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The history wars in Australia are an ongoing public debate over the interpretation of the history of the British colonisation of Australia and development of contemporary Australian society (particularly with regard to the impact on Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders).

The Australian debate often concerns the extent to which the history of European colonisation post-1788 and government administration since Federation in 1901 may be characterised as having been:

• a relatively minor conflict between European colonists and Indigenous Australians, and generally lacking in events that might be termed 'invasion', 'warfare', 'guerrilla warfare', 'conquest' or 'genocide', and generally marked instead by humane intent by government authorities, with damage to indigenous people largely attributable to unintended factors (such as the spread of new diseases) rather than to malicious policies; or


• an invasion marked by violent conflict at the frontier, guerrilla warfare (or other forms of warfare) between Europeans and Aboriginal people, involving frequent or significant massacres of Aboriginal peoples engaged in defending their traditional tribal lands; a situation which can be said to have developed either nationally, or in certain areas, into something like a war of 'extermination' or something which accords with the term genocide as a consequence of British imperialism and colonialism involving continued dispossession, exploitation, ill treatment and cultural genocide.

The history wars also relates to broader themes concerning national identity, as well as methodological questions concerning the historian and the craft of researching and writing history, including issues such as the value and reliability of written records (of the authorities and settlers) and the oral tradition (of the Indigenous Australians), along with the political or similar ideological biases of those who interpret them. One theme is how British or multicultural Australian identity has been in history and today.^[1][2]

At the same time the history wars were in play, professional history seemed in decline, and popular writers began reclaiming the field.^[3]

Outline

In 1968 Professor W. E. H. "Bill" Stanner, an Australian anthropologist, coined the term the "Great Australian Silence" in a Boyer Lecture entitled "After the Dreaming",^[4] where he argued that the writing of Australian history was incomplete. He asserted that Australian national history as documented up to that point had largely been presented in a positive light, but that Indigenous Australians had been virtually ignored. He saw this as a structural and deliberate process to omit "several hundred thousand Aboriginal people who lived and died between 1788 and 1938 ... (who were but) ... negative facts of history and ... were in no way consequential for the modern period".^[5] A new strand of Australian historiography subsequently emerged which gave much greater attention to the negative experiences of Indigenous Australians during the British settlement of Australia. In the 1970s and 1980s, historians such as Manning Clark and Henry Reynolds published work which they saw as correcting a selective historiography that had misrepresented or ignored Indigenous Australian history. The historian Geoffrey Blainey argued in the literary and political journal Quadrant in 1993 that the telling of Australian history had moved from an unduly positive rendition (the "Three Cheers View") to an unduly negative view (The "'black armband'") and Australian commentators and politicians have continued to debate this subject.

Interpretations of Aboriginal history became part of the wider political debate sometimes called the 'culture wars' during the tenure of the Coalition government from 1996–2007, with the Prime Minister of Australia John Howard publicly championing the views of some of those associated with Quadrant.^[6] This debate extended into a controversy over the way history was presented in the National Museum of Australia and in high school history curricula.^[7][8] It also migrated into the general Australian media, with regular opinion pieces being published in major broadsheets such as The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Marcia Langton has referred to much of this wider debate as 'war porn'^[9] and an 'intellectual dead end'.^[10]

Two Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Keating and John Howard, were major participants in the "wars". According to the analysis for the Australian Parliamentary Library of Dr Mark McKenna,^[11]Paul Keating (1991–1996) was believed by John Howard (1996–2007) to portray Australia pre-Whitlam in an unduly negative light; while Keating sought to distance the modern Labor movement from its historical support for the Monarchy and the White Australia policy by arguing that it was the Conservative Australian Parties who had been barriers to national progress and excessively loyal to the British Empire. He accused Britain of having abandoned Australia during World War II. Keating was a staunch advocate of a symbolic apology to indigenous people for the misdeeds of past governments, and outlined his view of the origins and potential solutions to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in his Redfern Park Speech (drafted with the assistance of historian Don Watson). In 1999, following the release of the 1998 Bringing Them Home Report, Howard passed a Parliamentary Motion of Reconciliation describing treatment of Aboriginal people as the "most blemished chapter" in Australian history, but he did not make a Parliamentary apology.^[12] Howard argued that an apology was inappropriate as it would imply "intergeneration guilt" and said that "practical" measures were a better response to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage. Keating has argued for the eradication of remaining symbols linked to British origins: including deference for ANZAC Day, the Australian Flag and the Monarchy in Australia, while Howard was a supporter of these institutions. Unlike fellow Labor leaders and contemporaries, Bob Hawke and Kim Beazley, Keating never traveled to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day ceremonies. In 2008 he described those who gathered there as "misguided".^[13]

In 2006, John Howard said in a speech to mark the 50th anniversary of Quadrant that "Political Correctness" was dead in Australia but: "we should not underestimate the degree to which the soft-left still holds sway, even dominance, especially in Australia's universities"; and in 2006, Sydney Morning Herald Political Editor Peter Hartcher reported that Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd was entering the philosophical debate by arguing in response that "John Howard, is guilty of perpetrating 'a fraud' in his so-called culture wars ... designed not to make real change but to mask the damage inflicted by the Government's economic policies".^[14]

The defeat of the Howard government in the Australian Federal election of 2007, and its replacement by the Rudd Labor government altered the dynamic of the debate. Rudd made an official apology to the Stolen Generation^[15] with bi-partisan support.^[16] Like Keating, Rudd supported an Australian Republic, but in contrast to Keating, Rudd declared support for the Australian flag and supported the commemoration of ANZAC Day and expressed admiration for Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies.^[17][18]

Following the change of government and the passage, with support from all parties, of a Parliamentary apology to indigenous Australians, Professor of Australian Studies Richard Nile argued: "the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate",^[19] a view contested by others, including conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen.^[20] However, an intention to reengage in the history wars was indicated by then-Federal Opposition member Christopher Pyne.^[21]

