Looting is the act of stealing, or the taking of goods by force, typically in the midst of a military, political, or other social crisis, such as war, natural disasters (where law and civil enforcement are temporarily ineffective), or rioting. The proceeds of all these activities can be described as booty, loot, plunder, spoils, or pillage. Throughout history, the practice of war looting was often considered a customary right of victorious armies until the development of modern international humanitarian law.Keegan, John. A History of Warfare. Vintage, 1994, p. 327.
Looting by a victorious army during war has been a common practice throughout recorded history. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and particularly after World War II, norms against wartime plunder became widely accepted. In modern armed conflicts, looting is prohibited by international law, and constitutes a war crime.Rule 52. Pillage is prohibited., Customary IHL Database, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)/Cambridge University Press.Hague Convention on the Law and Customs of War on Land (Hague II), article 28. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 explicitly prohibited pillage and looting, codifying earlier efforts to restrain the practice in European warfare.Hague Convention IV (1907), Article 47.
After disasters During a disaster, police and military forces are sometimes unable to prevent looting when they are overwhelmed by humanitarian or combat concerns, or they cannot be summoned because of damaged communications infrastructure. Especially during natural disasters, many civilians may find themselves forced to take what does not belong to them in order to survive. How to respond to that and where the line between unnecessary "looting" and necessary "scavenging" lies are often dilemmas for governments. In other cases, looting may be tolerated or even encouraged by governments for political or other reasons, including religious, social or economic ones.
Following major disasters, reports of widespread looting are often amplified by media coverage, despite disaster research showing that post-disaster looting behavior is cooperative rather than criminal. Scholars in disaster sociology have argued that narratives of lawlessness exaggerate the scale of looting and can reinforce stereotypes about affected communities. Research conducted after Hurricane Katrina, for example, found that many widely circulated reports of violent crime and mass lootings were inaccurate or overstated as many incidents involved communities attempting to obtain essential supplies like food or water. Researchers have also distinguished between opportunistic theft and survival-driven behavior in situations where access to resources and emergency assistance has broken down.
Disaster researchers have also observed that perceptions of looting can influence emergency response policies and public behavior during crises. Fears of widespread lawlessness have, in come cases, led authorities to prioritize security and policing over humanitarian assistance. Studies following Hurricane Katrina found that exaggerated reports of violence and looting contributed to delays in aid and reinforced public misconceptions about how people were behaving during disasters. Researchers generally argue that solidarity and cooperation are far more common responses than panic or criminal activity, a contrast to what is often portrayed in news and media outlets.
Some disaster researchers have argued that reports of looting following disasters can reflect broader social racial tensions instead of actual patterns of criminal behavior. Analyses of media coverage after Hurricane Katrina found that similar actions were described differently depending on the individuals involved. For example, Black residents were more frequently portrayed as "looters" while white residents were described as "finding" or "recovering" supplies. Scholars and sociologists have cited these differences as evidence that disaster narratives can reinforce existing social inequalities and shape public perceptions of affected communities. These portrayals may influence political responses and the allocation of emergency resources during disaster recovery.
History
In armed conflict
Looting by a victorious army during war has been a common practice throughout recorded history. Foot soldiers viewed plunder as a way to supplement an often-meagre incomeHsi-sheng Chi (1976), Warlord Politics in China, 1916–1928, Stanford University Press, , str. 93 and transferred wealth became part of the celebration of victory. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and particularly after World War II, norms against wartime plunder became widely accepted.
In the upper ranks, the proud exhibition of the loot plundered formed an integral part of the typical Roman triumph, and Genghis Khan was not unusual in proclaiming that the greatest happiness was "to vanquish your enemies ... to rob them of their wealth".Henry Hoyle Howorth (2008). History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century. Part 1: The Mongols Proper and the Kalmyks. Cosimo.
The Greek historian Polybius recounts that in the Roman era there existed a particular regulation concerning war booty after having conquered a city. Depending on the size of the city, the Romans assigned to the collection of booty, in some cases some men taken from each maniple, while at other times entire maniples. They never, however, employed for this operation more than half of their troops. The others were arranged to control the key points of the city, both internally and externally, always ready to intervene at any moment.
It should be added that in the republican period, since consular armies were normally composed of two legions and two alae of allied troops, all those who were assigned to this action of plundering normally brought the share of booty they had taken to their own legion.
