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From Terror to Genocide: Britain's Tasmanian Penal Colony and Australia's History Wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Benjamin Madley
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 77 - 106
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2008

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References

1 National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Bringing Them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families Sydney, 275.

2 Estimates ran as high as 250,000 (Australian, 30 May 2000).

3 Quadrant published Windschuttle's three-part “The Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian History” between October and December 2000. Precontact Aboriginal Australian population estimates range from 200,000 to 1,250,000. See David Horton, ed. The Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia, 2 vols. Canberra, 2:889; Attwood, Bain, “The Burden of the Past in the Present,” in Reconciliation: Essays on Australian Reconciliation, ed. Grattan, MichelleMelbourne, 258Google Scholar.

4 For more, see Macintyre, Stuart and Clark, Anna, The History Wars MelbourneGoogle Scholar.

5 Windschuttle, Keith, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One, Van Diemen's Land, 1803–1847 SydneyGoogle Scholar.

6 Barta, Tony, “Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia,” in Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, ed. Walliman, Isidor and Dobkowski, Michael N. (New York, 1987), 238Google Scholar.

7 Precontact Aboriginal Tasmanian population statistics are contested. David Davies claimed an 1803 population of 15,000 (The Last of the Tasmanians [Sydney, 1973], 120). Archeologist Rhys Jones estimated 3,000–5,000, but archaeologist Colin Pardoe argued, “Population estimates for [precontact] Tasmania need upward revision. In ecological and evolutionary terms there is scope to question [Jones’s] estimate of 3,000–5,000.” Pardoe also suggested reconsidering “carrying capacity data” (“Isolation and Evolution in Tasmania,” Current Anthropology 32, no. 1 [February 1991]: 1–21, 11); historian N. J. B. Plomley estimated 4,000–6,000 (The Aboriginal/Settler Clash in Van Diemen's Land: 1803–1831 [Hobart, 1992], 10); Henry Reynolds suggested “5,000–7,000” in Fate of a Free People: A Radical Reexamination of the Tasmanian Wars Ringwood, 4.

8 Plomley, N. J. B., ed., Weep in Silence: A History of the Flinders Island Aboriginal Settlement with the Flinders Island Journal of George Augustus Robinson Hobart, 172Google Scholar. Two were hanged in Melbourne and eleven sent to Hobart's Orphan School; see Ryan, Lyndall, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, 2nd ed. St. Leonards, 197, 196, 200Google Scholar.

9 Several “full-descent” Aboriginal Tasmanians survived on Kangaroo Island (Taylor, Rebe, Unearthed: The Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island [Kent Town, 2002], 127Google Scholar).

10 Dalrymple, Theodore, “Why Intellectuals Like Genocide,” New English Review (July 2007), http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/8744/sec_id/8744Google Scholar.

11 Melville, Henry, The History of Van Diemen's Land, From the Year 1824 to 1835, ed. Mackaness, George 1836; Hobart, 30, 56–57Google Scholar.

12 Merivale, Herman, Lectures on Colonization and Colonies, Delivered before the University of Oxford in 1839, 1840, & 1841, 2 vols. London, 2:150, 153Google Scholar. Merivale later became a senior colonial office official.

13 Australian Dictionary of Biography, 17 vols. Melbourne, 2:590.

14 John West, The History of Tasmania, 2 vols. Launceston, 2:18.

15 Bonwick, James, The Last of the Tasmanians; or, The Black War of Van Diemen's Land LondonGoogle Scholar; Calder, J. E., Some Account of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania HobartGoogle Scholar; Bonwick, James, The Lost Tasmanian Race LondonGoogle Scholar.

16 Twain, Mark, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World Hartford, CT, 256Google Scholar; Wells, H. G., War of the Worlds London, 5Google Scholar.

17 Raphaël Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress Washington, DC, xi–xii.

18 United Nations, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 9 December 1948, Treaty Series, vol. 78, no. 1021, 280.

19 Clive Turnbull, Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines Melbourne; Raphaël Lemkin, “Tasmania,” edited, and with commentary, by Ann Curthoys, Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (June 2005): 170–96, quotations on 179 and 178, respectively. Lemkin relied heavily on James Bonwick's work.

20 For Australian genocide-related articles in Quadrant and elsewhere, see Ben Kiernan, “Cover-up and Denial of Genocide,” Critical Asian Studies 34, no. 2 June: 163–92.

21 Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 255.

