Colonial warfare has been a frequent and bloody feature of international relations, yet most studies of wartime civilian victimization focus on either interstate or civil wars. In this article I argue that ignoring colonial violence has distorted our understanding of state-directed violence against civilians in wartime. I introduce a new theory of colonial violence, which focuses on the distinctive strategic, normative, and institutional incentives that colonial powers have to harm civilians. To assess this theory, I introduce and analyze a new data set of 193 cases of colonial war from 1816 to 2003. Using a variety of measures of civilian harm, I find that colonial wars are especially brutal. Three-quarters of states in colonial wars targeted civilians, for example, compared to less than a third of states in interstate wars. But some colonial wars are harder on civilians than others. Colonial powers are more likely to harm civilians when their indigenous adversaries employ guerrilla tactics, when their indigenous adversaries come from a different perceived racial background, and when the colonial state relies on settlers or indigenous intermediaries to help compensate for its relative weakness. By ignoring colonial violence in world politics, we misunderstand the scale and scope of state-directed violence against civilians and miss an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the causes of this brutality.

殖民战争一直是国际关系中频繁而血腥的特征，但大多数关于战时平民受害情况的研究都集中在国家间战争或内战上。在本文中，我认为忽视殖民暴力扭曲了我们对战时国家针对平民的暴力的理解。我介绍了一种新的殖民暴力理论，该理论侧重于殖民列强伤害平民的独特战略、规范和制度激励措施。为了评估这一理论，我引入并分析了从 1816 年到 2003 年的 193 个殖民战争案例的新数据集。使用各种对平民伤害的衡量标准，我发现殖民战争尤其残酷。例如，在殖民战争中，四分之三的国家以平民为目标，而在州际战争中，只有不到三分之一的国家以平民为目标。但有些殖民战争对平民来说比其他战争更艰难。当殖民国家的土著对手采用游击战术时，当他们的土著对手来自不同的种族背景时，以及当殖民国家依靠定居者或土著中间人来帮助弥补其相对弱点时，殖民国家更有可能伤害平民。通过忽视世界政治中的殖民暴力，我们误解了国家针对平民的暴力的规模和范围，并错过了加深我们对这种暴行根源的理解的机会。