Replication Data for: Making Sense of Violence in Semi-Technologized Conventional Civil War: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Japan

While existing studies highlight features of violence in conventional civil wars, they overlook how war technology is linked to the tactics of armed forces. To shed light on the understudied phenomenon of semi- technologized regular forces in a civil war, this article explores why and how violence is executed by such forces. To do so, we examine patterns of violence in the Boshin War that took place in Japan between 1868 and 1869. Our analyses of novel geocoded event data demonstrate that violent incidents occurred in strategically important locations but in ways that differed from conventional and guerrilla wars. Armed forces were unable to operate as technologically sophisticated forces do in modern conventional civil war due to limited logistics capabilities. Avoiding encounters in less accessible areas, the forces tended to fight in and contest areas that allowed them to establish relationships with local civilians. Additionally, violence against civilians was more likely to occur on the front lines where armed forces and civilians interacted because the former relied on the latter to convey provisions, arms, and ammunition. Unlike in conventional civil wars, military battles and one- sided violence were not unrelated to each other. With these findings, we address temporal, regional, and typological biases in civil war studies.