22 Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Uses in the Twentieth Century New Haven, CT, 40.

23 Robin Winks, “A System of Commands: The Infrastructure of Race Contact,” in Studies in British Imperial History, ed. George Martell (Hong Kong, 1986), 24; Barta, “Relations of Genocide,” 238.

24 Diamond, Jared, “In Black and White,” Natural History 97, no. 10 (October 1988): 8–14Google Scholar.

25 Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 53.

26 Moses, A. Dirk, “An Antipodean Genocide? The Origins of the Genocidal Moment in the Colonization of Australia,” Journal of Genocide Research 2, no. 1 (March 2000): 89–106, 99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Moses later suggested, with respect to Australia, that, “where genocide was not consciously willed, then it was implicitly intended in the sense of … silent condoning” (“Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History,” in Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, ed. A. Dirk Moses [New York, 2004], 30).

27 Reynolds, Henry, “Genocide in Tasmania?” in Moses, Genocide and Settler Society, 147Google Scholar.

28 Windschuttle, Fabrication, 386, 364, 297, 364.

29 For the Australian debate, see Robert Manne, “Introduction,” in Whitewash, ed. Robert Manne Melbourne, 10–11; British historian William Rubinstein quoted Windschuttle on Tasmania to bolster his interpretation of British imperialism as benign paternalism (Genocide: A History [Harlow, 2004], 66–67). Historian Ben Kiernan attacked the veracity and logic of Windschuttle's thesis (“Cover-up and Denial,” 180–81).

30 Windschuttle, Fabrication, 399.

31 Yi-fu Tuan, Landscapes of Fear New York, 213.

32 Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter, 21 September 1816, 2; Thomas Atkins, Reminiscences of Twelve Years’ Residence in Tasmania and New South Wales; Norfolk Island and Moreton Bay; Calcutta, Madras, and Cape Town; the United States of America; and the Canadas Malvern, 5, 10.

33 William Henry Breton, Excursions in New South Wales, Western Australia, and Van Diemen's Land, During the Years 1830, 1831, 1832, and 1833 London, 341.

34 Lieutenant-Governor Collins to Lord Hobart, 3 August 1804, in Fredrik Watson, ed., Historical Records of Australia, 3rd ser. (hereafter HRA.3), 6 vols. (Sydney, 1921–), 1:257.

35 Collins to Governor King, 28 September 1805, in Watson, HRA.3, 1:327–28.

36 Turnbull, Black War, 38; Collins to Governor Bligh, 18 October 1806, in Watson, HRA.3, 1:380.

37 Lieutenant-Governor Arthur to Secretary Sir George Murray, 20 November 1830; Correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the Subject of the Military Operations Lately Carried Out Against the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land; House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP), 1831 (259), IXI, 60.

38 Collins to Bligh, 26 January 1808, in Watson, HRA.3, 1:395.

39 Lieutenant-Governor Collins to Viscount Castlereagh, 2 August 1806, in Watson, HRA.3, 1:369.

40 Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore New York, 371.

41 Melville, History, 13; James Ross, The Settler in Van Diemen's Land (1836; Melbourne, 1975), 17.

42 West, History of Tasmania, 1:29.

43 Edward Curr, Account of the Colony of Van Diemen's Land (1824; Hobart, 1967), 10.

44 Arthur to Earl Bathurst, 3 July 1825, in Watson, HRA.3, 4:289.

45 5 June 1827 journal entry, in Anne McKay, ed., Journals of the Land Commissioners for Van Diemen's Land: 1826–1828 Hobart, 56.

46 Colonial Times, 22 June 1827, 2.

47 A. Maconochie, Convict Discipline, Van Diemen's Land ([London], 1838), 6.

48 Curr, Account, 120.

49 Peter Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales, 2 vols. (London, 1827), 2:192–93.

50 Atkins, Reminiscences, 16.

51 Douglas Hay, “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law,” in Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson, and Cal Winslow, Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), 62–63.

52 Launceston Advertiser, 3 August 1829, 2.

53 Colonial Times, 1 December 1826, 2.

54 Atkins, Reminiscences, 16; Examination of Richard Pitt, 9 May 1820, in Watson, HRA.3, 3:486; Hobart Town Gazette, 10 August 1816, 2, 14 December 1816, 1, 8 November 1817, 1; Melville, History, 15.