Black armband / white blindfold debate

The black armband debate concerns whether or not accounts of Australian history gravitate towards an overly negative or an overly positive point of view. The black armband view of history was a phrase first used by Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey in his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture to describe views of history which, he believed, posited that "much of [pre-multicultural] Australian history had been a disgrace" and which focused mainly on the treatment of minority groups (especially Aboriginal people). This he contrasted with the 'Three Cheers' view, according to which: "nearly everything that came after [the convict era] was believed to be pretty good". Blainey argued that both such accounts of Australian history were inaccurate: "The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self congratulatory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced."^[22]

The lecture was subsequently published in the political and literary journal, Quadrant,^[23] which at the time was edited by Robert Manne and is now edited by Keith Windschuttle, two of the leading "history warriors", albeit on opposing sides of the debate. The phrase then began to be used by some commentators pejoratively to describe historians viewed as writing excessively critical Australian history "while wearing a black armband" of "mourning and grieving, or shame". New interpretations of Australia's history since 1788 were contested for focussing almost exclusively on official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession and cultural genocide and ignoring positive aspects of Australia's history.^[11]Manning Clark was named by Blainey in his 1993 speech as having "done much to spread the gloomy view and also the compassionate view with his powerful prose and Old Testament phrases".^[23]

The Howard Government's responses to the question of how to recount Australian history were initially formulated in the context of Paul Keating's characterisation of the subject. John Howard argued in a 1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture that the "balance sheet of Australian history" had come to be misrepresented:

The 'black armband' view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. ... I believe that the balance sheet of our history is one of heroic achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud than of which we should be ashamed. In saying that I do not exclude or ignore specific aspects of our past where we are rightly held to account. Injustices were done in Australia and no-one should obscure or minimise them. ... But ... our priority should ... [be] to commit to a practical program of action that will remove the enduring legacies of disadvantage.^[24]

In 2009, Howard's successor Kevin Rudd also called for moving away from a black-arm view:

Time to leave behind us the polarisation that began to infect our every discussion of our nation's past. To go beyond the so-called "black arm" view that refused to confront some hard truths about our past, as if our forebears were all men and women of absolute nobility, without spot or blemish. But time, too, to go beyond the view that we should only celebrate the reformers, the renegades and revolutionaries, thus neglecting or even deriding the great stories of our explorers, of our pioneers, and of our entrepreneurs. Any truthful reflection of our nation's past is that these are all part of the rich fabric of our remarkable story ...^[25]

Stephen Muecke, currently Professor of Writing at the University of New South Wales, contributed to the debate by arguing that black armband events bring people together in common remembrance and cited Anzac Day as an example; while Aboriginal lawyer Noel Pearson argued that whilst there was much that is worth preserving in the cultural heritage of non-Aboriginal Australia, "To say that ordinary Australians who are part of the national community today do not have any connection with the shameful aspects of our past is at odds with our exhortations that they have connections to the prideful bits".^[26]

The notion of the 'white blindfold' view of history entered the debate as a pejorative counter-response to the notion of the "black armband school".^[27][28][29]

In his book Why Weren't We Told? in 1999, Henry Reynolds referred to Stanner's "Great Australian Silence", and to "a 'mental block' which prevented Australians from coming to terms with the past".^[30] He argued that the silence about Australia's history of frontier violence in much of the twentieth century stands in stark contrast with the openness with which violence was admitted and discussed in the nineteenth. Reynolds quotes many excerpts from the press, including an article written in the Townsville Herald in Queensland as late as 1907, by a "pioneer" who described his part in a massacre. Reynolds commented that violence against Aboriginals, far from being hushed up or denied, was openly talked about.

The nature of the debate began to change in 1999 with the publication of a book Massacre Myth by journalist, Rod Moran, who examined the 1926 Forrest River massacre in Western Australia. Moran concluded that the massacre was a myth inspired by the false claims of a missionary (possibly as a result of mental health issues).^[31] The principal historian of the Forrest River massacre, Neville Green, describes the massacre as probable but not able to be proven in court.^[32]Keith Windschuttle, an Australian historian, said that reviewing Moran's book inspired his own examination of the wider historical record.^[33] Windschuttle argues that much of Australian Aboriginal history, particularly as written since the late 1970s, was based on the use of questionable or unreliable evidence and on deliberate misrepresentation and fabrication of historical evidence. He based his conclusions on his examination of the evidence cited in previous historical accounts and reported incidences of non-existent documents being cited, misquoting and misleadingly selective quoting from documents and of documents being cited as evidence that certain events took place when his examination concluded that they do not support those claims. Windschuttle reported his conclusions in a number of articles published in Quadrant and in 2002, he published a book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume 1, Van Diemen’s Land 1803-1847, which focussed on Tasmanian colonial history.

Historian Geoffrey Blainey argued in a 2003 book review of Fabrication,^[34] that the number of instances when the source documents do not support the claims made and the fact that the divergences overwhelmingly tend to purport claims of violent conflict and massacres indicates that this is not a matter of mere error but bias.

The debate had therefore changed from an argument over whether there was an excessive focus on negative aspects of Australian history to one over to what extent, if at all, Australian Aboriginal history had been based on questionable evidence or had been falsified or fabricated and whether this had exaggerated the extent of violence against Aboriginal people. Particular historians and histories that are challenged include Lyndall Ryan and Henry Reynolds and the histories of massacres, particularly in Tasmania but also elsewhere in Australia. Windschuttle's naming of historians whom he accused of misrepresentation and fabrication of the historical evidence, created considerable controversy and produced a range of responses including condemnation of as well as support for his work.^{[35][36][37][38][39]}

Genocide debate

The case for using the term "Australian genocide" rests on evidence from various sources that people argue proves some form of genocide. People cite the list of massacres of indigenous Australians by white settlers, mainly in the 19th century (cf. Blood on the Wattle by Bruce Elder or Frontier History Revisited by Robert Orsted-Jensen); only a few massacres were documented, and the evidence is strong that evidence of massacres was generally covered by secrecy and there are powerful signs that documents had been destroyed. Evidence is solid that Queensland's Native Police produced diaries, collision reports and monthly and quarterly enumerations of 'patrols' and 'collisions' with indigenous people, and that all of this material was stored in the Queensland police department. However, not one single sheet of information of this kind which is today available at the Queensland State archive originate from files delivered by the police department, the material left comes solely from other government offices. Only human interference can produce a total loss of the vast Native Police Force records once stored in the Queensland Police Department.^[40]

