Why are Lilliput and Blefuscu at war in Gulliver’s Travels?

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Illustration of Lemuel Gulliver lying on the ground, tied down by tiny Lilliputians, with crowds and small buildings in the background, from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. — Gulliver’s Travels Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput, illustration from an edition of Jonathan Swift's *Gulliver's Travels*.

In Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver’s Travels, the empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu are engaged in a long-standing war over a trivial matter: the proper way to crack a boiled egg.1

This conflict stems from a disagreement over whether an egg should be broken at the big end or the little end. The Lilliputians treat this dispute as a matter of serious religious doctrine, satirizing the often absurd and destructive nature of conflicts between different religions and political factions, such as the Whigs and Tories in England.1