55 A. G. L. Shaw, Sir George Arthur, Bart, 1758–1854 Melbourne, 87.

56 Lloyd Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia: An Enquiry into the Origin and Character of the Convicts Transported to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, 1787–1852 Melbourne, 102.

57 Colonial Times (Hobart), 1 December 1826, 2.

58 Launceston Advertiser, 9 November 1829, 2.

59 Cunningham, Two Years, 2:261, 309.

60 West, History of Tasmania, 1:29, 32.

61 For solitary confinement, see Examination of J. B. Boothman, 15 April 1820, in Watson, HRA.3, 3:401; and John Henderson, Observations on the Colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land Calcutta, 20; for iron collars, see Hobart Town Gazette, 17 August 1816, 1, and 27 September 1817, 2; for stocks, see Hobart Town Gazette, 27 September 1817, 2.

62 Examination of R. W. Owen, 15 April 1820, in Watson, HRA.3, 3:408.

63 Report by Sorell, 9 June 1824, in Watson, HRA.3, 4:150.

64 David Burn, A Picture of Van Diemen's Land: A Facsimile of a Work Published in “The Colonial Magazine,” 1840–41 Hobart, 63; Launceston Advertiser, 9 November 1829, 2.

65 James Bonwick, The Bushrangers; Illustrating the Early Days of Van Diemen's Land Melbourne, 21–22.

66 James Backhouse, 18 June 1832 letter, in Extracts from the letters of James Backhouse whilst engaged in a religious visit to Van Dieman's Land, New South Wales, and South Africa, 2 vols. London, 1:35.

67 Backhouse, James, A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies London, 49, 50Google Scholar.

68 Knopwood, Robert, The Diary of the Reverend Knopwood: 1803–1808, ed. Nicholls, MaryLaunceston, 472Google Scholar; Arthur to Lieutenant Wright, 25 June 1824, in Watson, HRA.3, 5:632.

69 According to Thomas Lempriere, some called Port Arthur “Earthly Hell” (The Penal Settlements of Early Van Diemen's Land [1839; Tasmania, 1954], 60). Burn was one of them (Picture of Van Diemen's Land, 164).

70 Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839; New York, 1909), 471.

71 Bonwick, Bushrangers, 38.

72 Lempriere, Penal Settlements, 89, 94.

73 Colonial Times, 5 January 1827, 3, 12 January 1827, 4, 6 July 1827, 4, 24 August 1827, 4; for 1827 population see Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 25.

74 Gatrell, V. A. C., The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770–1868 Oxford, 575Google Scholar. Census takers recorded 11,977,663 people in England and Wales in 1821 and 13,897,187 in 1831 (HCPP, 1822 [8] XXI, 631, 1833 [149] XXXVI–XXXVII, xii).

75 Hobart Town Gazette, 8 June 1816, 1; Curr, Account, 184.

76 Lycett, Joseph, Views in Australia or New South Wales, & Van Diemen's Land London, 13Google Scholar.

77 Hobart Town Gazette, 23 November 1816, 1.

78 Cunningham, Two Years, 2:195.

79 Wallace, H., 10 September 1825 letter, in Tasmanian Letters, 1824–1852, ed. Richards, JackChristchurch, 10Google Scholar.

80 Knopwood, Diary, 479. Newspapers regularly reported murders by bushrangers.

81 Henderson, Observations, 43; Karl Von Stieglitz, Entally (1921): Pageant of a Pioneer Family: 1792–1912 n.p., 23, 31.

82 For bushrangers’ beheadings see Hobart Town Gazette, 29 March 1817, 2; Ross, Settler, 23; Curr, Account, 189.

83 Knopwood, Diary, 138, 143; “court martial” quoted in Knopwood, Diary, 201–2.

84 In 1817, the Hobart Town Gazette published rewards information in sixteen different issues.

85 Hobart Town Gazette, 6 September 1817, 1.

86 Colonial Times, 14 October 1825, 4.

87 The Colonial Times (6 January 1826) reported “upwards of 200 soldiers, and 100 volunteers … in close persuit” of bushangers; for an example of increased and expanded bounties see the Colonial Times, 10 March 1826, 1.

88 Davis, Richard P., The Tasmanian Gallows: A Study of Capital Punishment Hobart, 13Google Scholar.

89 Curr, Account, 207; Lycett, Views, 14.

90 Prinsep, Augustus, “Letter VII,” in The journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen's Land: Comprising a Description of that Colony During a Six Months' Residence: From Original Letters, selected by Mrs. A. Prinsep London, 111Google Scholar.

