tessé torched Heidelberg, and on 8 March, Montclar levelled Mannheim. Oppenheim and Worms were finally destroyed on 31 May, followed by Speyer on 1 June, and Bingen on 4 June. In all, French troops burnt over 20 substantial towns as well as numerous villages.

Mughal–Maratha Wars
In the Maratha Empire, Shivaji Maharaj had introduced scorched-earth tactics, known as Ganimi Kava. His forces looted traders and businessmen from Aurangzeb's Mughal Empire and burnt down his cities, but they were strictly ordered not to rape or hurt the innocent civilians and not to cause any sort of disrespect to any of the religious institutes.

Shivaji's son, Sambhaji Maharaj, was detested throughout the Mughal Empire for his scorched-earth tactics until he and his men were captured by Muqarrab Khan and his Mughal Army contingent of 25,000. On 11 March 1689, a panel of Mughal qadis indicted and sentenced Sambhaji to death on accusations of casual torture, arson, looting and massacres but most prominently for giving shelter to Sultan Muhammad Akbar, the fourth son of Aurangzeb, who had sought Sambhaji's aid in winning the Mughal throne from the emperor, his father. Sambhaji was particularly condemned for the three days of ravaging committed after the Battle of Burhanpur.

Great Northern War
During the Great Northern War, Russian Emperor Peter the Great's forces used scorched-earth tactics to hold back Swedish King Charles XII's campaign towards Moscow in 1707-1708.

Sullivan–Clinton genocide
In 1779 Congress decided to defeat the four British allied nations of the Iroquois decisively during the American Revolutionary War with the Sullivan Expedition. General John Sullivan used a scorched earth campaign by destroying more than 40 Iroquois villages and their stores of winter crops resulting in many deaths by starvation and cold in the following winter.

Haitian Revolution against Napoleon
In a letter to Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Toussaint Louverture outlined his plans for defeating the French in the Haitian Revolution starting in 1791 using scorched-earth: "Do not forget, while waiting for the rainy reason which will rid us of our foes, that we have no other resource than destruction and fire. Bear in mind that the soil bathed with our sweat must not furnish our enemies with the smallest sustenance. Tear up the roads with shot; throw corpses and horses into all the foundations, burn and annihilate everything in order that those who have come to reduce us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of the hell which they deserve".

Napoleonic Wars
During the third Napoleonic invasion of Portugal in 1810, the Portuguese population retreated towards Lisbon and was ordered to destroy all the food supplies the French might capture as well as forage and shelter in a wide belt across the country. (Although effective food-preserving techniques had recently been invented, they were still not fit for military use because a suitably-rugged container had not yet been invented.) The command was obeyed as a result of French plundering and general ill-treatment of civilians in the previous invasions. The civilians would rather destroy anything that had to be left behind, rather than leave it to the French. When the French armies reached the Lines of Torres Vedras on the way to Lisbon, French soldiers reported that the country "seemed to empty ahead of them". Low morale, hunger, disease and indiscipline greatly weakened the French army and compelled the forces to retreat, see also Attrition warfare against Napoleon.

In 1812, Emperor Alexander I was able to render Napoleon's invasion of Russia useless by using a scorched-earth policy. As Russians withdrew from the advancing French army, they burned the countryside over which they passed (and allegedly Moscow), leaving nothing of value for the pursuing French army. Encountering only desolate and useless land Napoleon's Grande Armée was prevented from using its usual doctrine of living off the lands that it conquered. Pushing relentlessly on despite dwindling numbers, the Grand Army met with disaster as the invasion progressed. Napoleon's army arrived in a virtually-abandoned Moscow, which was a tattered starving shell of its former self, largely because of scorched-earth tactics by the retreating Russians. Having conquered essentially nothing, Napoleon's troops retreated, but the scorched-earth policy came into effect again because even though some large supply dumps had been established on the advance, the route between them had both been scorched and marched over once already. Thus, the French army starved as it marched along the resource-depleted invasion route.

South American War of Independence
In August 1812, Argentine General Manuel Belgrano led the Jujuy Exodus, a massive forced displacement of people from what is now Jujuy and Salta Provinces to the south. The Jujuy Exodus was conducted by the patriot forces of the Army of the North, which was battling a Royalist army.

Belgrano, faced with the prospect of total defeat and territorial loss, ordered all people to pack their necessities, including food and furniture, and to follow him in carriages or on foot together with whatever cattle and beasts of burden that could endure the journey. The rest (houses, crops, food stocks and any objects made of iron) was to be burned to deprive the Royalists of resources. The strict scorched-earth policy made him ask on 29 July 1812 the people of Jujuy to "show their heroism" and to join the march of the army under his command "if, as you assure, you want to be free". The punishment for ignoring the order was execution, with the destruction of the defector's properties. Belgrano labored to win the support of the populace and later reported that most of the people had willingly followed him without the need for force.

The exodus started on 23 August and gathered people from Jujuy and Salta. People travelled south about 250 km and finally arrived at the banks of the Pasaje River, in Tucumán Province in the early hours of 29 August. They applied a scorched-earth policy and so the Spaniards advanced into a wasteland. Belgrano's army destroyed everything that could provide shelter or be useful to the Royalists.

Greek War of Independence
In 1827, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt led an Ottoman-Egyptian combined force in a campaign to crush Greek revolutionaries in the Peloponnese. In response to Greek guerrilla attacks on his forces in the Peloponnese, Ibrahim launched a scorched earth campaign that threatened the population with starvation and deported many civilians into slavery in Egypt. The fires of burning villages and fields were clearly visible from Allied ships standing offshore. A British landing party reported that the population of Messinia was close to mass starvation. Ibrahim's scorched-earth policy caused much outrage in Europe, which was one factor for the Great Powers (United Kingdom, the Kingdom of France and the Russian Empire) decisively intervening against him in the Battle of Navarino.

American Civil War

In the American Civil War, Union forces under Philip Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman used the policy widely: "supplies within the reach of Confederate armies I regarded as much contraband as arms or ordnance stores. Their destruction was accomplished without bloodshed and tended to the same result as the destruction of armies. I continued this policy to the close of the war. Promiscuous pillaging, however, was discouraged and punished. Instructions were always given to take provisions and forage under the direction of commissioned officers who should give receipts to owners, if at home, and turn the property over to officers of the quartermaster or commissary departments to be issued as if furnished from our Northern depots. But much was destroyed without receipts to owners when it could not be brought within our lines and would otherwise have gone to the support of secession and rebellion. This policy I believe exercised a material influence in hastening the end."

General Sherman used that policy during his March to the Sea.

Another event, in response to William Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas and the many civilian casualties, including the killing of 150 men, Brigadier General Thomas Ewing Jr., Sherman's brother-in-law, issued US Army General Order No. 11 (1863) to order the near-total evacuation of three-and-a-half counties in western Missouri, south of Kansas City, which were subsequently looted and burned by US Army troops. Under Sherman's overall direction, General Philip Sheridan followed that policy in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and then in the Indian Wars of the Great Plains.

When General Ulysses Grant's forces broke through the defenses of Richmond, Virginia, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered the destruction of Richmond's military supplies. The resulting fires quickly spread to other buildings, as well as to the Confederate warships docked on the James River. Civilians in panic were forced to escape the city as it quickly burned.

