Carthaginian peace

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Carthaginian Peace refers to a peace brought about through the total destruction of the enemy.

[edit] Origin

The term refers to the outcome of a series of wars between Rome and the Phoenician city of Carthage, known as the Punic Wars. The two empires fought three separate wars against each other, beginning in 264 BC and ending in 146 BC.

At the end of the Third Punic War, the Romans laid siege to Carthage. When they took the city, they killed most of the inhabitants, sold the rest into slavery, and destroyed the entire city. Some accounts also have it that they sowed the ground with salt so that nothing could ever grow there again, though this is probably only a legend. As Tacitus said in a different context, "they make a wasteland and call it peace."

By extension, the term "Carthaginian Peace" can refer to any brutal peace treaty demanding total subjugation of the defeated side.

[edit] Modern Use

Modern use of the term is often extended to any peace settlement in which the peace terms are overly harsh and designed to perpetuate the inferiority of the loser. Thus many (the economist John Maynard Keynes among them) deemed the Treaty of Versailles to be a "Carthaginian Peace." The Morgenthau Plan, which was dropped in favour of the Marshall Plan, might be described as a Carthaginian Peace, as it advocated the 'pastoralization' (de-industrialization) of Germany following World War II.