Remembering and Forgetting the Tasmanian Genocide

Hasian, Marouf

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-21278-0_2

Marouf Hasian Jr.²

418 Accesses

Abstract

In this particular chapter the author defends the need for more debates about colonial genocides by focusing attention on the types of arguments that are advanced by scholars and activists who argue about the colonial-settler perpetration of a “Tasmanian genocide.” While some skeptics of this thesis use Raphael Lemkin’s definition of genocide to argue that only a few hundred Tasmanians died in conflicts like the Black War, there are others who are adamant that it is not the exact numbers who die that determines whether certain colonial acts constitute a genocide. The chapter puts on display evidence from public and academic sources to show that further debate is needed about the attempted “extirpation” of the Tasmanians.

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Notes

1.
Some of those who will have laid the scholarly groundwork for this inclusion of the Tasmanian genocide in those traditional genocidal canons include Ann Curthoys, “Genocide in Tasmania: The History of An Idea,’ in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History, edited by Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 229–252; Tony Barta, “Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia,” in Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, edited by Isidor Wallimann and Michael N. Dobkowski (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), 237–251; John Docker, “A Plethora of Intentions: Genocide, Settler Colonialism and Historical Consciousness in Australia and Britain,” The International Journal of Human Rights 19, no. 1 (2015): 74–89; Thomas James Rogers and Stephen Bain, “Genocide and Frontier Violence in Australia,” Journal of Genocide Research 18, no. 1 (2016): 83–100.
2.
Penelope Edmonds, “‘Our History Is Not the Last Word’: Sorry Day at Risdon Cove and ‘Black Line’ Survival Ceremony, Tasmania,” in Settler Colonialism and (Re)conciliation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 126–219.
3.
Nick Brodie, The Vandemonian War: The Secret History of Britain’s Tasmanian Invasion (Sydney: Hardie Grant, 2017).
4.
Benjamin Madley, “Command, Control and Genocide: A Review of The Vandemonian War,” Journal of Genocide Research 20, no. 3 (2018): 467–471, 470–471.
5.
Güenter Lewy, “Documents and Discussions: Reply to Tony Barta, Norbert Finzsch and David Stannard,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 2 (2008): 307.
6.
Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain? The Question of Genocide in Australia’s History (Melbourne: Viking, 2001).
7.
Helen Davison, “John Howard: There Was No Genocide Against Indigenous Australians,” The Guardian, last modified September 22, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/22/john-howard-there-was-no-genocide-against-indigenous-australians
8.
Madeline Hayman-Reber, “The Black War: Tasmania Still Torn by Its History,” Special Broadcasting Services, last modified April 20, 2018, paragraphs 9–18, https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2018/04/19/black-war-tasmania-still-torn-its-history
9.
Kristyn Harman, “Explainer: The Evidence for the Tasmanian Genocide,” The Conversation, last modified January 17, 2018, paragraphs 2, 4, https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-evidence-for-the-tasmanian-genocide-86828
10.
Edmonds, “‘Our History Is Not the Last Word,’” 129.
11.
For an excellent overview of some of the different lexicons that would be used to describe what we call the “genocide” or the “indigenocide” of the Tasmanians, see Curthoys, “Genocide in Tasmania,” 229–252.
12.
Ann Curthoys, “Genocide in Tasmania,” 229.
13.
Edmonds, “‘Our History Is Not the Last Word,’” 136.
14.
Sydney Morning Herald Staff, “Our History, Not Rewritten but Put Right,” The Sydney Morning Herald, November 25, 2002, paragraph 2, https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/our-history-not-rewritten-but-put-right-20021125-gdfv47.html
15.
William R. Price, “Overcoming the Myth of Extinction: The Path Toward Heritage Rights for the Tasmanian Aboriginals,” Heritage & Society 10, no. 1 (2017): 68–90, 68.
16.
See Richard H. King and Dan Stone, Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History: Imperialism, Nation, Race and Genocide (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008).
17.
Raphaël Lemkin, “Tasmania” [edited by Ann Curthoys], Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (1996): 170–196, 178.
18.
Edmonds, “‘Our History Is Not the Last Word,’” 144.
19.
For an example of the hagiography that swirls around Lemkin’s work see the 2005 special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research, From the Guest Editors, “Raphael Lemkin: the ‘Founder of the United Nation’s Genocide Convention’ As a Historian of Mass Violence,” Journal of Genocide Research 7, no. 4 (2005): 447–452.
20.
Patrick Wolfe, “Forum Essay: Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (June 2001): 866–905.
21.
Ibid., 871.
22.
See, Douglas Irvin-Erickson, Raphael Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).
23.