Native American Wars

During the wars with Native American tribes of the American West, Kit Carson, under James Henry Carleton's direction, instituted a scorched-earth policy, burning fields and homes destroying any livestock. He was aided by other Indian tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos, chiefly the Ute tribe. The Navajo were forced to surrender because of the destruction of their livestock and food supplies. In the spring of 1864, 8000 Navajo men, women, and children were forced to march 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Navajos call it "The Long Walk."

Second Boer War

During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), British forces applied a scorched-earth policy in the occupied Boer republics under the direction of General Lord Kitchener. Numerous Boers, refusing to accept military defeat, adopted guerrilla warfare despite the capture of both of their capital cities. As a result, under Lord Kitchener's command British forces initiated a policy of the destruction of the farms and the homes of civilians in the republics to prevent the Boers who were still fighting from obtaining food and supplies. Boer noncombatants inhabiting the republics (mostly women and children) were interned in concentration camps to prevent them from supplying guerillas still in the field.

The existence of the concentration camps was exposed by English activist Emily Hobhouse, who toured the camps and began petitioning the British government to change its policy. In an attempt to counter Hobhouse's activism, the British government commissioned the Fawcett Commission, but it confirmed Hobhouse's findings. The British government then claimed that it perceived the concentration camps to be humanitarian measure and were established to care for displaced noncombatants until the war's end, in response to mounting criticism of the camps in Britain. A number of factors, including outbreaks of infectious diseases, a lack of planning and supplies for the camps, and overcrowding led to numerous internees dying in the camps. A decade after the war, historian P. L. A. Goldman estimated that 27,927 Boers died in the concentration camps, 26,251 women and children (of whom more than 22,000 were under the age of 16) and 1,676 men over the age of 16, with 1,421 being above the age of 16. The number of Black Africans who also suffered the same is unknown.

New Zealand Wars
In 1868, the Tūhoe, who had sheltered the Māori leader Te Kooti, were thus subjected to a scorched-earth policy in which their crops and buildings were destroyed and the people of fighting age were captured.

World War I
On the Eastern Front of World War I, the Imperial Russian Army created a zone of destruction by using a massive scorched-earth strategy during their retreat from the Imperial German Army in the summer and the autumn of 1915. The Russian troops, retreating along a front of more than 600 miles, destroyed anything that might be of use to their enemy, including crops, houses, railways and entire cities. They also forcibly removed huge numbers of people. In pushing the Russian troops back into Russia's interior, the German army gained a large area of territory from the Russian Empire that is now Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania.

In late 1916 the British army set fire to the Romanian oil fields in order to prevent the central powers from capturing them. 800 million litres of oil were burned.

On the Western Front on 24 February 1917, the German army made a strategic scorched-earth withdrawal (Operation Alberich) from the Somme battlefield to the prepared fortifications of the Hindenburg Line to shorten the line that had to be occupied. Since a scorched-earth campaign requires a war of movement, the Western Front provided little opportunity for the policy as the war was mostly a stalemate and was fought mostly in the same concentrated area for its entire duration.

Greco-Turkish War
During the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22), the retreating Greek Army carried out a scorched-earth policy while it was fleeing from Anatolia in the final phase of the war. The historian Sydney Nettleton Fisher wrote, "The Greek army in retreat pursued a burned-earth policy and committed every known outrage against defenceless Turkish villagers in its path".

Norman Naimark noted that "the Greek retreat was even more devastating for the local population than the occupation".

Second Sino-Japanese War
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Imperial Japanese Army had a scorched-earth policy, known as "Three Alls Policy", which caused immense environmental and infrastructure damage to be recorded. It contributed to the complete destruction of entire villages and partial destruction of entire cities.

The Chinese National Revolutionary Army destroyed dams and levees in an attempt to flood the land to slow down the advancement of Japanese soldiers, which further added to the environmental impact and resulted in the 1938 Yellow River flood. In the 1938 Changsha fire, the city of Changsha was put on fire by the Kuomintang to prevent any wealth from falling into enemy hands.

World War II

At the start of the Winter War in 1939, the Finns used the tactic in the vicinity of the border in order to deprive the invading Soviet Red Army's provisions and shelter for the forthcoming cold winter. In some cases, fighting took place in areas that were familiar to the Finnish soldiers who were fighting it. There were accounts of soldiers burning down their very own homes and parishes. One of the burned parishes was Suomussalmi.

When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, many district governments took the initiative to begin a partial scorched-earth policy to deny the invaders access to electrical, telecommunications, rail, and industrial resources. Parts of the telegraph network were destroyed, some rail and road bridges were blown up, most electrical generators were sabotaged through the removal of key components, and many mineshafts were collapsed.

The process was repeated later in the war by the German forces of Army Group North and Erich von Manstein's Army Group Don, which stole crops, destroyed farms, and razed cities and smaller settlements during several military operations. The rationale for the policy was that it would slow pursuing Soviet forces by forcing them to save their own civilians. The best-known victims of the German scorched-earth policy were the people of the historic city of Novgorod, which was razed during the winter of 1944 to cover Army Group North's retreat from Leningrad.

Near the end of the summer of 1944, Finland, which had made a separate peace with the Allies, was required to evict the German forces, which had been fighting against the Soviets alongside Finnish troops in northern Finland. The Finnish forces, under the leadership of General Hjalmar Siilasvuo, struck aggressively in late September 1944 by making a landfall at Tornio. That accelerated the German retreat, and by November 1944, the Germans had left most of northern Finland. The German forces, forced to retreat because of an overall strategic situation, covered their retreat towards Norway by devastating large areas of northern Finland by using a scorched-earth strategy. More than a third of the area's dwellings were destroyed, and the provincial capital Rovaniemi was burned to the ground. All but two bridges in Lapland Province were blown up, and all roads were mined.

In northern Norway, which was also being invaded by Soviet forces in pursuit of the retreating Wehrmacht in 1944, the Germans also undertook a scorched-earth policy of destroying every building that could offer shelter and thus interposing a belt of "scorched earth" between themselves and the allies.

In 1945, Adolf Hitler ordered his minister of armaments, Albert Speer, to carry out a nationwide scorched-earth policy, in what became known as the Nero Decree. Speer, who was looking to the future, actively resisted the order, just as he had earlier refused Hitler's command to destroy French industry when the Wehrmacht was being driven out of France. Speer managed to continue doing so even after Hitler became aware of his actions.

During the Second World War, the railroad plough was used during retreats in Germany, Czechoslovakia and other countries to deny enemy use of railways by partially destroying them.

Malayan Liberation War
Britain was the first nation to employ herbicides and defoliants (chiefly Agent Orange) to destroy the crops and the bushes of Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) insurgents in Malaya during the Malayan Emergency. The intent was to prevent MNLA insurgents from utilizing rice fields to resupply their rations and using them as a cover to ambush passing convoys of Commonwealth troops.

Goa War
In response to India's invasion of Portuguese Goa in December 1961 during the annexation of Portuguese India, orders delivered from Portuguese President Américo Tomás called for a scorched-earth policy for Goa to be destroyed before its surrender to India.

