"Eating Prisoners of War? Ten Thousand Years of ... " Topic

…"I Surrender'

"A.G. writes ‘I have often wondered what happened to the wounded left behind during the Napoleonic wars and earlier. Did the locals come along and kill them for their personal belongings, were they cared for and held for ransom, what? I am speaking here of the common soldiers and not their leaders.' Beach should start by saying that, while no expert, he senses a rich and interesting study here: has anyone tried to reduce this to a book length work: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

First, let's establish a range of possibilities if you catch an enemy combatant. To Beach's mind there are essentially five. (i) You can kill him. (ii) You can keep him as a slave. (iii) You can ransom him. (iv) You can keep him captive until the end of hostilities. (v) You can let him go. Of course, there will be lots of in between categories. (You can avoid killing your prisoner until he is fattened, then you can publicly eat him with the elders of the tribe… some Meso-American cultures.) But these five surely cover the range of possibilities?

So how do these break down historically speaking? Beach suspects the key fact in early human history is that hunter gatherer societies – with their endearing head hunting ways – have little use for slaves: unless we are talking of the let's-fatten-them-up-before-we eat-them-kind. This corresponds to certain archaeological digs that have happened on early battle scenes where no quarter was given: even to enemy civilians (in as much as that concept existed before there was a civis…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Well, if people are what they eat, the French must be in some demand. :)

Dan

EEw! Still, this would lend some zest to prisoner taking in my minis games. Perhaps I should begin mandating that ALL captives be placed in a large stew pot to the rear of the battle line. At the end of the day, the winners eat the losers.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

This was common practice amongst the tribal allies of the Belgians in the Congo.

I think one of the kings of Mali had the habit of eating captives on the return trips after his seasonal raids. I can't recall his name, but neighboring tribes were absolutely terrified of him.

Dan