Recent scholarship has found identity variables to be insignificant predictors of civilian targeting in war. Drawing on the European origins of the law of war, this article argues that previous scholarship has neglected the one specification of 'identity' that is most theoretically justified for understanding civilian targeting: whether a European state is fighting a non-European state. This article replicates and extends three recent statistical analyses -Downes; Valentino, Huth and Croco; and Morrow -of civilian targeting by including a variable capturing whether a European state fought a non-European state. The study finds that civilian targeting, and non compliance with the law of war more generally, is significantly more likely in European v. non-European dyads than in other types of dyads.The US War of Independence was a war of many sides. The colonialists fought the British, France fought alongside the rebels, and both sides fought (and allied with) Native Americans. Among the many striking features of this war was its internal variation in how the enemy's combatants and civilians were treated. At a time when the law of war governing the ways in which belligerents ought to comport themselves during combat was being developed in treatises such as Grotius' The Laws of War and Peace and Vattel's The Law of Nations, both the British and the colonists evinced dramatically different treatment of their European versus Native American foes. A shared culture and history led to gentle treatment between the British and colonialists -prisoners were treated kindly, and civilians spared many indignities. This civility in warfare contrasted greatly with both sides' treatment of Native Americans, who were routinely massacred without warning and even, at times, despite promises of safety. According to Iroquois commenting on the differential treatment of Iroquois and British soldiers taken captive, 'the Rebels don't put them to death; but we have no mercy to expect, if taken, as they will put us to death immediately, and will not even spare our Women and Children '. 1 This disparity in how belligerents of European descent treated each other compared to how they treated Native Americans is consistent with many arguments about the role of culture in shaping violence. Joseph Conrad's ivory trader Kurtz famously called on European readers to 'Exterminate all the Brutes!' 2 And studies of cases such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide have found that racial categories are frequently highly salient in identifying 'legitimate' targets. 3 Yet this -often qualitative and historical -evidence of the role of culture in law of war compliance stands in stark contrast to much of the recent political science work on this topic, which has taken two disparate directions. One strand of research finds strategic ). For valuable comments and suggestions, we thank Michael Doyle, Alex Downes, Matt Evangelista,

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