However, despite his orders from Lisbon, Governor General Manuel António Vassalo e Silva took stock of the superiority of the Indian troops and of his forces' supplies of food and ammunition and took the decision to surrender. He later described his orders to destroy Goa as "a useless sacrifice" (um sacrifício inútil)".

Vietnam War
The United States used Agent Orange as a part of its herbicidal warfare program Operation Ranch Hand to destroy crops and foliage to expose possible enemy hideouts during the Vietnam War. Agent Blue was used on rice fields to deny food to the Viet Cong.

Persian Gulf War
During the 1990 Persian Gulf War, when Iraqi forces were driven out of Kuwait, they set more than 600 Kuwaiti oil wells on fire. That was done as part of a scorched-earth policy during the retreat from Kuwait in 1991 after Iraqi forces had been driven out by Coalition military forces. The fires were started in January and February 1991, and the last one was extinguished by November 1991.

Guatemalan Civil War
Efraín Ríos Montt used the policy in Guatemala's highlands in 1981 and 1982, but it had been used under the previous president, Fernando Romeo Lucas García. Upon entering office, Ríos Montt implemented a new counterinsurgency strategy that called for the use of scorched earth to combat the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity rebels. Plan Victoria 82 was more commonly known by the nickname of the rural pacification elements of the strategy, Fusiles y Frijoles (Bullets and Beans). Ríos Montt's policies resulted in the death of thousands, most of them indigenous Mayans.

Indonesia
The Indonesian military used the method during Indonesian National Revolution when the British forces in Bandung gave an ultimatum for Indonesian fighters to leave the city. In response, the southern part of Bandung was deliberately burned down in an act of defiance as they left the city on 24 March 1946. This event is known as the Bandung Sea of Fire (Bandung Lautan Api).

The Indonesian military and pro-Indonesia militias also used the method in the 1999 East Timorese crisis. The Timor-Leste scorched-earth campaign was around the time of East Timor's referendum for independence in 1999.

Yugoslav Wars
The method was used during the Yugoslav Wars that started in 1991, such as against the Serbs in Krajina by the Croatian Army, and by Serbian paramilitary groups.

Soviet–Afghan War
The Soviet army used scorched-earth tactics against towns and villages in 1983 to 1984 in the Soviet–Afghan War to prevent the return of the Mujahideen by a migratory genocide. The Soviet army used mines extensively in the bordering provinces to Pakistan to cut off weapon supply.

Darfur War
The government of Sudan used scorched earth as a military strategy in the Darfur War that started in 2003.

Sri Lankan Civil War
During the 2009 Sri Lankan Civil War, the United Nations Regional Information Centre accused the government of Sri Lanka of using scorched-earth tactics.

Myanmar civil war
In March 2023, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the Burmese military's use of a scorched earth strategy, which has killed thousands of civilians, displaced 1.3 million people and destroyed 39,000 houses throughout the country since the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, as the military has denied humanitarian access to survivors, razed entire villages, and used indiscriminate airstrikes and artillery shelling.

In business world
The concept of scorched-earth defense is sometimes applied figuratively to the business world in which a firm facing a takeover attempts to make itself less valuable by selling off its assets.

title: Scorched earth


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Talk:History of Belgium

[Untitled]
Ctrl+V by 172 Nobody does it better !

Does the Dutroux scandal really need to take up this much space? The article is about the entire history of the country, but a significant portion of it is dedicated to a single scandal. --Sesel 07:26, 25 May 2004 (UTC)
 * It certainly deserves a paragraph. The issue is not so much how long this paragraph is, but how short the other ones are... --Edcolins 19:59, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Very true. There is barely any time spent discussing VITAL parts of Belgian history such as the school crisis or the splitting of the University of Leuven in '68. ... not to mention that the Congo received a very rosy treatment.

"Rumour has that both France and the Netherlands had plans to fully occupy or annex Belgium well after World War I, but these never came to fruition." Source? Junes 10:30, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Through a policy of deliberate lack of military spending since the latter half of the 19th century, the Netherlands were in no position to annex any part of a European country. Belgium did try to annex parts of the Netherlands after WWI as retalliation for the perceived Dutch support for the German side during the war and to improve Belgium's strategic position. In the absence of strong allied support for this plan, it was abandoned. --Mzzl (talk) 08:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

"In 675 BC, the Belgae were overrrun by the armies of Julius Caesar" : in 675 BC Julius Caesar was not even born ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.205.46.216 (talk) 14:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Belgae
This article seem to suggest that the belgae are viewed as almost perfectly Gauls. This isn't true. They were more of a melting pot between German and Celtic culture. With certain tribes claiming to have german blood, and originating from Germanic lands. At least thats what Caesar says in his Bello Galllico. If noone minds I'll go do some reading and expand (and possibly correct some mistake) in this section. When I find more time and have good sources at hand. Need spelling, grammar and opinions afterwards. Titirius (talk) 10:58, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Federalisation process +/- ignored!
The process that lead to the stablisment of the federalised institutions (Flemish, Walloon, ... governements) is not discussed at all in this section. Quite strange.

 * Yes indeed. Be bold : do it!

I'll have a go at it when I find some time. Though I could use someone proofreading spelling and grammar. Titirius (talk) 10:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Franco-Prussian war
What is the last country that Belgium was at war with before the two World Wars? The answer I hear most often is .. Germany, during the Franco-Prussian war. This article doesn't mention it all. However, I am far from an expert on that war, and not a native speaker of English either... So I must resort to asking for help.Evilbu 14:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

 * Belgium was neutral until WWI, and di not declare war on any party in the war of 1870. See e.g. here (in Dutch) for a short mention of this, or here for an indirect testimony to this in English. Fram 14:38, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Needed: Military history of Belgium during World War II
Hi. In looking at Category:Military history of Belgium during World War II it appears that there is no lead article for this. Belgium was a key state in the beginning of the Second World War. If anyone can assist by starting Military history of Belgium during World War II it would fill an important gap. There are many good and reliable sources for this topic. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 13:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll try and write a short basis for this section when I find some time. Titirius (talk) 10:24, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Taal Aktie Komitee.jpg
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The image Image:Atomium-sm.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

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Key Objective?
Aside from political sympathy, a key objective for both the British and the French governments was to keep the harbors of Antwerp and Rotterdam in two separate, hostile countries.

Are there any independent sources for this claim? It seems unlikely that Britain, which was at the apex of its economic and military power at that time, would have felt remotely threatened by a united Netherlands. In fact, the united kingdom of the Netherlands was a British creation. Furthermore, in the absence of a land route, cargo for the European mainland couldn't have gone to London instead, and cargo for the UK couldn't be unloaded in Antwerp, even if one harbor was much "better" than the other. It seems more likely that Britain recognized and guaranteed the Belgian independence and its borders to prevent it from joining France, so shortly after Napoleon, and very shortly after the French july revolution. --Mzzl (talk) 08:41, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

War Reperations
The comment that Belgium recieved no war reperations is incorrect. During the 1920's when the German Government could not pay, a Franco-Belgian force invaded the Saar land to collect what was owed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.66.173.253 (talk) 19:51, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Did the Socialist Party incite?
I read this sentence: Although he narrowly won the referendum, the militant socialist movement in Liège, Hainaut and other urban centres incited major protests and strikes. Many people said, long before (in 1945) the strike of July will occur (Gillon, Van den Dungen, Frans Van Cauwelaert... In General strike against Leopold III of Belgium, there are evidences  the Socialist party didn't incite. I think it is difficult to say that a party would be able to incite or to order a General strike, which is always rather uncontrollable. Sincerely, José Fontaine (talk) 22:24, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The lead and my reversion
I did a pretty big revert of content added by Andrew Lancaster, so I would like to explain my concerns.
 * General phrasing
 * There was too much detail on Caesar, and what he said and thought.
 * Missed mention of the independent status of the smaller Medieval entities.
 * Habsburg rule is important to mention.
 * The revolution should be explicitly mentioned, not just as a vague "series of steps".