Others have pointed to the dramatic reduction in the Tasmanian Aboriginal population in the 19th century and the forced removal of generations of Aboriginal children from their parents during the 20th century as evidence of genocide. The evidence includes documentation of the wish, and sometimes intention, of a significant proportion of late 19th-century and early 20th-century white Australians to see the Aboriginal "race" eliminated. Documents include published letters to the editors of high-circulation newspapers. Certainly this was the case in Queensland, in terms of indigenous people the most populated section of Australia and certainly the colony with the most violent frontier. In June 1866 Sir Robert Herbert summing up his experience after little more than five years as the first Premier of this colony wrote:

Every method of dealing with these very dangerous savages has been tried, and I believe no more satisfactory system can be devised than that under which the people of Queensland endeavour to deal with a difficulty which it is feared can never terminate except with the gradual disappearance of the unimprovable race.^[41]

The mentioned "system", for which Herbert was among the people personal responsible, was the so-called "Native Police system" which typically went about "dispersing" any sign of indigenous resistance at the frontier by use of deadly early morning attacks on Aboriginal camps. This semi-military force was allowed to go about its business, typically instigating large scale deadly retaliation without prior investigating of alleged crime. They generally took no prisoners at the frontier and there are no signs that they ever enforced any other "law" than "might is right". It was a force designed more in the manner of the recent times phenomenon known as the "death-squad" and the secrecy of its operations was ensured by the remoteness of its operations, added a system that denied the evidence from "blacks" while the force itself was instructed to ensure that there would always be only one white witness, the officer in charge of each detachment. Recently the first ever attempt to scientifically calculate the amount of Aboriginal people killed in encounters with the Native Police indicates that numbers may exceed 45,000.^[42]

The phrase "useless race" was commonly expressed in Queensland such as in 1877 when an editorial in the leading journal noted that,

The desire for progressive advancement and substantial prosperity is, after all, stronger than sentimental dislike to the extinction of a savage and useless race.^[43]

Classifying Aboriginal people as a useless or unimprovable race was common. Comprehensively debating the native police and the frontier in public in 1880 in the columns of the Queenslander (the weekly edition of the colony's leading journal), one could read the following statements from yet another prominent settler,

And being a useless race, what does it matter what they suffer any more than the distinguished philanthropist who writes in this behalf cares for the wounded half dead pigeon he tortures at his shooting matches.^[44]

Remarks which were followed up in October of that years by Boyd Dunlop Morehead, one of the leading landholders, manager of the Scottish Australian Investment Co.'s Bowen Downs in 1866-81 and a future Premier, could be heard making the following acknowledgement in a parliamentary speech, saying, yes settlers in the past did go

... out, and in their pioneering had, of necessity, to use extreme measures to the inhabitants of the soil. The aboriginal, no doubt, had been shot down; no one denied it ... this race was being worked off the face of the earth. That that was so everyone knew, and that it must be so, none would deny ... For his own part he did not believe that the aboriginal race was worth preserving. If there were no aboriginals it would be a very good thing ^[45]

After the introduction of the word "genocide" in the 1940s by Raphael Lemkin, Lemkin himself and most comparative scholars of genocide and many general historians, such as Robert Hughes, Ward Churchill, Leo Kuper and Jared Diamond, basing their analysis on previously published histories, present the extinction of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people as a text book example of a genocide.^[46] The Australian historian of genocide, Ben Kiernan, in his recent history of the concept and practice, Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur (2007), treats the Australian evidence over the first century of colonization as an example of genocide.^[47]

Among scholars specializing in Australian history much recent debate has focused on whether indeed what happened to groups of Aboriginal people, and especially the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, during the European colonisation of Australia can be classified as genocide. According to Mark Levene, most Australian experts are now "considerably more circumspect".^[48] In the specific instance of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, Henry Reynolds, who takes events in other regions of colonial Australia as marked by "genocidal moments",^[49] argues that the records show that British administrative policy in Tasmania was explicitly concerned to avoid extermination. However, in practice the events on the ground that lead to their virtual extinction worked out.^[50] Tony Barta, John Docker and Anne Curthoys however emphasize Lemkin's linkage between colonization and genocide.^[51] Barta, an Australian expert in German history, argued from Lemkin that, "there is no dispute that the basic fact of Australian history is the appropriation of the continent by an invading people and the dispossession, with ruthless destructiveness, of another".^[52] Docker argues that, "(w)e ignore Lemkin's wide-ranging definition of genocide, inherently linked with colonialism, at our peril".^[53] Curthoys argues that the separation between international and local Australian approaches has been deleterious. While calling for "a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship",^[54] her own view is that the Tasmanian instance constitutes a "case for genocide, though not of state planning, mass killing, or extinction".^[55]

Much of the debate on whether European colonisation of Australia resulted in genocide, centres on whether "the term 'genocide' only applies to cases of deliberate mass killings of Aboriginal people by European settlers, or ... might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by the reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers".^[56] Historians such as Tony Barta argue that for the victim group it matters little if they were wiped out as part of a planned attack. If a group is decimated as a result of smallpox introduced to Australia by British settlers, or introduced European farming methods causing a group of Aboriginal people to starve to death, the result is, in his opinion, genocide.^[57]

Henry Reynolds points out that European colonists and their descendants frequently use expressions that included "extermination", "extinction", and "extirpation" when discussing the treatment of Aboriginal people during the colonial period, and as in his opinion genocide "can take many forms, not all of them violent".^[58] Janine Roberts has argued that genocide was Australian policy, even if only by omission. She notes that despite contemporary newspapers regularly decrying "the barbarous crop of exterminators", and "a system of native slaughter ... merciless and complete", the government contended that "no illegal acts were occurring", with the worst incidents being described as merely "indiscretions".^[59]

