Total war is a conflict of unlimite scope in which a belligerent engages in a total mobilization of all available resources at their disposal, whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological, or otherwise, in order to entirely destroy or render beyond use their rivalry's capacity to continue to resist. The practice of total war has been in use for centuries, but it was only in the middle to late 19th century that total war was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, there is less differentiation between combatants and non-combatants than in previous conflicts, as nearly every person from a particular country, civilians and soldiers alike, can be considered to be part of their belligerent's war effort, whether they fire a gun, or make the bullets to be fired.