GENOCIDE IN TASMANIA?

In the “GENOCIDE IN TASMANIA?”, Reynolds writes about the Black War and its controversy of genocide in Australian history. Collecting a set of detailed stories from those of historical documentation, Reynolds depicts a vivid image of the colonial ruling in Tasmania during the 1920s and 1930s. In his work, Reynolds discusses the numerous letters and accounts related to the conflicts and concludes that the reality has overwhelmed by the assumption of brutal acts by settlers. The author states that this is a false assertion to generalise settlers as total patronisers and the Aborigines as just helpless victims.

Reynolds references an egalitarian policy by colonial government at the initial steps and notes that following his arrival in 1824, Governor George Arthur’s declaration was “aglow with good intentions” (p.130). In his very first proclamation, Arthur announced, “the Natives of this island being under the protection of the same laws which protect the settlers” (p.130). Reynolds chronicles the conflicts related to Aboriginal resistance which was started in 1826, and gradually intensified the situation and jeopardised the ideal harmony between the settlers and Aboriginals. Following a series of attacks, officially endorsed as "black savage” (p.134), “a number of settlers killed in the spring” of 1827.  Governor Arthur wrote to his senior officials in London and suggested the “decision to force the tribes out of the settled districts” (p.134).

Some other historians listed the Tasmania killings as genocide equal to those of Armenian by Turks. Reynolds brings in his work at least one of those claims and quotes Robert Hughes as an acclaimed convicts’ historian who wrote that Aboriginals were “shot like kangaroos and poisoned like dogs” and called Tasmania killings as “the only true genocide in English colonial history” (p.127).

Nevertheless, as it has pointed out by Reynolds, the killing of Aboriginals was not officially declared and was not the government policy either, it happened beyond the written law, but the rapid reduction in Aboriginal populations within just a few years causes a reasonable question and highlights the possibility of mass extermination. Although the evidence which has used by the author is largely based on government documentation which was left by those from the colonial period and despite the fact that the utter conflict led to the extreme measure, Reynolds acknowledges, that in 1831 from two aboriginal tribes “only twenty-six of them left” (p.145).

Reference:

Reynolds, H. (2004). Genocide in Tasmania? In A. D. Moses (Ed.), Genocide and settler society: Frontier violence and stolen Indigenous children in Australian history (pp. 127-149). New York, NY: Berghahn Books.