The political scientist Kenneth Minogue and other historians such as Keith Windschuttle disagree and think that no genocide took place.^[60][61] Minogue does not try to define genocide but argues that its use is an extreme manifestation of the guilt felt by modern Australian society about the past misconduct of their society to Aboriginal people. In his opinion its use reflects the process by which Australian society is trying to come to terms with its past wrongs and in doing this Australians are stretching the meaning of genocide to fit within this internal debate.^[62]

In the April 2008 edition of The Monthly, David Day wrote further on the topic of genocide. He wrote that Lemkin considered genocide to encompass more than mass killings but also acts like "driv[ing] the original inhabitants off the land ... confin[ing] them in reserves, where policies of deliberate neglect may be used to reduce their numbers ... Tak[ing] indigenous children to absorb them within their own midst ... assimilation to detach the people from their culture, language and religion, and often their names."^[63]

Controversy over smallpox in Australia

The arrival of smallpox in Australia is of uncertain origin and is a major theme in the history wars. The lack of immunity among Aboriginal Australians to this introduced disease saw it inflict a devastating toll on the Aboriginal population. Though the First Fleet itself did not arrive with any known carriers of the disease, the observation of an epidemic among the Aboriginal population of Sydney around 16 months after the British arrived has led to speculation that the Fleet itself brought this disease to Australia. Some historians have suggested that the disease may have been either released by accident or theft of medicine stores or perhaps been deliberately employed as a form of "germ warfare" against indigenous Australians. Inoculation was thus commonly practised by surgeons decades before 1796 and the process of smallpox vaccination was introduced by Edward Jenner. Dried scab was commonly stored in glass containers as part of a surgeons remedies.^[64]

Early speculation on the origins of the disease is recorded in the writing of a First Fleet Captain of Marines, Watkin Tench, who noted an "extraordinary calamity" among the Aboriginal people of Sydney, beginning in April 1789. Repeated accounts of dead bodies marked with pustules consistent with smallpox began being reported around Sydney Harbour around this time. Tench wrote that the colonists' observations had led them to suppose that smallpox was not known in New South Wales and as no First Fleeters had suffered from the disease, its sudden existence among the Aboriginal people was "inexplicable". Tench speculated as to whether the disease might be indigenous to the country; or whether it had been brought to the colony by the French expedition of Lapérouse a year before; traversed the continent from the West where Europeans had previously landed; brought by expedition of James Cook; or indeed by the first British settlers at Sydney. "Our surgeons brought out varioulous matter in bottles", he wrote, "but to infer that it was produced from this cause were a supposition so wild as to be unworthy of consideration".^[65]

Subsequently, and despite the lack of certainty over how or when the disease reached Australia, there has been a history war regarding the way that smallpox arrived in Australia, especially whether it was deliberately used as a crude biological weapon against indigenous peoples.

Medical scientists such as Sir Edward Stirling and Sir John Cleland published a number of books and articles between 1911 and 1966 suggesting that smallpox arrived in Northern Australia from an Asian source.^[66]

A rival theory, that smallpox was introduced to NSW in 1789 by British settlers, was put forward in 1914 by the director of the Australian Quarantine Service, Dr J. H. L. Cumpston.^[67]

In 1983, Professor Noel Butlin, an economic historian, suggested: "it is possible and, in 1789, likely, that infection of the Aboriginal people was a deliberate extermination act". Historians David Day and Henry Reynolds repeated Butlin’s claims and in 2001 Reynolds wrote: "one possibility is that the epidemic was deliberately or accidentally let loose by someone in the settlement at Sydney Cove. Not surprisingly this is a highly contentious proposition. If true, it would clearly fall within the ambit of the Genocide Convention".^[68] Butlin argued that while Macassan fishermen could possibly 'have landed the virus on the Australian mainland at some stage their ability to do so was limited'.^[69] It is furthermore highly unlikely, he argued, that this virus should have been brought down from the Gulf of Carpentaria to coincidence with the first major outbreak "just fifteen months after the landing of the first fleet". Besides the time factor connected to Macassans, 'over seven or eight weeks (or more)', the type of vessels, the limited potential for contact between Aboriginal people and fishermen, and the fact of clothing as carrier and virus is destroyed or seriously reduced in contact with salt water, makes the Macassan theory highly unlikely, he argued. Indeed, infected 'Macassans would be either dead or fully recovered long before reaching the Gulf of Carpentaria.^[70] Whereas transfer somehow, theft accident or the like, from scab originally stored in glass containers carried by just one of the seven medical officers on the first fleet seems the most likely cause.^[71]

C. C. Macknight (1986) an authority on the centuries-old interaction between indigenous Australians and the people of Makassar (later part of Indonesia), revived the theory that smallpox was introduced to Australia by Macassan mariners visiting Arnhem Land.^[72]

Australian virologist Frank Fenner (1988) – who in 1977–80 led the successful World Health Organization (WHO) campaign to eradicate smallpox and was the principal author of a 1988 WHO report, Smallpox and its Eradication – pointed out that no cases of smallpox were reported amongst convicts, sailors, military personnel, or free settlers, on the First Fleet.^[73] The virus was also not reported among British or Aboriginal people at Port Jackson over the following 15 months. It was, therefore, unlikely that a person suffering from smallpox and travelling with the First Fleet had caused the 1789 outbreak.

While there were cases of smallpox in Macassar during 1789, there are no reports of it occurring prior to that period. However, smallpox had long been present in island South East Asia – possibly as early the 4th century according to Frank Fenner.^[74] There were outbreaks of smallpox in Indonesia throughout the 18th century.^[75] These included, for example, major epidemics in the Sultanate of Tidore (in the Moluccas) during the 1720s, the Sultanate of Banjar (South Kalimantan), in 1734, 1750–51, 1764–65 and 1778–79; and in southern Sumatra during the 1750s, the 1770s, and in 1786. Macassans had contact with these areas both directly and indirectly (through foreign traders and invaders).