91 Backhouse, 25 June 1832 letter, in Extracts, 1:44.

92 Melville, History, 55.

93 Atkinson, Alan, The Europeans in Australia, 2 vols. Oxford, 2:157Google Scholar.

94 Ibid., 2:374 n. 15; Websters International Dictionary Springfield, 531. For the etymology of “exterminate,” see Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur New Haven, CT, 15.

95 Colonial Times, 5 January 1827, 2; Arthur to Murray, 20 November 1830, HCPP, 60.

96 Arthur to Secretary Huskinson, 17 April 1828, HCPP, 4; Report of the Aborigines Committee, 19 March 1830, and Arthur to Murray, 20 November 1830, HCPP, 39, 60.

97 James Hobbs to Aborigines Committee, 9 March 1830, and Aborigines Committee, 19 March 1830, HCPP, 49, 36.

98 Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians, 61.

99 Arthur to Murray, 20 November 1830, HCPP, 60.

100 Rowland Hassall to his father, 17 March 1819, Rowland Hassall Papers, vol. 2, pt. 1, 236–37.

101 Hobart Town Gazette, 13 March 1819, 1.

102 Quoted in Aborigines Committee, 19 March 1830, HCPP, 38.

103 General Orders, 7 January 1805, in Watson, HRA.3, 1:529.

104 See Collins's January 29, 1810 proclamation quoted in Aborigines Committee, 19 March 1830, HCPP, 38; and Sorell's 24 May 1817 public warning, Hobart Town Gazette, 24 May 1817, 1.

105 Windschuttle, Keith, “The Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian History (Part II): The Fabrication of the Aboriginal Death Toll,” Quadrant 44, no. 11 (November 2000): 17–30, 23Google Scholar.

106 For population estimate see Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 123; Arthur to Murray, 25 August 1830, HCPP, 19.

107 Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 5.

108 Aborigines Committee, 19 March 1830, and Kelly to Aborigines Committee, 10 March 1830, HCPP, 37, 51; Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 88.

109 Former marine Robert Evans recollected that in 1804, “some children [were] taken” Robert Evans to Aborigines Committee, 16 March 1830, HCPP.

110 Quoted in Aborigines Committee, 19 March 1830, HCPP, 36.

111 Robert Knopwood to Aborigines Committee, 11 March 1830, HCPP, 53.

112 Hobart Town Gazette, 13 March 1819, 1.

113 Colonial Times, 5 May 1826, 4.

114 Arthur to Viscount Goderich, 10 January 1828, HCPP, 2.

115 Melville, History, 140.

116 W. Stewart to Secretary Campbell, 28 September 1815, in Watson, HRA.3, 2:576.

117 George Augustus Robinson, 10 October 1829 journal entry, in Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829–1834, ed. N. J. B. Plomley Kingsgrove, 82; for abductions see: 194, 246, 249, 271, 290–91, 293, 349, 417, 451–52, 461–62, 576, 675–76, 801; for murders: 246, 249, 293, 301; for torments: 184, 249, 256–57, 272, 274, 295, 308, 342.

118 James Hobbs to Aborigines Committee, 9 March 1830, HCPP, 50.

119 Kelly to Aborigines Committee, 10 March 1830, HCPP, 51; for venereal diseases among Aborigines in the 1820s, see Cunningham, Two Years, 2:45.

120 Knopwood, Diary, 182; Robinson, Friendly Mission, 257, 271, 293, 295, 751.

121 Robinson, Friendly Mission, 88, 344, 346, 506, 553.

122 Robinson, 21 April 1831 journal entry, in Friendly Mission, 344.

123 Melville, History, 31.

124 Shaw, Sir George Arthur, 128. Windschuttle has noted William Tibbs's 1824 trial and conviction for the manslaughter of a black man. James Boyce has persuasively argued that the victim was likely a visiting ship's nonwhite crewmember (“Fantasy Island,” in Manne, Whitewash, 36–37). Tibbs's “sentence was later reversed and he was discharged” (Plomley, Weep in Silence, 43 n. 42).

