Prisoners of War
A Brief History of the Human Currencies in Conflict
Hello Tom Clancy Fans,
I’m attempting to provide some more value for my paid subscribers, so you can expect a few of these long form essays that have never found a full home to show up in your inbox from time to time; they’re all Tom Clancy adjacent, and I thought it might be a little bonus for summer reading. Hope you’re all well, appreciate you all reading, and I’ll have some exciting new stuff coming your way this summer. Thanks for your continued patronage of the USS Tom Clancy!
Best,
Matt Farwell
A Brief History of Prisoners of War
The idea of swapping prisoner isn’t anything new—it is a consistent thread in the history of warfare and the Bowe Bergdahl/Taliban 5 swap was just the latest knot. In Homer’s “Iliad,” the Trojan War began with Paris, a Trojan prince, kidnapping the sister in law of the Spartan king Agamemnon, sparking a 10 year Aegean War. While Conan is a movie and the Iliad is a poem—neither are history, but both reflect differences the ancient and classical views on prisoners. Greeks’ cultural views on prisoners: there were underlying social expectations that prisoners would be treated well and ransomed off after the conflict ended.
With the decline of Rome and rise of European feudal states in the Middle Ages, war became an occupation of the idle rich. The non-heir sons of landowning nobility were sent to fight external enemies lest they become enemies to the internal order. This meant that when captured there was a possibility for a handsome profit in the ransom for their safe return. If there was no possibility for profit, execution was always an alternative for their captors.
For over two thousand years, the exchange of prisoners followed similar lines—eventually leading to system of prisoner exchange become codified as bilateral negotiations and ‘cartels’ that continued through the 17th and 18th Centuries—including during the American Revolutionary War and the subsequent War of 1812. “Prisoner exchange was a rational solution, since soldiers held captive were of no use to either side.” (Scheipers)
Whether prisoners captured in war are military or civilian, active participants in the conflict or innocent bystanders swept up in circumstances beyond their control makes little difference in how they are used: as pawns to further the goals of those who hold them.
Once captured they fulfill the same role: hostages to the conflict. Hostages have always been currency in war. The importance of hostages to the way wars unfold and end is often glossed over. As a volume edited by University of St. Andrews scholar Sibylle Scheipers notes, the problem hostage present all sides in a conflict “frequently forms the focal point of much broader conflicts at the interface of politics, law, strategy.” (Prisoners in War, Oxford, pg 3).
The value of hostages is determined by many factors. There is the ransom potential—both in monetary value and in exchange for other prisoners or concessions—that must be considered. Their ability to deter attacks—think, human shields—their propaganda value, the information they have, the morale boost they provide to the side capturing prisoners, these all play a role.
Whatever goal the hostages are used to advance doesn't change the underlying fact that war takes prisoners. The parlay for those prisoners ends wars. It’s been that way since war was invented.
It was during the War of 1812 the poem which would eventually became the American National Anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner,” was written. What is often forgotten is that Francis Scott Key, the thirty five year old American who wrote the poem, was himself a prisoner at the time.
On September 5, 1814 a federal agent named John Skinner and Francis Scott Key, a Georgetown lawyer, boarded the HMS Tonnant—the flagship of the British fleet was docked at in the Potomac— Skinner’s portfolio as a federal agent was prisoners. He and Key were there, with the approval of President James Madison, to negotiate the release of Maryland Doctor named William Beanes. The Britis arrested Beanes a week before when he led a posse and captured elements of the British Army who were running wild in his hometown of Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
In the course of negotiations, Skinner, Key and Beanes ate with the British Major General Robert Ross, eventually persuading him to release Dr. Beanes. Yet during the dinner Ross divulged his strategy for attacking Baltimore and realized that he couldn’t release the three Americans: because they knew his plan.(Star Spangled Banner, Ferris) They were transferred, under guard, to another British ship until the battle was over, but not before Key composed the lines that would eventually become the National Anthem in 1931:
“And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!”
(Ferris, Marc: Star Spangled Banner JHU Press 2014) Star Spangled Banner