David Day (2001) reiterated Butlin's argument and suggested that members of Sydney's garrison of Royal Marines may have attempted to use smallpox as a biological weapon in 1789.^[76] The following year, however, John Connor stated that Day's theory was "unsustainable".^[77]

In a 2002 book, Invisible Invaders, historian Judy Campbell – advised by Fenner – reviewed reports of disease amongst Aboriginal people from 1780–1880, including the smallpox epidemics of 1789-90, the 1830s and the 1860s. Campbell argues that the evidence, including that contained in these reports shows that, while many diseases such as tuberculosis were introduced by British colonists, this was not so for smallpox and that the speculations of British responsibility made by other historians were based on tenuous evidence, largely on the mere coincidence that the 1789-90 epidemic was first observed afflicting the Aboriginal people not long after the establishment of the first British settlement. Campbell argues instead that the north-south route of transmission of the 1860s epidemics (which is generally agreed), also applied in the earlier ones. Campbell noted that the fleets of fast Macassan fishing vessels, propelled by monsoonal winds, reached Australia after being at sea for as little as ten to fifteen days, well within the incubation period of smallpox. The numbers of people travelling in the fleets were large enough to sustain smallpox for extended periods of time without it ‘burning out’. The Macassans spent up to six months fishing along the northern Australian coastline and Aboriginal people had "day-to-day contact with the islanders. Aboriginals visited the praus and the camps the visitors set up on shore, they talked and traded…" ^[78] She also notes that Butlin, writing in 1983, "did not recognize that Aboriginals were "great travellers", who spread infection over long distances…." and that smallpox was spread through their extensive social and trading contacts as well as by Aboriginal people fleeing from the disease.^[79] Campbell also cited British historian Charles Wilson, who cited "medical microbiology" in disagreeing with Butlin about the origins of the 1789 outbreak, and "doubted his estimates of its demographic impact", as well as "First Fleet historian Alan Frost [who] also disagreed with Butlin’s views".^[80]

Christopher Warren (2007) claimed that Fenner did not address the issue of variolous material brought in bottles by the First Fleet, for use as an inoculant.^[81] Warren argued that, even if the variolous material was degraded, it could still infect susceptible people. Smallpox spread by the inhalation of airborne droplets of virus in situations of personal contact or by contact with blankets, clothing or other objects that an infected person had recently used.^[82] This material was carried by First Fleet surgeons for inoculation purposes. Warren also suggested that Frost's view was based on a false premise: that the First Fleet's stocks of virus were sterilised by summer heat.

Craig Mear (2008) and Michael J. Bennett (2009) have disputed Campbell's hypothesis that smallpox was introduced to Australia in 1789 through contact between Aboriginal people and mariners from Makassar.^[83][84][85]

H. A. Willis (2010), in a survey of much of the literature discussed above, reiterated the argument made by Campbell.^[86] In response, Warren (2011) suggested that Willis had not taken into account research on how heat affects the smallpox virus, cited by the World Health Organization.^[87] In reply, Willis (2011) reiterated that his position was supported by a closer reading of Frank Fenner’s report to the World Health Organization (1988) and invited readers to consult that report online.^[73][88]

Macknight re-entered the debate in 2011, declaring: "The overwhelming probability must be that it [smallpox] was introduced, like the later epidemics, by [Macassan] trepangers on the north coast and spread across the continent to arrive in Sydney quite independently of the new settlement there."^[89]

In 2010 John Carmody, a professor of medicine, put forward an alternative theory on Robyn Williams’s ABC Radio Science Show. Carmody asserted that the 1789 epidemic could not have been smallpox and was almost certainly chickenpox.^[90]. Carmody argued that smallpox, being much less infectious than chickenpox, could not have spread so rapidly from tribe to tribe around Sydney (nor from Arnhem Land to the Sydney region); but if present would certainly have infected some of the European colonists: “If it had really been smallpox, I would have expected about 50 cases amongst the colonists.” Carmody pointed out that chickenpox can take a severe toll on a population with little hereditary or acquired immunological resistance, and that it was certainly present in the colony. With regard to how smallpox might have reached the colony, Carmody later said: "There is absolutely no evidence to support any of the theories and some of them are fanciful and far-fetched."^[91][92] In response, Christopher Warren rejected suggestions that chickenpox caused the 1789 epidemic.^[93][94][95] Carmody’s argument on the Science Show was not, for some time, followed by a scholarly paper, and was ignored by many historians.

However another medical researcher working on Aboriginal epidemiology, Dr G E Ford stated in late 2010 that he had previously and independently reached Carmody’s conclusions: “In a project applying a specialist understanding of disease and epidemiology from my own previous professional life as a pathobiologist, I had verified that the small pox was not Smallpox but was Chicken Pox brought to the colony in a latent form later known as Shingles.” Ford also said that he had “identified a likely convict carrier and the means by which the chicken pox infection spread through the population”.^[96] However Ford concedes that neither he nor Carmody can claim priority for this theory since:
“In 1985 a teacher of ‘medical geography’, Peter Curson of Macquarie University presented a good case on historic evidence that the disease was chickenpox.^[97] [Also] At a conference on ‘Aboriginal Studies’ in 1987, archaeologist Barry Wright presented his conclusion^[98] that:
'I believe . . . that an introduced epidemic of chickenpox not smallpox swept through the tribes, its effects every bit as deadly as if it had been smallpox'.”

To maintain coherence with earlier historical accounts, Ford refers to “the small pox epidemic of 1791”, but makes two words of “small pox” and reminds the reader that he believes the “small pox” in question was “Chicken Pox, a small pox other than Smallpox.”^[99] This convention has been followed by some later writers.

Warren (2014) subsequently rejected the theory that the 1789 epidemic had originated from Macassar.^[100] He claimed that there was no evidence of a major outbreak of smallpox in Macassar before 1789;^[101] there were no indigenous trade routes that would have enabled overland transmission from Arnhem Land to Port Jackson;^[102] the Makassan theory was contradicted by Aboriginal oral tradition,^[103] and 1829 was the earliest point at which there was possible evidence that Makassans had been the source of a smallpox outbreak.

