There used to be accepted rituals for surrendering, understood by everyone. Today, it is not always clear how and when a conflict ends.
References
1.
SchivelbuschWolfgang. The Culture of Defeat. Translated by ChaseJefferson (Henry Holt, 2003). Schivelbusch analyzes the cultural aftermath of defeat in the American South after the Civil War, in France after the Franco-Prussian War, and in Germany after World War I.
2.
Wagner-PacificiRobin. The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict's End (University of Chicago Press, 2005). This new book interprets significant military surrenders in the history of warfare — from the 30 Years War to the U.S. Civil War, to World War II — as performances of submission, demonstrations of power, and representations of shifting, unstable worlds.
3.
Wagner-PacificiRobinSchwartzBarry. “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past,”American Journal of Sociology97 (1991):376–420. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is viewed as a cultural object and set of discourses, a commemorative site of ambivalence where opposing constituencies with differing visions of the Vietnam conflict articulated their memories.
