The principle of reparations is as old as warfare and humankind and is well established in international law. The principle requires the party who has caused injuries to another to redress the damage caused either through monetary means, rehabilitation or material labour. The principle has been generally enforced by the victor on the vanquished and has become the core of the peace settlement. Its punitive streak has been evident quite early, in 202bc, when Rome exacted reparations from a defeated Carthage, an African city state, at the end of the second Punic war. It was at Versailles (1919), however, that a defeated Germany was constrained to yield to exacting demands, the trenchant and prescient criticisms of which would launch J M Keynes into international acclaim. Seeming to be magnanimous, the succeeding generation would believe that it was rather generous, again with a defeated Germany, at the peace constructed at Yalta, Potsdam and Paris (1946).
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