Dr Seth Carus^[104] (2015) stated: "Ultimately, we have a strong circumstantial case supporting the theory that someone deliberately introduced smallpox in the Aboriginal population."^[105]

Yet in a 2014 paper on historic Aboriginal demography, the Australian National University’s Boyd Hunter and Sydney University’s Jack Carmody continue to argue^[106] that the recorded behavior of the epidemic rules out smallpox and indicates chickenpox.

Stolen Generations debate

Despite the lengthy and detailed findings set out in the 1997 Bringing Them Home report into the Stolen Generation, which documented the removal of Aboriginal children from their families by Australian State and Federal government agencies and church missions, the nature and extent of the removals have been disputed within Australia, with some commentators questioning the findings contained in the report and asserting that the Stolen Generation has been exaggerated. Sir Ronald Wilson, former President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and a Commissioner on the Inquiry, has stated that none of the more than 500 witnesses who appeared before the Inquiry were cross-examined. This has been the basis of criticism by the Coalition Government^[107] and by the anthropologist Ron Brunton in a booklet^[108] published by the Institute of Public Affairs that was criticised in turn by the lawyer Hal Wootten.^[109] An Australian Federal Government submission has questioned the conduct of the Commission which produced the report, arguing that the Commission failed to critically appraise or test the claims on which it based the report and failed to distinguish between those separated from their families "with and without consent, and with and without good reason". Not only has the number of children removed from their parents been questioned, but also the intent and effects of the government policy.^[110]

Some critics, such as Andrew Bolt, have questioned the very existence of the Stolen Generation. Bolt stated that it is a "preposterous and obscene" myth and that there was actually no policy in any state or territory at any time for the systematic removal of "half-caste" Aboriginal children. Robert Manne responded that Bolt did not address the documentary evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generations and that this is a clear case of historical denialism.^[111] Bolt then challenged Manne to produce ten cases in which the evidence justified the claim that children were "stolen" as opposed to having been removed for reasons such as neglect, abuse, abandonment, etc. He argued that Manne did not respond and that this was an indication of unreliability of the claim that there was policy of systematic removal.^[112] In reply, Manne stated that he supplied a documented list of 250 names^[113][114] Bolt stated that prior to a debate, Manne provided him with a list of 12 names that he was able to show during the debate was "a list of people abandoned, saved from abuse or voluntarily given up by their parents"; and that during the actual debate, Manne produced a list of 250 names without any details or documentation as to their circumstances. Bolt also stated that he was subsequently able to identify and ascertain the history of some of those on the list and was unable to find a case where there was evidence to justify the term ‘stolen’. He stated that one of the names on the list of allegedly stolen children was 13-year-old Dolly, taken into the care of the State after being "found seven months pregnant and penniless, working for nothing on a station".^[115]

The Bolt/Manne debate is a fair sample of the adversarial debating style in the area. There is focus on individual examples as evidence for or against the existence of a policy, and little or no analysis of other documentary evidence such as legislative databases showing how the legal basis for removal varied over time and between jurisdictions,^[116] or testimony from those who were called on to implement the policies,^[117] which was also recorded in the Bringing Them Home report. A recent review of legal cases claims it is difficult for Stolen Generation claimants to challenge what was written about their situation at the time of removal.^[118]

The report also identified instances of official misrepresentation and deception, such as when caring and able parents were incorrectly described by Aboriginal Protection Officers as not being able to properly provide for their children, or when parents were told by government officials that their children had died, even though this was not the case.

The new Australian Government elected in 2007 issued an Apology similar to those that State Governments had issued at or about the time of the Bringing Them Home report ten years earlier. On 13 February 2008, Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia moved a formal apology in the House of Representatives,^[119]:167 which was moved concurrently by the Leader of the Government in the Senate^{[citation needed]}. It passed unanimously in the House of Representatives on 13 March 2008.^{[citation needed]} In the Senate, the leader of the Australian Greens moved an amendment seeking to add compensation to the apology,^{[120]:161–4} which was defeated in a vote of 65 to 4,^{[120]:165–6} after which the motion was passed unanimously^{[citation needed]}.

Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History

In 2002, historian Keith Windschuttle, in his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, questions the historical evidence used to identify the number of Aboriginal people deliberately killed during European colonisation, especially focusing on the Black War in Tasmania. He argues that there is credible evidence for the violent deaths of only 118 Tasmanian Aboriginal people, as having been directly killed by the British, although there were undoubtedly an unquantifiable number of other deaths for which no evidence exists. He argues that the Tasmanian Aboriginal population was devastated by a lethal cocktail of introduced diseases to which they had little or no resistance due to their isolation from the mainland and the rest of humanity for thousands of years. The deaths and infertility caused by these introduced diseases, combined with the deaths from what violent conflict there was, rapidly decimated the relatively small Aboriginal population. Windschuttle also examined the nature of those violent episodes that did occur and concluded that there is no credible evidence of warfare over territory. Windschuttle argues that the primary source of conflict between the British and the Aboriginal people was raids by Aboriginal people, often involving violent attacks on settlers, to acquire goods (such as blankets, metal implements and 'exotic' foods) from the British. With this and with a detailed examination of footnotes in and evidence cited by the earlier historical works, he criticises the claims by historians such as Henry Reynolds and Professor Lyndall Ryan that there was a campaign of guerrilla warfare against British settlement. Particular historians and histories that are challenged include Henry Reynolds and the histories of massacres, particularly in Tasmania (such as in the Cape Grim massacre) but also elsewhere in Australia. Windschuttle's claims are based upon the argument that the 'orthodox' view of Australian history were founded on hearsay or the misleading use of evidence by historians.