I did end up putting a lot of his stuff back in too. My version was certainly not perfect, and nor was his, so I'm hoping that my edits turn out to move the introduction closer to something that gets to the gist of it.  Oreo Priest  talk 00:31, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

 * Most academic works which discuss the origin of the word "Belgium" really do mention Caesar. This is not just pointing to a famous person. He really does seem to be the origin of the word "Belgium" in the written record. He also did this before there was any such thing as a province of "Gallia Belgica". You have reversed this, which is actually wrong. Belgium was first, and Gallia Belgica came later. We also have to be careful about implying that Belgium is in the same place as Gallia Belgica or classical Belgium, and we need to be careful to avoid taking any non-neutral position concerning how Celtic, Germanic or "other" that the Belgae were.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:41, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

 * Made an edit, but keep up the good work.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:45, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

"The history of Belgium stretches from pre-history to the present day"
Can we take this a read? Quite frankly it would be surprising if it didn't. Though I don't have a better suggestion off the top of my head, the first sentance is really important and, in its present form, it really does not add anything. --Brigade Piron (talk) 17:05, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * good point; I fixed it. Rjensen (talk) 17:25, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

the article is getting very big and very wordy
Continuing thanks for the work being done on the article, but I do feel that a caution needs to be raised. This article is now getting well above the suggested maximum size for an article, and any quick reading will show that every part and even every sentence is becoming very wordy and trying to fit every possible side-issue into every sentence. It looks like a very big draft at this moment. I am hoping that compression will also be part of the editing process?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:19, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I absolutely agree.  Oreo Priest  talk 21:35, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * good point. I'll start trimming. If a topic has a Wiki article then a brief summary is all that is needed; if the point does not have a separate article perhaps it can be dropped.Rjensen (talk) 21:42, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. Maybe a new article would need to be created if there is not yet an article. I do not think Wikipedia is over-endowed with articles about Belgium, so if a section here is getting too long, and there is no article why not make a new article with that material and keep a short version here?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:47, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know - its true there are a lot of sections, but none are particularly big on their own. Surely for a page of this magnitude (second only to Belgium on the wikiproject's hit-list right?) it needs to be detailed? There are plenty of "History of..." pages on wiki that are very superficial and not worth reading because they do not deal with all the important points in sufficient detail. ---Brigade Piron (talk) 23:54, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * One reason for the WP:SPLIT policies is that when an article gets over 100,000 bytes it becomes difficult to load and edit for many people. So it is partly just a practical thing to split up discussion of large subjects.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:55, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * at 10,000 bytes per second --a very slow speed indeed in this cellphone age--it would take about 10 seconds to download an article that would take 30+ minutes to read. So I don't think that's a good reason to reduce the quantity of info we provide. Rjensen (talk) 09:53, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm with Rjensen on this one - considering the importance of the article, I don't think we can afford to cut it without losing valuable stuff. However, I do think some of the more recent (policy on nuclear power, gay marriage etc) doesn't really rank with the Second World War in the History of Belgium, but should be moved to the page Belgium. Brigade Piron (talk) 10:23, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not an expert, but I do not think you can just equate bytes per second of your cellphone with speed problems on Wikipedia itself. There are presumably many possible transmission and processing bottlenecks? Anyway, I do know from practical experience that long articles such as Evolution can be very hard to edit on some days, leading to crashes and lost work. Nothing is lost by splitting an article that gets too big, and Evolution periodically has "children". Anyway, the other point is that you just have to read the article to see that some of the expansions happening have not necessarily increased quality of wording. Editing usually makes things both shorter and easier to read, and does not necessarily mean removing information.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:51, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I understand that everything seems important and valuable, but this article isn't supposed to be an exhaustive list of everything that's ever happened in Belgium. It's supposed to be a high-level summary, and a reasonable length, and readability suffers if we try to include everything on this page. Per WP:SPLIT:
 * Rule of thumb :

Right now we're sitting on 140k, which is substantially more than the 'almost certainly should be divided' listed above. If you print it as a PDF, the prose is 33 A4 pages long. This is simply too much text for the average reader. To pick out a couple particularly egregious examples, someone wanting a summary of the history of Belgium (and not a PhD on it) would probably not care about "Foreign relations and the Franco-Prussian War" (in which Belgium didn't even participate) or a contract awarded to provide tramways to a minor Chinese city. I know we find these interesting, but we are clearly not the average reader, and this article is not the place for those facts. We really have to be bold here with the scissors, and fork some of the more detailed explanations to their own pages.  Oreo Priest  talk 16:52, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * As the writer of both of the paragraphs which invoke Oreo's displeasure, I'd just point out that (a) the Franco-Prussian War is the watershed point in Belgian policy in many different areas and led to a crash modernization programme at the end of the century and (b) "providing tramways to a minor Chinese city" is exactly how Belgium made much of its money; Belgium was the biggest exporter of rail/tram parts in the world which I felt, at least, was worth a mention. --Brigade Piron (talk) 09:08, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think indeed such things are notable enough to be in Wikipedia, so they should of course not simply be deleted, but the article is getting too big, and so please already