125 Windschuttle disputed Reynolds's Fate of a Free People argument that Aboriginal Tasmanians fought a guerrilla war. Windschuttle claimed that primary sources documented no Aboriginal Tasmanian military strategies or nationalistic rhetoric and that their violence was never more than “robbery, assault and murder” (Fabrication, 95–114, 130). However, Windschuttle's argument ignored 1830s sources. A letter to the Colonial Times described Aborigines’ “declaration of war” (Colonial Times, 26 February 1830, 3). Arthur's Executive Council described Aboriginal “acts of warfare” Executive Council Minutes, 27 August 1830, HCPP. Melville mentioned “the Guerilla war” repeatedly (History, 33, 91, 106).

126 Colonial Times, 1 December 1826, 2.

127 Arthur to Goderich, 10 January 1828, HCPP, 4.

128 Robinson, 23 November 1829 journal entry, in Friendly Mission, 88.

129 Backhouse, 21 September 1832 letter, in Extracts, 1:57.

130 Quoted in Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 48.

131 John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838 Sydney, 89.

132 Hobart Town Gazette, 2 December 1826, 1.

133 Earl Bathurst to Governor Darling, 14 July 1825, in Historical Records of Australia, ser. 1, 26 vols. Sydney, 7:21.

134 Collins to King, 15 May 1804, in Watson, HRA.3, 1:238.

135 Knopwood, Diary, 273.

136 H. Wallace to J. Wallace, 10 September 1825, in Richards, Tasmanian Letters, 8.

137 Arthur to Under Secretary Hay, 15 November 1826, in Watson, HRA.3, 5:435.

138 Burn, Picture of Van Diemen's Land, 22.

139 Colonial Times, 26 January 1827, 3.

140 Executive Council Minutes, 31 October 1828, HCPP, 11.

141 Arthur to Murray, 4 November 1828, and Arthur to Murray, 4 April 1831, HCPP, 9, 79.

142 27 November 1827 journal entry, in McKay, Journals, 67; Prinsep, Journal, 79; Breton, Excursions, 405; Cunningham, Two Years, 2:46.

143 Backhouse, 9 February 1832 letter, in Extracts, 1:15.

144 Robinson, 5 August 1830 and 23 November 1829 journal entries, in Friendly Mission, 194, 88.

145 Atkins, Reminiscences, 14.

146 Rodric O’Connor to Aborigines Committee 17 March 1830, HCPP, 54; Breton, Excursions, 400.

147 Melville, History, 57.

148 Atkins, Reminiscences, 14.

149 Colonial Times, 1 December 1826, 2. The paper later warned, “they must be removed; or they will be shot like quails” (Colonial Times, 27 July 1827, 2).

150 Colonial Times, 5 January 1827, 2.

151 Quoted in Gwyneth Dow and Hume Dow, Landfall in Van Diemen's Land: The Steels’ Quest for Greener Pastures Footscray, 45.

152 Colonial Times, 11 May 1827, 2, and 6 July 1827, 4.

153 Gilbert Robertson to Aborigines Committee, 3 March 1830, HCPP, 49.

154 George Hobler, The Diaries of Pioneer George Hobler, October 6 1800–December 13 1882, 5 vols. California, 1:40.

155 Rosalie Hare and Ida Lee, The Voyage of the Caroline from England to Van Diemen's Land and Batavia in 1827–28 London, 41.

156 For more on this massacre, see Ian McFarlane, “Cape Grim,” in Manne, Whitewash, 277–98.

157 Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 26–27.

158 Reproduced in Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians, 85.

159 Arthur to Goderich, 10 January 1828, and Arthur to Huskinson, 17 April 1828, HCPP, 2, 7.

160 Melville, History, 76.

161 Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 26, 27.

162 Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 100.

163 Connor, Australian Frontier Wars, 12, 14.

164 Colonial Times, 27 August 1830, 3.

165 Colonial Times, 16 July 1830, 3.

166 Settler W. Clark described whites’ superior firepower: “Two or three men, well armed, need never fear an open attack from [Aborigines], however numerous” (Colonial Times, 13 November 1829, 3).

167 Wedge, John Helder, 23 March 1828 entry, in The Diaries of John Helder Wedge, 1824–1835, ed. Crawford, Justice, Ellis, W. F., and Stancombe, G. H.Devonport, 44Google Scholar.

