Introducing the Euro-Invasion Conflict Database 1513–1901

Abstract

We introduce a comprehensive new dataset of conflicts, in chronological order, between the Indigenous Peoples of North America and Europeans seeking to colonize what is now the Continental United States. These data, covering 1,375 conflicts, were originally compiled as a book in 2007 by Michael L. Nunnally, a self-taught historian with a talent for careful data collection and analysis. A research team within the Rights Lab (University of Nottingham, U.K.), drew upon Nunnally’s American Indian Wars to code each recorded conflict (battle, skirmish, raid, massacre, etc.) along with other relevant information. The conflicts were then further researched by the Rights Lab team to add any missing information, resolve ambiguities or questions, and to find common conflict patterns through these centuries. The database holds thirty possible variables for each conflict. An example of one such variable is “genocidal massacre,” following the work of historian Benjamin Madley. Other variables include specifying and/or clarifying the identity of all participants; introducing, as often as possible, the exact or approximate GPS coordinates for each conflict; and noting who were the initiators of each conflict. The full Codebook is an Appendix to this article. To our knowledge, the database we are presenting is unique. We offer this dataset to scholars in the hope that it will allow for a more nuanced and deeper consideration of the history of the European invasion of North America over a four-hundred-year period.