Windschuttle argues that, in order to advance the ‘deliberate genocide’ argument, Reynolds has misused source documentation, including that from British colonist sources, by quoting out of context. In particular, he accuses Reynolds of selectively quoting from responses to an 1830 survey in Tasmania in that Reynolds quoted only from those responses that could be construed as advocating "extermination", "extinction", and "extirpation" and failed to mention other responses to the survey, which indicated that a majority of respondents rejected genocide, were sympathetic to the plight of the Aboriginal people, feared that conflict arising from Aboriginal attacks upon settlers would result in the extinction of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people and advocated the adoption of courses of action to prevent this happening.^[121]

Windschuttle's claims and research have been disputed by some historians, in Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, an anthology including contributions from Henry Reynolds and Professor Lyndall Ryan, edited and introduced by Robert Manne, professor of politics at La Trobe University. This anthology has itself been the subject of examination by Melbourne businessman, freelance writer and Objectivist John Dawson, in Washout: On the academic response to The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, which argues that "Whitewash" leaves Windschuttle's claims and research unrefuted.^[122]

In "Contra Windschuttle", an article published in the conservative publication Quadrant, S.G. Foster examined some of the evidence that Windschuttle presented on one issue, Stanner's notion of the "Great Australian Silence". In Foster’s opinion, the evidence produced by Windschuttle did not prove his case that the "Great Australian Silence" was largely a myth. Windschuttle argues that, in the years prior to Stanner’s 1968 Boyer lecture, Australian historians had not been silent on the Aboriginal people although, in most cases, the historians’ "discussions were not to Stanner’s taste" and the Aboriginal people "might not have been treated in the way Reynolds and his colleagues would have liked".^[123] Foster argues that Windschuttle is "merciless with those who get their facts wrong" and that the fact that Windschuttle has also made a mistake^[124] means that he did not meet the criteria that he used to assess 'orthodox historians' he was arguing against and whom he accused of deliberately and extensively misrepresenting, misquoting, exaggerating and fabricating evidence relating to the level and nature of violent conflict between Aboriginal people and white settlers.^[125]

At the time of the publication of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One it was announced that a second volume, to be published in 2003, would cover claims of frontier violence in New South Wales and Queensland, and a third, in 2004, would cover Western Australia.^[126]
On 9 February 2008, however, it was announced that the second volume, anticipated to be published later in 2008, would be entitled The Fabrication of Australian History, Volume 2: The "Stolen Generations" and would address the issue of the removal of Aboriginal children (the "stolen generations") from their families in the 20th century.^[127]

The new volume was released in January 2010, now listed as Volume 3, with a statement that Volumes 2 and 4 would appear later.^[128] Announcing the publication, Windschuttle claimed that the film Rabbit-Proof Fence had misrepresented the child removal at the centre of the story, and offered inaccurate accounts of Molly's journey as it was recounted by her daughter, Doris Pilkington. These claims were subsequently rejected by the makers of the film.^[129]

Stuart Macintyre's The History Wars

In 2003 Australian historian Stuart Macintyre published The History Wars, written with Anna Clark.^[130] This was a study of the background of, and arguments surrounding, recent developments in Australian historiography, and concluded that the History Wars had done damage to the nature of objective Australian history. At the launch of his book, historian Stuart Macintyre emphasised the political dimension of these arguments^[131] and said the Australian debate took its cue from the Enola Gay controversy in the United States.^[132] The book was launched by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who took the opportunity to criticise conservative views of Australian history, and those who hold them (such as the then Prime Minister John Howard), saying that they suffered from "a failure of imagination", and said that The History Wars "rolls out the canvas of this debate."^[133] Macintyre's critics, such as Greg Melluish (History Lecturer at the University of Wollongong), responded to the book by declaring that Macintyre was a partisan history warrior himself, and that "its primary arguments are derived from the pro-Communist polemics of the Cold War."^[134] Keith Windschuttle said that Macintyre attempted to "caricature the history debate."^[135] In a foreword to the book, former Chief Justice of Australia Sir Anthony Mason said that the book was "a fascinating study of the recent endeavours to rewrite or reinterpret the history of European settlement in Australia."^[136]

National Museum of Australia controversy

In 2001, writing in Quadrant, a conservative magazine,^[137] historian Keith Windschuttle argued that the then-new National Museum of Australia (NMA) was marred by "political correctness" and did not present a balanced view of the nation's history.^[138] In 2003 the Howard Government commissioned a review of the NMA. A potentially controversial issue was in assessing how well the NMA met the criterion that displays should: "Cover darker historical episodes, and with a gravity that opens the possibility of collective self-accounting. The role here is in helping the nation to examine fully its own past, and the dynamic of its history—with truthfulness, sobriety and balance. This extends into covering present-day controversial issues."^[139] While the report concluded that there was no systemic bias, it recommended that there be more recognition in the exhibits of European achievements.^[140]

The report drew the ire of some historians in Australia, who claimed that it was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Government to politicise the museum and move it more towards a position which Geoffrey Blainey called the 'three cheers' view of Australian history, rather than the 'black armband' view.^[141] In 2006 columnist Miranda Devine described some of the Braille messages encoded on the external structure of the NMA, including "sorry" and "forgive us our genocide" and how they had been covered over by aluminium discs in 2001, and stated that under the new Director "what he calls the 'black T-shirt' view of Australian culture" is being replaced by "systematically reworking the collections, with attention to 'scrupulous historical accuracy'".^[142]

An example of the current approach at the NMA is the Bells Falls Gorge Interactive display, which presents Windschuttles's view of an alleged massacre alongside other views and contemporary documents and displays of weapons relating to colonial conflict around Bathurst in 1824 and invites visitors to make up their own minds.^[143]

University of New South Wales controversy

Publication in 2016 of "Indigenous Terminology" guidelines^[144] for the teaching and writing of history by the University of New South Wales created a brief media uproar.^[145] Amongst the advised language changes, they recommended "settlement" be replaced by "invasion", "colonisation" or "occupation". They also deemed that the generally accepted anthropological assumption^[146] that "Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for 40,000 years" should be dropped for "... since the beginning of the Dreaming/s" as it "reflects the beliefs of many Indigenous Australians that they have always been in Australia, from the beginning of time" and because "many Indigenous Australians see this sort of measurement and quantifying as inappropriate." While some commentators considered the guidelines appropriate,^[147] others categorised them as political correctness that was an anathema to learning and scholarship.^[148]

History wars and culture wars

The "history wars" are widely viewed, by external observers and participants on both sides as similar to the "culture war" underway in the United States. William D. Rubinstein, writing for the conservative British think tank the Social Affairs Unit, refers to the history wars as "the Culture War down under".^[149] Participants in the debate including Keith Windschuttle and Robert Manne are frequently described as "culture warriors" for their respective points of view.^[150][151]

Protagonists

• Geoffrey Blainey


• Stuart Macintyre


• Robert Manne


• Henry Reynolds


• Lyndall Ryan


• Keith Windschuttle

It bears mentioning, that despite the subject of the History wars being Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, none of the main protagonists in the debate have been Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.