consider what new articles can be created in order to be a home for some of this material. For example Economic history of Belgium?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:58, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Brigade, I find those things interesting, I really do. But we have to be more concise here. Perhaps the Franco-Prussian War content would have a better home at Belgian_Army? And the "providing tramways to a minor Chinese city" is not how Belgium made much of it's money, it's an example of how. If "Belgium was the biggest exporter of rail/tram parts in the world" then that's what we should say, and there's no need to mention a specific contract. The Tianjin concession as a whole is notable enough for at most one sentence in an article on the whole history of the country. This article will be better with a concise style than with a length that is daunting for the average reader.  Oreo Priest  talk 15:06, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * the Wikipedia rule of thumb " 'almost certainly should be divided' " was written to cover the run of the mill 4 million articles on Wikipedia. It was not written by someone familiar with history articles. I suggest that few people read this article from beginning to end--people are instead interested in a specific period, and perhaps what comes before and after. That will make for a comfortable reading experience for most of our readers. Rjensen (talk) 15:23, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That's not correct. Summary_style makes it clear that an article should not attempt to cover all the details of a topic if this makes it unduly long. Part of this is to not be "exhausting those who need a primer on a whole topic". If people are interested in a specific period only, then we can fork that into a separate, more detailed article, as the policy page makes clear.  Oreo Priest  talk 16:00, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * this article covers a small fraction of what a history book would cover--and indeed there are many many links to Wikipedia articles on special topics. But I don't think it's unduly long--what is the evidence for that from someone who has actually read the article? Rjensen (talk) 16:31, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I understand Oreo. If cuts have to be made, could we perhaps consider creating a sub article Belgian history since 1830 or History of the Kingdom of Belgium? I notice that this article incorporated text from a previous one covering Belgian history before Independence... --Brigade Piron (talk) 18:43, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Rjensen, I'm not sure why you don't think the policy doesn't apply to this article unless the policy writer has read this article specifically. I have read this article. It took ages, and it was exhausting despite my interest in the subject. That's not OK.
 * Brigade, breaking it up by time period might be a good idea. I think having a separate article about Belgium in each of the world wars would be a good idea, because there's probably too much detail on those too. It might very well be time to create Military history of Belgium as well.  Oreo Priest  talk 20:27, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * the policy was designed for 4 million articles. It explicitly says that it assumes people will read the article straight through and the reader then bumps against a "normal" attention span. That's true for millions of Wikipedia articles I suppose but I think this should be designed for readers who a) are interested in a specific  subtopic or b) are serious enough to spend the time they need in perhaps two or three sessions. (That's how people read books, after all.   Yes Belgium needs a separate article on many topics--certainly on the world war I (it has one on ww2 = History of Belgium (1939-1945). It already has many and needs more. But like all nations it also needs an overall article that makes sense of the overall history. This one runs about 17,000 words of main text (excluding notes) -- That's about the length of perhaps two chapters in a university history textbook. I think instead of chopping out history here we would be better off adding new material to other Belgium-related articles. Rjensen (talk) 21:15, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * So you think that we should have no article that gives a primer on the topic that's accessible to those who aren't willing to invest the time required to read two chapters of a university textbook? That's exactly what the policy page says should not happen. Those willing to invest the time should refer to the more in-depth subarticles where appropriate. This article must become accessible to those seeking a primer.  Oreo Priest  talk 22:11, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh no--for those people with a few minutes to spend the lede is already a good introduction. It summarizes what they want to know in a nutshell. Rjensen (talk) 10:21, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the policy does apply to this article, and I do not think it is damaging to our coverage of Belgium if we split big subjects up into multiple articles. It is just natural that as things get bigger, they need to be split and carefully structured. So for example a TOC is normal for articles over a certain size. It would be silly to argue that a TOC should be avoided for some subjects because people interested in those subjects have a better attention span.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:23, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Great War
I'm starting a new article on Belgium in World War I that will include excerpts from here and from the articles on the Rape of Belgium etc. We can decide later if this article can be shortened accordingly. Rjensen (talk) 09:32, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea, it makes a pretty good article already! I've done something similar with History of Belgium (1939-1945) (though the article's title is really bad) so that section can be cut also. --Brigade Piron (talk) 11:50, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

New sub-articles
Here is a list of (sub) articles which have been from the text from this article. Please link to them instead of providing long descriptions: Please update this list as they are created. --Brigade Piron (talk) 19:07, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * History of Belgium (1939-1945)
 * First Schools' War
 * Second Schools' War
 * Belgium and the Franco-Prussian War
 * Just to confirm: I notice there are many articles named "Economic history of...". It seems a good idea to me to have one for Belgium, given that you are working on this subject already. I have done this sort of thing before: you can efficiently work on two articles at once in such a situation, main and specialist, moving long stuff from one to the other.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:03, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Do we really need a section on the Historiography of Belgium in this article?
Historiography can be worth discussing in WP of course, but is it a notable part of History itself?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:05, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * oh yes--when you get to graduate school in history it's mostly about historiography. That is how different historians have given different interpretations to the same historical data and events. People ignorant of historiography falsely assume that there is one and only one "true" history and it's a matter of memorizing the official facts.   Rjensen (talk) 13:41, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe Rjensen has done an excellent job of that section, but I do agree that it should be moved to a different page, say Belgian historiography. This article is after all mainly for a basic, impartial and chronological history of the topic; few "real" historians would consider writing like this but nevertheless this article should serve as an introduction alone. ---Brigade Piron (talk) 21:08, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, no criticism of the work done is intended by me. Of course I also understand that historiography might be a valid and important part of university courses about Belgian history, but not every part of a study course is part of what should be in a WP article about the same subject. Indeed, no University course will ever fit in one WP article, but we can hope to fit such material into lots of different articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:08, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Brigade Piron says "article is after all mainly for a basic, impartial and chronological history" -- yes indeed. the obvious question is how we know it's "basic, impartial and chronological" -- and the answer is historiography tells us. There's no secret book somewhere that has all this impartial history that we just copy. Rjensen (talk) 14:33, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I've tried to keep the sections I have written as free of interpretation as possible, just sticking to facts and "significance" rather than "interpretation". However, I'd also point out thathe historians you mention (indeed, the Great Belgian historians) like Henri Pirenne remain almost totally un-cited in the article. In this light, I'd just question how relevant it was. --Brigade Piron (talk) 17:19, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that there is no place for historiography in this article. It should be forked in its entirety to another article. I have not seen a single other history article on wikipedia mention historiography. Once again, I'd like to reiterate that this article is NOT to be written for graduate students or at the graduate level. No article in any encyclopedia is; encyclopedias are meant to be accessible to the general public.  Oreo Priest  talk 17:28, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * the entire article, including historiography section, is fully accessible to the general public. There are no fancy technical terms, for example.  To assume the general public is uninterested in how we know so much about Belgium is a poor argument--I am assuming instead that lots of people are seriously interested in the history of Belgium. The articles on History of the Netherlands and History of Germany have much longer sections on historiography. Rjensen (talk) 17:39, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * History of Germany has no historiography section, but History of the Netherlands does, you're right. The concern about accessibility is once again a question of length. I have never encountered historiography (about subjects that are not highly disputed) outside of university; as a result, I think that historiography is the most easily dispensable section if this article is to be made an appropriate length.  Oreo Priest  talk 19:30, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Most people go to university these days including tens of millions of our users. They deserve help from Wikipedia too. (on the History of Germany article, the historiography is under #13 "Historians" and #12 "Sonderweg debate"). Rjensen (talk) 21:56, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, this article has still got to show the chronology and outline the most important aspects of the topic. What I'm afraid you seem to be doing is sawing through vast sections of article in order to justify the historiography section, which is, in my opinion wrong in an article of this scope. I notice you have deleted all mention of Belgian territory in China, Women's suffrage, the Belgian Congo in WW1 and The Fusilade of Mons all in a series of edits within a few hours. In my humble opinion, those deserve the place (albeit in a trimmed form) in a much-squeezed article more than this section, which deserves a separate one. --Brigade Piron (talk) 22:54, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * people want it shorter and so I'm trimming away. The Belgium did not control any significant territory in China so I dropped two sentences that do not claim that anything important happened there (The section was mostly about selling trams to one city in China--that does not make the cut for importance to the history of Belgium) The Fusilade of Mons is still there and even has a picture. World War I in Belgium now has a detailed article with the Congo covered (there was no fighting in the Congo & I did not reduce the coverage of the colony--indeed I think it should be expanded) Women's suffrage is still there. Rjensen (talk) 19:59, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The map in the "Unrest in the southern provinces" section
This map is presented as a language map. However, the file is called "File:Dutch religion map.png" which is also what it is to my knowledge. It shows the catholic south and the protestant north in the Dutch language area (which is the whole area). Some mistake must have happened here. Can someone replace it with a correct map? --Thathánka Íyotake (talk) 02:47, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * it's actually the language (Dutch north and French south) map, which historicallly had a sharp line of division. The religion map is much more complicated--lots of Catholics lived in the North . The person who drew the map misnamed it--that is the mistake.Rjensen (talk) 05:13, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Really? Are you sure? I've seen plenty of language maps that put the language border roughly where it is today; this one shows almost all of modern 'Flanders' as predominantly French, in addition to some regions firmly in the modern Netherlands. - Oreo Priest  talk 16:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It is definitely not a language map. Whatever the file name, this is a map of the entire Dutch-speaking area, apparently around 1830, since it also includes Brussels plus French Flanders (Dutch-speaking) in the west. Note that Wallonia is not included in the map at all. The red/green divide does not represent any language border: it shows all of Flanders plus the present Dutch provinces of Noord-Brabant, Limburg and part of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen (in Zeeland) and Gelderland and even a section of Overijssel(!) as French-speaking (German should have another colour). The French language never reached that far north. As a religion map I agree that it is crude, but as a language map it is grossly flawed and misleading. I still believe in the intention behind the file name "File:Dutch religion map.png", but if it is not a crude religion map, I propose to delete it altogether since, as a language map it is so massively erroneous that it has no place on Wikipedia. --Thathánka Íyotake (talk) 06:00, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

