Indemnity
The Oxford Universal Dictionary (3rd edition, 1955) defines indemnity as "security or protection against contingent hurt, damage, or loss; safety." It adds, as a second definition, "a legal exemption from the penalties or liabilities incurred by any course of action." It can also be seen as compensation for loss, a sum paid by way of compensation. Similarly, the verb form "indemnify" means to keep free from, secure against (any hurt, harm, or loss); or to compensate for loss suffered, expenses incurred. For example, after wars, the losers have sometimes been required to pay indemnities. An insurance payout is often called an indemnity, or it can be insurance to avoid paying expenses in case of a lawsuit.
In pre-biblical times, most societies allowed for non-equal indemnity; a person who was only injured was often allowed to kill the person responsible in revenge. This was true of many near-eastern and middle-eastern societies. In some cultures, the standard has been like-for-like recompense, as in "an eye for an eye".
An innovation occurred with the development of the Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament"), which put limits on indemnities; in the Biblical view, a maximum limit was applied with the phrase "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." In later centuries this was anachronistically read by non-Jews as a promotion of equal physical indemnity, while many Jews and Bible scholars hold that in its original context its function was to limit such actions.
Indemnification is a promise, usually as a contract provision, protecting one party from financial loss. This is sometimes stated as a requirement that one party "hold harmless" the other. Indemnification is a type of insurance, which protects one party at the expense of the other. Indemnification can either by direct payment or reimbursement for the loss. Indemnification clauses cannot usually be enforced for intentional tortious conduct of the protected party.
Corporate officers, board members and public officials often require an indemnity clause in their contracts before they perform any work.
In addition, indemnification provisions are common in intellectual property licenses in which the licensor does not want to be liable for misdeeds of the licensee. A typical license would protect the licensor against product liability and patent infringement.
Comment: "hold harmless" does not imply indemnification. The first says I won't make a claim against you; the second says I will pay off claims against you and/or your costs, etc.
Freeing of slaves and servants
Slaveowners are said to suffer a loss whenever their slaves or servants are granted their freedom. A tacit belief exists that harm is caused to slaveowners whenever slaves or servants are released. Slaveowners may be paid to cover their losses.
When the slaves of Zanzibar were freed in 1897, it was by compensation since the prevailing opinion was that the slaveowners suffered the loss of an asset whenever a slave was freed.
In the 1860s in the United States, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had requested many millions of dollars from Congress with which to pay slaveowners "for the loss of their property." On July 9th, 1868, part #4 of the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment dismissed all of the claims that slaveowners had been injured by the freeing of the slaves.
In 1807-08, in Prussia, statesman Baron Heinrich vom Stein introduced a series of reforms, the principal of which was the abolition of serfdom with indemnification to territorial lords.
Haiti was required to pay an indemnity of 150,000,000 francs to France in order to atone for the loss suffered by the French slaveowners.
Costs of war
The nation that wins a war may insist on being paid compensations for the costs of the war, even after having been the creator of the war.
- Following the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, the Treaty of Shimonoseki required that China pay Japan the sum of 200,000,000 taels (or liangs).
- China incurred an indemnity which resulted from massacres of foreigners during the Boxer Rebellion. The payment of 450,000,000 Haikwan taels, or $330,000,000 became necessary.
Indemnity in Unification Church belief
In the Unification Church, indemnity is a theological term involved in the absolution of sin. Usually, a sinner may pay 'lesser indemnity' by performing an act of contrition. A secular counterpart to lesser indemnity would be if a child broke a neighbor's window, and the neighbor accepted the child's apology as settling the matter.
The Unification Church believes that on a few occasions God required 'greater indemnity', as when he required the Israelites to wander 40 years in the desert after 10 of the 12 spies sent to Canaan reported faithlessly, "a year for every day". "After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise," Numbers 13:34.
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