The tribunes, once the entire booty had been sold, distributed the profit in equal parts to everyone, including those who had remained at their post performing a covering function, in addition to those placed to guard the camps, the sick, and also those who had been sent somewhere to perform some special duty but belonging to that particular consular army. All this because no one may appropriate part of the booty without having been authorized by his tribune. All, in fact, must remain faithful to the oath taken at the moment of entering the army, when the recruits are assembled for the first time in the camp, in preparation for their first military campaigns.
It is no coincidence that no one harbored distrust toward their comrades-in-arms; on the contrary everyone knew, both those who remained on cover duty and those who went to plunder the city, that each would be given his share, without anyone ever considering it appropriate to abandon his post in order to recover his portion of the booty, something that would have caused irreparable damage in an army.
It is said that Julius Caesar, not only did not remove from his soldiers during the Gallic Wars the possibility of taking booty, but to the poor and simple legionary, who had to keep clearly in mind the final objective of the campaign and whose actions were not to condition the operational plans of the commander, in 51–50 BC he doubled the pay from 5 to 10 asses per day (equal to 225 denarii annually), so much so that the pay of the legionary remained unchanged until the period of the emperor Domitian (81–96).Alessandro Milan, Le forze armate nella storia di Roma Antica, Rome 1993, p. 95.
It is said that the conquest of Dacia brought to the emperor Trajan an enormous booty, estimated at five million Roman pounds of gold (equal to 163.6 t) and double the amount of silver,Cassius Dio, LXVIII, 14, 4–5.Filippo Coarelli, La colonna Traiana, Rome, 1999, tables 164–165 (CI–CII/CXXXVII–CXL), pp. 208–209. and an 'extraordinary' quantity of other loot, in addition to half a million prisoners of war with their weapons. It was the treasure of Decebalus, which the king himself is said to have hidden in the bed of a small river (the Sargetia) near his capital, Sarmizegetusa Regia.Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, VIII, 4, 2. The same emperor was granted a grand triumph, with gladiatorial spectacles, chariot races in the Circus Maximus, a new forum and the construction of the famous column, thirty meters high, on whose spiral frieze, two hundred meters long, the military deeds of Trajan and his generals were carved. A work of rare beauty and originality where, under the guidance of the architect Apollodorus of Damascus, until the day of the inauguration (which took place on May 12 113), numerous sculptors worked on 155 scenes and 2500 figures.Julian Bennett, Trajan, Optimus Princeps, Bloomington, 2001, p. 90. Some have thought that these figures are the result of a transcription error and should be divided by 10, but the adjusted figures remain significant. In fact Trajan seems to have received from this immense booty about 2.7 billion sesterces, a figure clearly higher than the entire sum spent by Augustus and documented in his Res gestae divi Augusti. In addition to this, the conquest contributed to a permanent increase in revenues in the state treasury thanks to the mines of western Dacia which were reopened under the supervision of imperial officials.Grigore Arbore Popescu, Le strade di Traiano, in Traiano ai confini dell'Impero, edited by Grigore Arbore Popescu, Milan, 1998, p. 190.
Looting was sometimes prohibited due to religious concerns. For example, King Clovis I of the Franks, forbade his soldiers to loot when they campaigned near St Martin's shrine in Tours, for fear of offending the saint.Gregory of Tours. A History of the Franks. Pantianos classics, 1916 In warfare in ancient times, the spoils of war included the defeated populations, which were often enslaved. Women and children might become absorbed into the victorious country's population, as concubines, eunuchs and slaves.John K. Thorton (1996). "African Background in American Colonization". In Stanley L. Engerman, Robert E. Gallman (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Cambridge University Press, 1996, , p. 87. "African states waged war to acquire slaves ... raids that appear to have been more concerned with obtaining loot (including slaves) than other objectives."John Bagot Glubb, The Empire of the Arabs, Hodder and Stoughton, 1963, p. 283. "... thousand Christian captives formed part of the loot and were subsequently sold as slaves in the markets of Syria". In other pre-modern societies, objects made of precious metals were the preferred target of war looting, largely because of their ease of portability. In many cases, looting offered an opportunity to obtain treasures and works of art that otherwise would not have been obtainable. Beginning in the early modern period and reaching its peak in the New Imperialism era, European colonial powers frequently looted areas they captured during military campaigns against non-European states. In the 1930s, and even more so during the Second World War, Nazi Germany engaged in large-scale and organized looting of art and property, particularly in Nazi-occupied Poland.J. R. Kudelski (2004), , Warsaw . The Soviet Union did likewise. On the smaller level, looting was done by other Allied forces too.