For an example of an academic work that shares my interest in deploying critical genealogical or Foucauldian critiques of debates over the Tasmanian genocide, see Jess Shipway, Scars of the Archive, Visions of Place: Genocide and Modernity in Tasmania (Hobart: University of Tasmania, 2005).
24.
We need to treat Lemkin’s texts as just some of the influential shards of memory that are a part of dense ideological epistemes that have been circulating since the first half of the nineteenth century. These were historical periods when physical anthropologists, diplomats, journalists, and others left us competing interpretations of how to respond to what would later be called the Social Darwinian “extirpation” of the Tasmanians.
25.
Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michael Foucault (1971: Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 139.
26.
As readers might imagine there are those who say there is no reason to say sorry. See Andrew Bold, “We Should Not Be Saying Sorry to Aborigines,” Herald Sun, last modified January 29, 2008, https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/we-should-not-be-saying-this/news-story/
27.
James Bonwick, The Last of the Tasmanians; or, The Black War of Van Diemen’s Land (London: Sampson Low, 1870).
28.
Lemkin, “Tasmania,” 171. There are variant spellings of this land, sometimes called Van Dieman’s Land and at other times called Van Diemen’s Land.
29.
Professor Bromley is one of those who estimated that somewhere between 4000 and 6000 Tasmanians may have died during British settlement. Norman J. B. Plomley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash in Van Diemen’s Land: 1803–1831 (Hobart: University of Tasmania, 1992), 10. For similar figures see Henry Reynolds, Fate of a Free People: A Radical Reexamination of the Tasmanian Wars (Ringwood: Victoria Penguin Books, Australia, 1995), 4. Some of those who have proposed that we adopt larger figures of Aborigines’ morality rates often depend on what are called “precontact” Aboriginal Tasmanian population statistics. David Davies, for example, asserts that in 1803 it was possible that the population of Van Diemen’s Land was in the neighborhood of 15,000. David Davies, The Last of the Tasmanians (Sydney: Williams Collins, 1973), 120.
30.
“Minority literatures” is the name Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari give to those marginalized interpretations that are presented by the disempowered or others who contest dominant readings of texts. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). Critical scholars have appropriated some of this language in their studies of the contingent, partial, and motivated nature of colonial or imperial texts.
31.
Shayne Breen, “Extermination, Extinction, Genocide: British Colonialism and Tasmanian Aborigines,” in Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory, edited by René Lemarchand (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 70.
32.
Edmonds, “‘Our History Is Not the Last Word,’” 126.
33.
Anna Johnston, “George August Robinson, the ‘Great Conciliator’: Colonial Celebrity and Its Postcolonial Aftermath,” Postcolonial Studies 12, no. 2 (2009): 153–152, 170.
34.
Benjamin Madley, “From Terror to Genocide: Britain’s Tasmanian Penal Colony and Australia’s History Wars,” Journal of British Studies 47, no. 1 (January 2008): 77–106, 78. For a more comparative study see Benjamin Madley, “Patterns of Frontier Genocide 1803–1910: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia,” Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 2 (June 2004): 167–192. For examples of how what happened in Tasmanian has become a part of many Australian and British “history wars” see Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark, The History Wars (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003). For an illustration of continued interest critiquing academic interest in the genocidal dimensions of these history wars, see Theodore Dalrymple, “Why Intellectuals Like Genocide,” New England Review (July, 2007), http://www.newenglishreview.org/Theodore_Dalrymple/Why_Intellectuals_Like_Genocide/
35.
See Patrick Wolfe’s analysis of some of this deviousness. Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference.”
36.
Rogers and Stephen Bain, “Genocide and Frontier Violence,” 85.
37.
Raymond Evans and Bill Thorpe, “Indigenocide and the Massacre of Aboriginal History,” Overland (2011): 21–39.
38.
John Dawson, “Van Demonisation: The Revival of the Tasmanian Genocide Thesis,” Quadrant 52, no. 11 (November 2008): 48–53.
39.
Ibid., 53.
40.
John Dawson, Washout: On the Academic Response to the Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Sydney: Macleay Press, 2004).
41.
For the attempted mainstreaming of some of these ideas see John Dawson, “The Truth Wars,” Australian Broadcast Network, last modified March 7, 2005, https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/perspective/john-dawson/3443660
42.
William E. L. H. Crowther, “The Final Phase of the Extinct Tasmanian Race, 1847–1876,” Records of the Queen Victoria Museum 49 (1974): 1–34, 2.
43.
Lieutenant Governor Arthur, quoted in Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 83.
44.