168 Ross, Settler, 26.

169 Colonial Times, 18 September 1829, 4.

170 Twain, Following the Equator, 267.

171 Colonial Times, 6 July 1827, 4.

172 Arthur to Murray, 15 April 1830, HCPP, 16.

173 Cunningham, Two Years, 2:32–33.

174 Quoted in Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 99.

175 Launceston Advertiser, 9 February 1829, 4.

176 Aborigines Committee, 19 March 1830, HCPP, 38.

177 Sherwin to Aborigines Committee, 23 February 1830, HCPP, 47.

178 Arthur to Murray, 4 November 1828, HCPP, 11–12.

179 Arthur was not the last British colonial governor to trade conciliation toward nonwhites for martial law and extreme force. Historian Catherine Hall has described how Edward Eyre was initially “sympathetic to Aboriginal peoples, [and] became associated with Governor Grey's policy of assimilation in South Australia.” Later, as “lieutenant-governor of the South Island of New Zealand,” he “[attempted] to foster amicable relations between black and white.” However, after some Jamaicans rebelled in 1865, Governor Eyre declared martial law, and troops under his command “executed 439 people, flogged more than 600 men and women, and burnt more than 1,000 homes” (Civilizing Subjects: Colony and Metropole in the English Imagination, 1830–1867 [Chicago, 2002], xv, 43, 46, 23).

180 Executive Council Minutes, 31 October 1828, Arthur to Murray, 4 November 1828, Murray to Arthur, 25 August 1829, HCPP, 11, 9, 14.

181 Arthur to Murray, 4 November 1828, HCPP, 12.

182 Colonial Times, 24 September 1830, 3.

183 Shaw, Sir George Arthur, 125–26.

184 Ryan, Lyndall, “Who Is the Fabricator?” in Manne, Whitewash, 250Google Scholar.

185 Colonial Times, 24 September 1830, 3.

186 Melville, History, 71.

187 Hobart Town Courier, 13 December 1828, 2.

188 Melville, History, 79.

189 Colonial Times, 2 January 1829, 3, 30 January 1829, 3, and 8 September 1829, 3; on 1 September 1829 Batman reported attacking and killing or mortally injuring thirteen Aborigines and then murdering two captured during the attack: Alastair Cambell, John Batman and the Aborigines Melbourne, 32.

190 Tasmanian and Austral-Asiatic Review, 26 February 1830, 7.

191 O’Connor to Aborigines Committee, 17 March 1830, HCPP, 55.

192 Quoted in Reynolds, “Genocide in Tasmania?” 141.

193 Launceston Advertiser, 15 February 1830, 3.

194 Colonial Times, 27 August 1830, 3.

195 Colonial Times, 24 September 1830, 3.

196 Robinson, 10 October 1830 letter, in Friendly Mission, 435.

197 Robertson to Aborigines Committee, 3 March 1830, HCPP, 48. This massacre likely occurred before 1830.

198 Robinson, 16 June 1830 journal entry, in Friendly Mission, 175. Later that month, Robinson reported what was probably the same massacre. Aborigines told him that “at the Doughboys” Van Diemen's Land Company employees had “massacred thirty of them and threw them off a cliff” (21 June 1830 journal entry, in Friendly Mission, 181).

199 Colonial Times, 2 July 1830, 2.

200 Robinson, 12 August 1830 and 23 October 1830 journal entries, in Friendly Mission, 197–98, 256.

201 Robinson, 25 September 1830 journal entry, in Friendly Mission, 219.

202 Independent, 24 September 1831, quoted in Reynolds, “Genocide in Tasmania?” 142.

203 Backhouse, 9 February 1832 letter, in Extracts, 1:16.

204 Connor, Australian Frontier Wars, 89; Robinson, Friendly Mission, 579–80.

205 Melville, History, 33.

206 The Colonial Times reported, “several parties … in pursuit of the natives, to endeavour to capture them” on 28 August 1829, 3.

207 Government order, 25 February 1830, HCPP, 35.

208 Launceston Advertiser, 29 May 1834, 3.

209 Arthur to Murray, 20 November 1830, HCPP, 74.

210 Connor, Australian Frontier Wars, 99.

211 Arthur to Murray, 20 November 1830, HCPP, 74.

212 Ibid., 60.

213 Murray to Arthur, 5 November 1830, HCPP, 56.

214 Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 29.

215 Quoted in Aborigines Committee, 4 February 1831, HCPP, 76; Henderson, Observations, 149.

216 G. A. Robinson, 14 April 1838 journal annotation in Plomley, Weep in Silence, 733.

217 Secretary of the Aborigines Committee, quoted in Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 130.

218 Quoted in Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 170.

219 Launceston Advertiser, 29 May 1834, 3, and 23 October 1834, 3.

220 By 1835, “about three hundred and ten” were captured (Melville, History, 106). In 1842 seven more were captured and incarcerated at Wybalenna (West, History of Tasmania, 2:65).

