<P> The white flag is an internationally recognized protective sign of truce or ceasefire, and request for negotiation . It is also used to symbolize surrender, since it is often the weaker party which requests negotiation . A white flag signifies to all that an approaching negotiator is unarmed, with an intent to surrender or a desire to communicate . Persons carrying or waving a white flag are not to be fired upon, nor are they allowed to open fire . The use of the flag to request parley is included in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 . </P> <P> The improper use of the flag is forbidden by the rules of war and constitutes a war crime of perfidy . There have been numerous reported cases of such behavior in conflicts, such as combatants using white flags as a ruse to approach and attack enemy combatants, or killings of combatants attempting to surrender by carrying white flags . </P> <P> The first mention of the usage of white flags to surrender is made during the Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25--220). In the Roman Empire, the historian Cornelius Tacitus mentions a white flag of surrender in AD 109 . Before that time, Roman armies would surrender by holding their shields above their heads . The white flag was widely used in the Middle Ages in Western Europe to indicate an intent to surrender . The color white was used generally to indicate a person was exempt from combat; heralds bore white wands, prisoners or hostages captured in battle would attach a piece of white paper to their hat or helmet, and garrisons that had surrendered and been promised safe passage would carry white batons . </P> <P> Its use may have expanded across continents, e.g. Portuguese chronicler Gaspar Correia (writing in the 1550s), claims that in 1502, an Indian prince, the Zamorin of Calicut, dispatched negotiators bearing a "white cloth tied to a stick", "as a sign of peace", to his enemy Vasco da Gama . In 1625, Hugo Grotius in De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace), one of the foundational texts in international law, recognized the white flag as a "sign, to which use has given a signification"; it was "a tacit sign of demanding a parley, and shall be as obligatory, as if expressed by words". </P>

Where did the white flag of surrender come from
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