Keith Windschuttle, “The Myths of Frontier Massacres in Australian History,” Quadrant 44, no. 11 (November 2000): 17–24.
45.
Johnston, “George August Robinson,” 170.
46.
Herman Merivale, Lectures on Colonization and Colonies, Delivered Before the University of Oxford in 1839, 1840 & 1841, 2 Volumes (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1842), II, 150.
47.
Ibid., 153.
48.
Edmonds, “‘Our History Is Not the Last Word,’” 138.
49.
Ibid.
50.
Plomley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 10–29; Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 3–4.
51.
Madley, “Patterns of Frontier Genocide,” 170.
52.
See A Dirk Moses, “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.
53.
Plomley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 25.
54.
Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 371.
55.
James Ross, The Settler in Van Diemen’s Land (1836; Melbourne, Marsh Walsh, 1975), 17.
56.
Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 83. For contemporary examples of critiques of these lashings, see James Backhouse, Extracts from Letters of James Backhouse Whilst Engaged in a Religious Visit to Van Diemen’s Land, New South Wales, and South Africa, 2 volumes (London: Harvey and Darton, 1841).
57.
Thomas Lempriere, The Penal Settlements of Early Van Diemen’s Land (1839; Tasmania: Royal Society of Tasmania, 1954), 60.
58.
Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 85.
59.
See Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (December 2006): 387–409.
60.
Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians, 61. The notion of the “last” of the Tasmanians would be a topic that appealed to those wanting to keep visual records of these events as well. See, for example, the 1978 Australian documentary, Tom Haydon, The Last Tasmanian: A Story of Genocide (Avalon Beach, New South Wales: Maxwell’s Collection, 1982).
61.
Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 86.
62.
Ibid., 87. For other discussions of other colonial origins of similar annihilations rhetorics, see Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
63.
Lieutenant Governor Arthur to Secretary Sir George Murray, November 20, 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 (Cambridge: House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers, 1831), 60, quoted in Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 87.
64.
Ibid.
65.
Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 5; Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 88.
66.
Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 90.
67.
Ibid., 91.
68.
Ibid.
69.
Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians (St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1996), 85.
70.
Andrew Darby, “More Than 1000 Died in Tasmanian War, Says Historian,” The Sydney Morning Herald, last modified April 28, 2012, https://www.smh.com.au/national/more-than-1000-died-in-tasmanian-war-says-historian-20120427-1xq5p.html
71.
For an example of attempts to provide contrapuntal or counterhistorical readings of Tasmanian histories and memories see Leonie Stevens, “Me Write Myself”: The Free Aboriginal Inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land at Wybaleena, 1832–47 (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2017).
72.
Madley, “Patterns of Frontier Genocide,” 171.
73.
For a critique of Robinson’s efforts see Ashley Riley Sousa, “‘They Will Be Hunted Down Like Wild Beasts and Destroyed’: A Comparative Study of Genocide in California and Tasmania,” Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 2 (2004): 193–209.
74.
See Tony Barta, “Mr. Darwin’s Shooters: On Natural Selection and the Naturalizing of Genocide,” Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (2005): 116–137.
75.
David Burn, A Picture of Van Diemen’s Land (Hobart: Cat & Fiddle Press, 1973), 22.
76.
Backhouse, Extracts, I: 15.
77.
Henry Melville, The History of the Island of Van Diemen’s Land from the Year 1824 to 1835 (1835: Sydney: Halstead Press, 1965), 31; Madley, “Patterns of Frontier Genocide,” 172.
78.
Jeni Thornley, “Race Wars Written Out of Australian History,” Jen Thornley Documentary, last modified April 23, 2007, http://jenithornleydoco.blogspot.com/2007/04/race-wars-written-out-of-australian.html?m=0
79.
Henry Saxelby Melville, The History of Van Diemen’s Land: from the Year 1824 to 1835, edited by George Mackaness (1836: Hobart: Horwitz-Grahame, 1965), 56–57.
80.
John West, The History of Tasmania (Launceston: Henry Dowling, 1852), II, 18. For an example of another account from these same years see 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, Australia: Advertiser, 1869).
81.
Shayne Breen, “Extermination, Extinction, Genocide,” 84.
82.
Edmonds, “‘Our History Is Not the Last Word,’” 147.
83.
For an overview of varies responses to the Black Line see Lyndall Ryan, “The Black Line in Van Diemen’s Land: Success or Failure,” Journal of Australian Studies 37, no. 1 (2013): 3–18.
84.
Ibid., 84.
85.
Russell McGregor, “Review: The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 60, no. 3 (2014): 466–467, 466.
86.
Alex Tyrrell, A Sphere of Benevolence: The Life of Joseph Orton, Wesleyan Methodist Missionary, 1795–1842 (Melbourne: State Library of Victoria, 1993), 140.