221 Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 176.

222 Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 183.

223 Turnbull, Clive, “Tasmania: The Ultimate Solution,” in Racism, The Australian Experience, ed. Stephens, F. S., 3 vols. Sydney, 2:230Google Scholar; Hughes, Fatal Shore, 423; Raymond Gill “A Closer Look at Our Singing Ambassador,” Age, 14 April 1994; quoted in Andrew Darby, “Bacon's Final Act Hopes to End Fight for Cape Barren,” Age, 28 February 2004.

224 “About 200” were sent to Flinders Island (Turnbull, “Tasmania,” 231).

225 Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians, 247. The author visited Wybalenna in winter.

226 Windschuttle, Fabrication, 230.

227 Quoted in Peter Chapman, “Introduction” in Historical Records of Australia, ser. 3, 11 vols., ed. Peter Chapman Melbourne, 9:liv.

228 West, History of Tasmania, 2:67.

229 Quoted in Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 154.

230 Quoted in Plomley, Weep in Silence, 314–15.

231 Walker, James, Early Tasmania: Papers Read before the Royal Society of Tasmania during the Years 1888 to 1899 1902; Tasmania, 242Google Scholar.

232 Quoted in Turnbull, Black War, 176, 177.

233 Report of Major Thomas Ryan upon the Aboriginal Establishment, quoted in Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 186.

234 Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 186, 196.

235 Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians, 256.

236 Melville, History, 106.

237 Report of the Aboriginal Establishment, 7, quoted in Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 190.

238 Ryan,Aboriginal Tasmanians, app. 3.

239 Plomley, Weep in Silence, 934.

240 Ryan,Aboriginal Tasmanians, 191.

241 Flinders Island Weekly Chronicle, 17 November 1837, 1.

242 Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 192.

243 Ibid., 186; quoted in Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 184.

244 “About 200” were brought to Flinders Island (Turnbull, “Tasmania,” 231). Two were executed on mainland Australia. Forty-seven returned to mainland Tasmania (Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, app. 3).

245 Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 196, 200.

246 West, History of Tasmania, 2:75.

247 Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 7–8.

248 Ibid., 15.

249 West, History of Tasmania, 2:75.

250 Plomley, Weep in Silence, 172.

251 Melville, History, 75–76, editor's footnote. This conversation probably took place in 1829.

252 Michael Roe, “Tasmania,” in The Oxford Companion to Australian History (New York, 2001), 635.

253 Australian Bureau of Statistics, http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/featurearticlesbytitle/06E6409495FF5247CA256DEA00053A04?OpenDocument.

254 Windschuttle, Fabrication, 386.

255 Anthropologist Josephine Flood has recently argued that “a strong oral tradition indicates that a catastrophic epidemic occurred even before British settlement.” Her evidence for this is post-1829 only. Paraphrasing a passage from James Bonwick's 1870 book Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians (87), Flood has written that “Robert Clark, a teacher at Wybalenna … reported that Aborigines told him [that] 'their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English.'” Flood has also argued that “corroboration of depopulation through disease in the northeast comes from” Robinson's writings (Josephine Flood, The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People [Crows Nest, 2007], 66, 67). However, the sources she cites date from 1830 and 1831—during the final phase when few Aborigines remained on mainland Tasmania—and they provide unclear evidence of any epidemic prior to 1829. No extant primary source that this author is aware of ever mentions any epidemic, apart from venereal disease, among the Aborigines of Tasmania prior to 1829. Lyndall Ryan has concluded that “recent archaeological research indicates that” Aboriginal Tasmanians were actually “increasing in population at the moment of British colonization in 1803” (“Abduction and Multiple Killings of Aborigines in Tasmania, 1804–1835,” http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial, 1). Boyce has observed, “Only from 1832 is the leading role of disease in the Aboriginal death rate conclusive” (“Fantasy Island,” 44).

256 Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 81–82; Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 313, 174.

257 In 1998, for example, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ruled that Jean-Paul Akayesu was “culpable because he knew or should have known that the act committed would destroy, in whole or in part, a group” (quoted in William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes [New York, 2000], 212).

258 West, History of Tasmania, 2:94.

259 Atkins, Reminiscences, 14.

260 Colonial Times, 31 May 1836, 5.

261 Barta, “Relations of Genocide,” 238.