BELLIGERENT (Lat. belligerare, to wage war, from beihm, war + gerere, to carry). In international law, a government actually at war. It is not necessary that a political com munity shall be independent in order to have the status of a belligerent, but it must be main taining itself by regular hostilities or otherwise under a de facto government. When a state of war exists between sovereign powers. the rights and duties of the several parties. both as be tween themselves and as to neutral powers. are in general dearly defined. Modern usage re quires that the existence of a state of war shall be made known to neutral powers by public proclamation. (See DECLARATION OF WAR.) As between the belligerent powers, the rules of mod ern warfare require that the lives and property of non-eombatants shall be respected, forbid un due cruelty and the use of barbarous weapons and methods of warfare, and dictate that no more damage shall he inflicted than is necessary to obtain victory. Where an enemy's 'territory is occupied, the hostile authority may require the submission of the inhabitants, and may lawfully exercise over them the police and tax ing powers of the government. As regards neu trals, the tendency of modern international law is to relieve them, their ships, their goods, and their trade, as far as possible, from the dangers and inconveniences of the war. and, on the other hand, to hold them strictly to a policy of com plete abstention from the concerns of the war ring States. See ALARANIA BLOCKADE; ()ENEVA CONVENTION ; HAGUE PEACE CONFER ENCE ; INTERNATIONAL LAW ; NEUTRALITY; WAR.
A more difficult question is presented when both parties to the struggle are nut sovereign political communities, but one a colony in rebel lion against the parent State, or a revolutionary section or party waging war against the general i;overnment. Unless the conditions are such as to bring about the international recognition of the rebellious party as a belligerent, it has no standing in international law, and its acts of war are technically acts of piracy. It has no belligerent rights. and is not entitled to have its blockades respected or its vessels received in foreign ports. It is the recognition of an insur
gent government as a belligerent by neutral pow ers which brings it within the protection of the laws of war. But this act. which involves no decision of the questions at issue between the contending parties, hut only an racial recogni tion of the fact that a state of war exists. must be carefully distinguished from recognition of the independence of the insurgent government. This amounts to a declaration that the parent State is unable to coerce the rebellious subject, and carries with it a recognition of the latter as a sovereign power.
For the neutral State. the question of the rec ognition of belligerency is one of expediency.
Such recognition cannot be elaimed by an insur gent as a matter of right. It may be conceded on purely selfish grounds. if the trade or other interests of the neutral call for such action; or it may be granted in response to the demands of humanity or of general international policy. But in order to be justifiable in international law, the recognition must rest upon certain ac complished facts—viz. the existence, in the re bellious community, of a stable, well-o•ganized civil government, exercising de facto authority in a definite territory, and the existence of actual and serious hostilities, carried on by such con stituted authority for a considerable period of time, though these need not be regular in char acter nor general in extent. lf, in addition to all this, the insurrection is of a formidable char acter, if the hostilities are on a large scale, and, especially, if they are of such a nature as to threaten the interests of neutral States, the ease for recognition of belligerency may become so strong as to be conclusive. When an interne cine struggle presents the aspect of a war be tween federated States—as in the American Civil War, and the conflict between Prussia and the majority of the German Confederation in 1866— belligerent rights are usually accorded to both the contending parties impartially. The recog nition of the Southern Confederacy by Great. Britain and France in 1861, though strenuously opposed by the Government of the United States, was undoubtedly proper and necessary.