 * PS: it also seems that the map has somehow been projected upon a map with the modern coastlines which would explain the green dot on the coast of Noordoost-Polder in Flevoland. It's the (now former) island of Urk --Thathánka Íyotake (talk) 06:00, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

 * i agree this not a language mapbfor any period. I also doubt that it is a useful religion map?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:51, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * OK I will delete it. Rjensen (talk) 07:12, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed, this is an odd map of The Netherlands and Flanders, as if they were one unit without the rest of Belgium, and showing red over the entirety of Flanders, which has long been vastly Dutch speaking. Louvain, which was French in name before WWI and is now almost entirely Dutch speaking, lies at the southern border of the red area.  The map probably does represent religion in the historically Dutch speaking areas, but is too confused to be of any use. μηδείς (talk) 07:18, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I think Louvain/Leuven has always been Dutch speaking since late antiquity. French has however been used in the University until recent decades. The existence of a French name Louvain does not mean anything. There are also old French names for places like Londres. This is a well-studied subject, and basically the language border of Belgium and northern France has moved in the opposite direction to what is shown in this map. There are special exceptions, but quite small, and nothing like this map.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:14, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I certainly won't argue. I am going from a memory that had the Dutch speaking area expanding to include Louvain, that may have been the surrounding countryside, with Dutch expanding at the expense of French.  In any case, I know where Louvain is, and the language border was much closer to it than the religious border here.  Be nice if I could remember where I saw that map! μηδείς (talk) 20:38, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

 * I am from Belgium and I can tell you for an absolutely definite fact this is not the language map. This is the map showing the religious division. Reformed (Protestant Calvinist) in Green and Catholics in Red. Signed: Basemetal ( write to me here) 16:05, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Here is a map of the language areas. Compare with the map above where "French" supposedly extends far into the Netherlands. Again: the first map is the religious map, not the linguistics map. Signed: Basemetal ( write to me here) 22:58, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Basemetal - no-one doubts that this is what the language divides look like today, but as I'm sure you appreciate, there has been a shift over the past three hundred years. Personally, I agree. I also don't think it is useful to use the map in any context since it seems a bit dodgy for all. I suggest we drop it and leave it at that. Brigade Piron (talk) 07:14, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree. I do not think it is easy to create a map of religions for this section either. Modern Belgium is basically entirely Catholic (whether or not people are even still serious about religion) and it has been for some time. And even though Flanders once contained many hotspots of very early Protestantism, this was during a period of change, and long ago.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, the more I look at the religion map, the more problematic it's beginning to seem to me. Wallonia (catholic) is not even shown. I have no idea then what that map purports to show. However it's definitely not a language map. Ok Brigade Piron, let's drop it and leave it at that. But you seem to believe that this may have been a language map a few hundred of years ago. But no, this can't have been the language map ever since the Franks (who brought the Germanic language into the Low Countries, which were then a part of the Roman Empire) crossed the Rhine, which happened around 400 or 500 AD. Since then the language boundaries have changed but only very little. The most important change is that Brussels that is now bilingual was a wholly Dutch (Flemish) speaking city (this is why in today's language map you see Brussels surrounded by a Dutch area). Dutch was extending as far down south as Waterloo (hence the Germanic place name) which is now wholly French speaking. In general French had been gaining a little bit the ground lost since the great invastions of 400 or 500 AD. It's not a usual situation if you look at the boundaries between Romance and Germanic through Belgium, France, Switzerland and the Austrian-Italian border. A final word of caution regarding the Belgian language map: actually the "language" map that I posted is the "official" language map (it's also the only map you will ever find because the Flemish authorities prevent any further census). This is the language map such as it was frozen around 1960 based on data from around 1935. Since then French has continued to expand around Brussels so that in fact Brussels is now more than 80 percent French-speaking and the officially bilingual region of Brussels which on the map is surrounded by Dutch in fact now touches the French speaking region. That the language map has now been frozen means that even if the majority in a region changes (say French speakers start outnumbering Dutch speakers in some commune) that commune remains forever officially Dutch-speaking. So this language map is an artificial construct used for political purposes, that does not reflect and will reflect less and less (until Belgium splits) the actual linguistic reality. Signed: Basemetal ( write to me here) 14:54, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * there is a much more sophisticated map of religion in 1849 online -- perhaps it could be used to draw a more simple and accurate map of religion. the caption of the map says that is based on the 1849 census of Belgium (which is online)....however why then would it include the Netherlands? In any case statistical maps of census data were not invented until the 1860s -- and so this map seems to be from a later atlas. Can anyone identify it? how can we tell if the map in question is copyright or not?  This comment was by  Rjensen  yet there is no signature and SineBot did not do its job! ( Signed:  Basemetal  ( write to me  here ) 15:33, 12 January 2013 (UTC))
 * The map you have indicated is a religion map but only for the Netherlands. Belgium lies wholly outside the area covered by the map. You could use it though to draw a religion map by adding the whole of Belgium as a catholic area (since Belgium is essentially wholly Catholic) but don't forget the French-speaking part of Belgium which had disappeared from the initial purported religion map. For the Netherlands the data of 1849 should be close enough to the 1830 data. Combining all of this you would get a reasonably accurate map for religions in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815-1830) established by the Congress of Vienna, which included the Netherlands, Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and which ended in that form when Belgium split from the Netherlands in 1830. (To recount what happened to Luxembourg would take us to far. Look up this article if interested). Signed: Basemetal ( write to me here) 15:26, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The comment I responded to was by Rjensen. How come that the comment is not signed and has not been supplied with information about its author by SineBot. A SineBot bug? Signed: Basemetal ( write to me here) 15:30, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I apologize for confusing SineBot and for being confused myself on the maps! Rjensen (talk) 16:23, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * No need to apologize. I was just wondering what had happened. Cheers. Signed: Basemetal ( write to me here) 16:37, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Presently the map is shown in Dutch people with a correct description and in Wikimedia commons, here and in History of the Netherlands with a false and misleading description. Best to copy the correct description from Dutch people to Wikimedia commons, hither, and to History of the Netherlands article. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 00:14, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I changed it accordingly. Rjensen had previously altered the original description of the map everywhere (see, ). --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 00:45, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