87.
Tyrell, A Sphere of Benevolence, 141; Tony Barta, “‘They Appear to Vanish from the Face of the Earth.’ Aborigines and the European Project in Australia Felix,” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 4 (2008): 519–539, 538.
88.
Henry Reynolds, “Genocide in Tasmania?” in A. Dirk Moses, “Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History,” in Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, edited by A. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 147: Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 80.
89.
Norman James Brian Plomley, Weep in Silence: A History of the Flinders Island Aboriginal Settlement with the Flinders Island Journal of George Augustus Robinson (Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 1987), 172. See also Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians (St. Leonards, New South Wales: Allen & Unwin, 1996).
90.
Promley, Weep in Silence: 172. Sometimes survivors were sent to orphanages or other island locations. See Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians.
91.
Breen, “Extermination, Extinction, Genocide,” 6.
92.
James Erskine Calder, “Some Account of the Wars of Extirpation, and Habits of the Native Tribes of Tasmania,” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 3 (1974): 7–29.
93.
Ibid., 8.
94.
Ibid.
95.
Ibid.
96.
Ibid., 9.
97.
Ibid.
98.
Ibid., 11.
99.
Ibid.
100.
Ibid., 13.
101.
Ibid.
102.
Ibid., 14–15.
103.
Ibid., 16.
104.
Ibid., 19.
105.
Ibid., 21.
106.
Ibid., 24.
107.
James W. Agnew, “The Last of the Tasmanians,” Proceedings of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science 1 (1888): 478–481.
108.
Ibid., 479.
109.
Ibid.
110.
Ibid., 478–479.
111.
Ibid., 478.
112.
Ibid.
113.
Crowther, “The Final Phase,” 8.
114.
Ibid., 8–29.
115.
Ibid., 28–29.
116.
Barta, “‘They Appear to Vanish,’” 519–539.
117.
Ibid.
118.
Clive Turnbull, Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1948).
119.
Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, 255. See also Jared Diamond, “In Black and White,” Natural History 97, no. 10 (October 1988): 8–14.
120.
Barta, “Relations of Genocide,” 227–232.
121.
Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 255.
122.
Moses, “An Antipodean Genocide?” 99.
123.
National Indian Child Welfare Association, Bringing Them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997).
124.
Ibid., 275.
125.
See Neill Levi, “‘No Sensible Comparison’?: The Place of the Holocaust in Australia’s History Wars,” History & Memory 19, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2007): 124–156.
126.
Reynolds, An Indelible Stain?
127.
Promley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash.
128.
See various contributors to “Footnotes to a War,” The Sydney Morning Herald, last modified December 13, 2003, https://www.smh.com.au/national/footnotes-to-a-war-20031213-gdhzmz.html; Rhiannon Shine, “Tasmania’s Difficult History: Monuments Leave Out Dark Side to Colonial Past,” ABC News, last modified August 30, 2017, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-31/monuments-to-tasmanias-colonial-past-have-dark-side/8851554
129.
On Quadrant see Ben Kiernan, “Cover-Up and Denial of Genocide,” Critical Asian Studies 34, no. 3 (June 2002): 163–92.
130.
Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 81.
131.
Windschuttle, Fabrication, 399.
132.
Keith Windschuttle, quoted in Paul Sheehan, “Our History Not to Be Rewritten by Put Right,” Sydney Morning Herald, last modified November 24, 2002, paragraph 10, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/1037697982065.html
133.
See Price, “Overcoming the Myth of Extinction,” 68–90.
134.
Keith Windschuttle, “The Fabrication of Aboriginal History,” The Sydney Papers 15, no. 1 (Summer, 2003): 21–29. http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/197.pdf
135.
Ibid., 23.
136.
Ibid., 24.
137.
Ibid., 26.
138.
Ibid.
139.
Ibid.
140.
Ibid.
141.
Ibid.
142.
Shayne Breen, “Extermination, Extinction, Genocide,” 90.
143.
Ibid., 90.
144.
For a list of some of the alleged killing sites see Lyndall Ryan, “List of Multiple Killings of Aboriginals in Tasmania: 1804–1835,” Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, March 5, 2008, http://www.massviolence.org/IMG/article_PDF/List-of-multiple-killings-of-Aborigines-in-Tasmania-1804.pdf
145.
Henry Reynolds, “Foreword,” Nicholas Clement, The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2014).
146.
McGregor, “Review: The Black War,” 466.
147.
Nicholas Clements, The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2014).
148.
McGregor, “Review: The Black War,” 466.
149.
Tom Lawson, The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 127.
150.
Madley, “From Terror to Genocide,” 78.
151.
Ibid., 81.
152.
Ibid., 106.
153.
Edmonds, “‘Our History Is Not the Last Word,’” 152–153.
154.
Ibid., 156.
155.
Moses, “Genocide and Settler Society,” 30.

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Hasian, M. (2020). Remembering and Forgetting the Tasmanian Genocide. In: Debates on Colonial Genocide in the 21st Century. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21278-0_2

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