page_title: White flag
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: White flag / The white flag / Origin
caption_attribution_description: English: 27. Looking for wounded under protection of a white flag 1916
context_page_description: White flags have had different meanings throughout history and depending on the locale.
context_section_description: The first mention of the usage of white flags to surrender is made during the Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25–220). In the Roman Empire, the historian Cornelius Tacitus mentions a white flag of surrender in AD 109. Before that time, Roman armies would surrender by holding their shields above their heads.  The white flag was widely used in the Middle Ages in Western Europe to indicate an intent to surrender.  The color white was used generally to indicate a person was exempt from combat; heralds bore white wands, prisoners or hostages captured in battle would attach a piece of white paper to their hat or helmet, and garrisons that had surrendered and been promised safe passage would carry white batons.
  Its use may have expanded across continents, e.g. Portuguese chronicler Gaspar Correia (writing in the 1550s), claims that in 1502, an Indian prince, the Zamorin of Calicut, dispatched negotiators bearing a "white cloth tied to a stick", "as a sign of peace", to his enemy Vasco da Gama. In 1625, Hugo Grotius in De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace), one of the foundational texts in international law, recognized the white flag as a "sign, to which use has given a signification"; it was "a tacit sign of demanding a parley, and shall be as obligatory, as if expressed by words".
caption: Australian soldier looking for wounded under protection of a white flag, Western Front (World War I)
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