chicken fighting???? no "cockpit of Europe" is used by hundreds of scholars & guide books
Some editors think that "Cockpit is a problematic term for any modern audience!" Of course not. It's the standard English term for nearly 400 years and has often been used for Belgium with no suggestion whatever of fighting chickens. I added a RS citation from the standard history of Belgium by Cook. Changing the historic phrase used by hundreds of scholars and current guide books to gibberish about fighting chickens is very bad editing. OI can prove it's current: it's used in ''Belgium - Culture Smart! !: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture (2010); Encyclopedic World Atlas (2002) - Page 52; America's War for Humanity (2010); Worldwide Destinations (2012); Understanding the Literature of World War I (2004); DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Europe (2010); Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium,'' (2007) ETC etc. Rjensen (talk) 19:44, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, both "cockpit of Europe" and "battlefield of Europe" are common descriptions of Belgium in a historical context. It's rarely, if ever, called the cockfighting arena though. Fram (talk) 06:45, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Personally I would be in favour of removing the whole sentence actually. I made the changes I did (and I wasn't the first) because:

 * 1) To a modern audience, Cockpit has a very different meaning to that which it had in the 1640s. Since both meanings *technically* work in the context, the problem is compounded. In effect, even if the viewer knows what both meanings are (which is far from given) it is not immediately clear which is being referred to...
 * 2) Also, please let's try to keep the lead free of extraneous detail (dates etc.). It's long and confusing enough as it is.
 * Hopefully that has made my reasoning a bit clearer.---Brigade Piron (talk) 06:49, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The "cockpit" sources are recent ones, not ones from 1640. That the term originated then doesn't mean that it is no longer in use or understandable. You can link cockpit to Cockfight if you want, but you shouldn't change cockpit to "cockfighting arena": Belgium is "never" described as the "cockfighting arena of Europe" in reliable sources, so writing "Belgium since the Thirty Years' War has often been called the “cockfighting arena of Europe."" is simply wrong and should not be restored to the article at all. Fram (talk) 08:07, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: if battlefield of Europe is also a common term, why not use that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:15, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Cockpit absolutely is a problematic term for a modern audience.
 * A bit of context. First, this came up already on Belgium, see also Talk:Belgium/Archive_6, though the discussion here is more in-depth. Second, as Brigade Piron pointed out, the term means something totally different now than it did at the time, and it's extremely likely to be misinterpreted. Consider for example a reputable dictionary like the Cambridge Dictionary, which doesn't mention the cockfighting meaning at all: . I'm not arguing that the term is incorrect, just that it's so massively likely to be misunderstood by an overwhelming majority of the readership, that any harm caused by paraphrasing a famous quote is more than made up for by the clarity gained. Having said all that, I now think it would be most beneficial to remove the phrase entirely.  Oreo Priest  talk 16:02, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * No, it is not correct that "any harm caused by paraphrasing is more than made up by the clarity gained"; your version of the sentence claimed that "cockfighting arena" was often used for Belgium, while in reality it was never used. Giving the reader ambiguous but entirely correct information is hundred times better than giving them wrong information, and the ambiguity can be lessened by wikilinking it to the right meaning. Note that while the rather short Cambridge dictionary you link to may not include the meaning used here, it is included in the Oxford one, it is the first meaning in Merriam-Websters, it is included in Longman's dictionary of Contemporary English, in MacMillan, in Collins... It seems that you have picked the one dictionary that doesn't include it, and missed all the others that do include it... Fram (talk) 20:46, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I understand your concern with respect to the quotation. Removing the quotation marks can address this, or better still, we can remove it entirely.
 * My omission of other dictionaries was not dishonesty; I honestly only checked the dictionary I use regularly.
 * The problem with linking the word is that nobody clicks on a word they already know (or think they know). For ages I thought that 'cockpit of Europe' on the article Belgium was referring to a pilot's area; why would I click through if I already know (or think I do) what cockpit means? I'm sure you're not in the habit either of clicking on every link just to make sure it doesn't mean something unexpected. If 'cockpit' were merely obscure and didn't have any modern meaning, we could just link it and we wouldn't have this problem. But Brigade Piron pointed out correctly that it's very likely to confuse because the modern meaning is so widespread and even works in this context, meaning a link won't really get us anywhere.  Oreo Priest  talk 22:22, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * the Longman dictionary that omits the definition is for beginners in English ("Learners' Dictionary" is part of the tritle). All the standard dictionaries use it. More to the point the major current guidebooks use the "cockpit of Europe" term because it is standard across the English-speaking world in scholarship, in textbooks and in guidebooks for tourists. People come to Wikipedia to learn things and if they learn a standard ordinary definition of an English word, that is progress. No evidence whatsoever has been presented that the word would confuse anyone. Rjensen (talk) 22:34, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * That's not the point. It's a anachronism and even more than that, it's extremely confusing. Cockpit (as in aircraft) makes sense in the context. Basically, you are not getting the message across that you are trying to convey. "Standard across the English speaking world" - this is immaterial! The fact is that it is the standard term to describe a venue used for cockfighting, which the vast majority of users will know virtually nothing about - and thus does not have currency. If they come to this page, they want to learn about Belgian history - not archaic sports after all. I would certainly support Oreo's proposition that "battlefield" is used in the lead, and perhaps "cockpit" could be used later on and properly explained...---Brigade Piron (talk) 06:49, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Again, it's not an anachronism, it is an accepted current meaning of the word, used in recent books on the subject, and used in recent dictionaries as a normal meaning of "cockpit". I haev tried to rewrite the lead to make it a bit clearer. Fram (talk) 08:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keeping in mind that this is about the lead, if we have battlefield already, why not just leave it at this? Fram's edit seems more appropriate for somewhere in the body of the article. But in general mentioning both terms seems to add very little to the article. I am not sure why it is being seen as such a big issue. (I do agree that the word cockpit will be confusing to even many educated readers. That a term is frequently used is not the only important thing for us to consider. Confusion is never good.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:35, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Were we to want to explain it anywhere, "cockpit [cockfighting arena] of Europe" (or something similar) would be appropriate. But if a quote needs square brackets to be annotated, or if it generates serious discussion about how confusing it is, it is probably not appropriate for the lead. On the other hand "battlefield of Europe" alone gets the point across well, with none of the confusion engendered by the word 'cockpit'.  Oreo Priest  talk 15:53, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Historians and travel guides use a famous term (for over 300 years). People need to know that.  Oreo Priest still has not explained where the confusion comes in -- the dictionary that omitted the term was in fact a beginners dictionary that omitted many term used in Wikipedia. I think people come here to broaden their cultural experience. The suggestion about using "cockfighting arena" is a hilarious blooper. Rjensen (talk) 16:39, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess there is a fine line between broadening cultural experiences and creating sentences people will frequently misunderstand. If cockpit were an archaic word your argument would be a bit more convincing, but cockpit today will mean the place where decisions are made and might be read as referring to the EU etc. Anyway it seems unnecessary to use the word if there is an alternative that gets it across easier?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:58, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * "people will frequently misunderstand" -- that the assumption I reject, as have the popular writers for example of guide books. It's an important phrase because it for centuries sharply defined B's image in the world--and indeed fits Napoleon, WWI and WWII quite well. Rjensen (talk) 17:06, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I think no one is debating the idea of mentioning the idea that Belgium is a famous battleground. But the discussion is about word choice? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The current text is ok with me: " Due to its strategic location and the many armies fighting on its soil, Belgium since the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) has often been called the "battlefield of Europe" or the "cockpit of Europe".[1]" Rjensen (talk) 21:46, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Flag of Flanders
The flag of Flanders normally has a red tongue. If the black-tongued flag is to be called "flag of Flanders", a citation would be needed that it has indeed ever been the official Flemish flag. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.110.29.67 (talk) 17:37, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I fixed it.  Oreo Priest  talk 20:12, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