See also

Australian topics

• Australian frontier wars


• Black War


• Historiography of the British Empire#Australia


• List of massacres of indigenous Australians


• Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country


• 
  Marngrook, subject of a debate often referred to as "football's history wars"


• Geographical renaming

Similar topics in other countries

• 
  Black Legend (Spain)


• 
  New Historians (Israel)

Footnotes

References

• 
  Curthoys, Ann (2008). "Genocide in Tasmania: The History of an Idea". In Moses, A. Dirk. Empire, colony, genocide: conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history. Studies on war and genocide. 12. Berghahn Books. pp. 229-252. ISBN 978-1-84545-452-4.
  


• 
  Docker, John (2008). "Are Settler Colonies Inherently Genocidal? Re-reading Lemkin". In Moses, A. Dirk. Empire, colony, genocide: conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history. Studies on war and genocide. 12. Berghahn Books. pp. 81-101, esp. p. 98. ISBN 978-1-84545-452-4.
  


• Evans, Raymond & Ørsted–Jensen, Robert: 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier" (paper at AHA 9 July 2014 at University of Queensland) publisher Social Science Research Network (SSRN)


• 
  Macintyre, Stuart; Anna (2003). The History Wars. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Publishing. ISBN 978-0-522-85091-8.
  


• 
  Manne, Robert, ed. (2003). Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History. ISBN 978-0-9750769-0-3.
  


• 
  Moses, A. Dirk (2004). Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History. War and genocide. 6. Berghahn Books. p. 27. ISBN 978-1-57181-411-1.
  


• 
  Reynolds, Henry (1999). Why Weren't We Told?. ISBN 978-0-14-027842-2.
  


• 
  Stanner, W.E.H. (1979). "After the Dreaming". In Stanner, W.E.H. White Man Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938-1973. pp. 198–248. ISBN 978-0-7081-1802-3.
  


• 
  Windschuttle, Keith (2002). The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847. Sydney: Macleay Press. ISBN 978-1-876492-05-2.
  

Further reading

Books

• Attwood, Bain (2005): Telling The Truth About Aboriginal History, Melbourne 2005,
  ISBN 1-74114-577-5
  


• Attwood, Bain & Foster, S.G. (2003): Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, Australian National Museum 2003, 218 pages,
  ISBN 1-876944-11-0
  


• Curthoys, Ann, Docker, John & Peters-Little, Frances (Ed): Passionate Histories: Myth, memory and Indigenous Australia, Aboriginal History Monograph 21, ANU-Press, 3 October 2011, 348 pages,
  ISBN 1-921666-64-1
  


• Connor, John: The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838 (2002),
  ISBN 0-86840-756-9
  


• Dawson, John (2004): Washout: On the academic response to The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Sydney 2004,
  ISBN 1-876492-12-0
  


• Macintyre, Stuart (with Clark, Anna): The History Wars, Revised edition Melbourne 2004 (first edition Melbourne 2003),
  ISBN 0-522-85128-2,
  ISBN 978-0-522-85128-1
  


• Manne, Robert (ed.) (2003): Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Melbourne 2003,
  ISBN 0-9750769-0-6
  


• Ørsted-Jensen, Robert: Frontier History Revisited - Colonial Queensland and the ‘History War', Brisbane 2011, 284 pages ill.
  ISBN 978-1-466-38682-2
  


• Taylor, Tony & Guyver, Robert (Ed): History Wars and the Classroom - Global Perspectives, Charlotte NC 2011,
  ISBN 978-1-61735-526-4,
  ISBN 978-1-61735-527-1,
  ISBN 978-1-61735-528-8
  

Articles

• Bonnell, Andrew G., and Martin Crotty. "Australian "Historikerstreit"? The Australian Journal of Politics and History. Volume: 50. Issue: 3: 2004. pp. 425+. online edition^{[dead link]}
  


• Foster, S.G. Contra Windschuttle, Quadrant, March 2003, 47:3


• Evans, Raymond & Thorpe, Bill: Indigenocide and the Massacre of Aboriginal History, overland (Melbourne), 163, winter 2001, p21-39.


• Evans, Raymond & Ørsted–Jensen, Robert: 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier (paper at AHA 9 July 2014 at University of Queensland) publisher Social Science Research Network (SSRN)[2]
  


• Francis, P., The Whole Truth...?, (2000), The Journal of GEOS
  


• McKenna, Mark. "Writing the Past: History." Literature and the Public Sphere in Australia, public lecture at Griffith Graduate Studies, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane 1 (2005) in Drusilla Modjeska, ed. (2006). The Best Australian Essays 2006. pp. 96–110. ISBN 9781863952781.CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list (link), Focus on historical fiction


• 
  History Wars Special in the Sydney Morning Herald
  


• Keith Windschuttle, "Postmodernism and the Fabrication of Aboriginal History"


• Gould, Bob. McGuinness, Windschuttle and Quadrant: The attempt to revise the history of the massacre of Aborigines on the British colonial frontier in Australia. (Annotated bibliography of colonial history).


• Warren, Christopher. "Could First Fleet smallpox infect Aborigines? - A note", Aboriginal History 31, pp. 152–164.

External links

• 
  Ed Lewis. "McGuinness, Windschuttle and Quadrant: the revisionist attack". Gouldsbooks.com.au. Archived from the original on 8 June 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  


• 
  "Mark McKenna, (1997). "Different Perspectives on Black Armband History: Research Paper 5 1997-98". Parliament of Australia: Parliamentary Library". Aph.gov.au.