citation request
I rmoved the citation request dated 2010 for 13 the century cities and replaced it with a link to the appropriate Wikipeida Article--DerekvG (talk) 23:09, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

"Massacre of the French in Bruges"
The heading is misleading, it kids the reading into thinking some kind of French population or French traders were present and then massacred. The heading or underheading should instead read something like: garrisoned French troops routed/massacred

Anyway, it is the lefthandsided boxed inset image showing some kind of 'battlescape' and it reads: "Massacre of the French in Bruges" the 'Massacre of the French' is bluelinked to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruges_Matins_%28massacre%29 which is clear about it being garrisoned French troops NOT civilians/traders. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.68.32.34 (talk) 07:41, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you really think it implies that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:30, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

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license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:History of Belgium


text:
Absence of Malice

Absence of Malice is a 1981 American drama neo noir thriller film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Paul Newman, Sally Field, Wilford Brimley, Melinda Dillon and Bob Balaban.

The title refers to one of the defenses against libel defamation. It is used in journalism classes to illustrate the conflict between disclosing damaging personal information and the public's right to know.

Plot
Miami liquor wholesaler Michael Gallagher, the son of a deceased criminal, awakens to find himself a front-page story in the local newspaper. The paper indicates that he is being investigated in the disappearance and presumed murder of a longshoremans' union official, Joey Diaz.

The story was written by Miami Standard newspaper reporter Megan Carter. She acquired it from reading a file left intentionally on the desktop of federal prosecutor Elliot Rosen, who is doing a bogus investigation. He leaked it in order to squeeze Gallagher for information.

Gallagher comes to the newspaper's office trying to discover Carter's basis for the story, but the reporter does not reveal her source. Gallagher's business is shut down by union officials, who are suspicious of him since he has been implicated in Diaz's murder. Gallagher's uncle, local crime boss Malderone, has him followed in case he talks to the government.

Teresa Perrone, a friend of Gallagher, tells Carter that Gallagher could not have killed Diaz because he took her out of town to get an abortion that weekend. A devout Catholic, she does not want Carter to reveal the abortion, but she includes it in the story anyway.

The paper's editor tells Carter that Perrone has died by suicide. Carter goes to Gallagher to apologize, but he physically assaults her. She attempts to make it up to him by revealing Rosen's role in the investigation.

Gallagher hatches a plan for revenge. He arranges a secret meeting with District Attorney Quinn, offering to use his organized-crime contacts to give Quinn information on Diaz's murder in exchange for the D.A. calling off the investigation and issuing a statement clearing him. He also makes anonymous contributions to one of Quinn's political action committee backers and then he and Carter begin a love affair.

Rosen is mystified by Quinn's exoneration of Gallagher, so he places phone taps on both and surveils their movements. He and federal agent Bob Waddell obtain evidence of Gallagher's donations to Quinn's political committee. They also find out about Gallagher and Carter's relationship. Waddell, as a friend, warns Carter about the investigation, but she breaks the story that the federal strike force is investigating Gallagher's attempt to bribe the D.A.

The story makes the front page again and causes an uproar over the investigation of the district attorney. Assistant US Attorney General Wells calls the principals together and offers them a choice between going before a grand jury or informally making their case to him. Rosen questions Gallagher but it becomes apparent that he has no case, and Carter reveals that Rosen left Gallagher's file open on his desk for her to read.

Wells suggests that Quinn resign since Gallagher's legal donations to Quinn’s political committee cast suspicions on his motives in issuing his statement clearing Gallagher. Wells also suspects that Gallagher set everything up but cannot prove it, so he will not investigate further. Finally, he fires Rosen for malfeasance. The newspaper prints a story written by a different reporter revealing details of the incidents.

The final scene shows Carter and Gallagher having a cordial conversation on the wharf where Gallagher's boat is docked before he sails away and leaves the city.

Production
The movie was written by Kurt Luedtke, a former newspaper editor, and David Rayfiel (uncredited). Newman said that the film was a "direct attack on the New York Post," which had earlier published a caption for a photo of Newman that he said was inaccurate. Because of the dispute, the Post banned Newman from its pages, even removing his name from movies in the TV listings.

Critical response
Absence of Malice received mostly positive reviews. Newman and Dillon's performances were praised, as was Brimley's cameo. Many reviewers compared the film to the 1976 Oscar–winner All the President's Men. In his review, Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote "Absence of Malice does not invalidate All the President's Men. But with entertainment values – and a moral sense – every bit as high as that film's, it observes that there is an underside to journalistic gallantry." Similarly, Variety called it "a splendidly disturbing look at the power of sloppy reporting to inflict harm on the innocent."

The Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert wrote that some may take the approach "that no respectable journalist would ever do the things that Sally Field does about, to, and with Paul Newman in this movie. She is a disgrace to her profession." Instead he preferred a "romantic" approach, writing that he "liked this movie despite its factual and ethical problems" and was not "even so sure they matter so much to most viewers". Janet Maslin of The New York Times found the movie "lacking in momentum", but praised its "quiet gravity". Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader disliked Absence of Malice, writing that "the picture has a smug, demoralizing sense of pervasive corruption". Although Pauline Kael described the film as only "moderately entertaining", she offered higher praise for Newman's "sly, compact performance" and particularly for "the marvelously inventive acting of Melinda Dillon".

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 81% based on reviews from 27 critics, with an average score of 6.8/10.

Academic use
Absence of Malice has been used in journalism and public administration courses to illustrate professional errors such as writing a story without seeking confirmation and having a romantic relationship with a source.

Box office
The film was a box office success. Film Comment said "It was the first picture in ages that had Newman playing opposite a strong female co-star in a romantic vein and Columbia astutely capitalized on public desire to see Newman in such a role again."

title: Absence of Malice