- Title
- Settler massacres on the Australian colonial frontier, 1836-1851
- Creator
- Ryan, Lyndall
- Relation
- Theatres of Violence: Massacre, Mass Killing and Atrocity throughout History p. 94-109
- Relation
- http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=DwyerTheatres
- Publisher
- Berghahn Books
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- In 2005, Richard Broome, one of the most respected historians of the Australian colonial frontier, published his long awaited history of the Aboriginal people of the colony of Victoria. As the first sustained narrative of their historical experiences from the British colonization of their country in 1836 to the present, it is, by necessity, an account of how they survived against the odds, because from the outset it appears that the British settlers did everything possible to eradicate them. The grim statistics leave the reader in no doubt about what happened. Broome estimated that there were at least 10,000 Aboriginal people in the colony in 1836 and that by 1853 their number had fallen to 1,907, a decline of eighty per cent in just under twenty years. How then did they nearly 'vanish' so rapidly? He estimated that 1,500-2,000 died violently at white and black hands and that perhaps a further 1,000 to 1,500 died of natural causes, leaving 4-5,000 who fell to diseases, disruption of food supplies and the impact of cultural dislocation. This was exacerbated by the dramatic decline in the birth rate. Broome concluded: 'An unintended and almost literal decimation of Aboriginal people occurred as two different peoples and their cultures clashed, and the more powerful invader, bearing unfamiliar diseases, dispossessed indigenous peoples of their land. Thus the misadventure of foreign microbes and the impact of colonialism caused an unintended outcome not dissimilar to genocide. Was the outcome completely unintended? Broome's account of the dramatic population collapse has many important components, but it tends to overlook the possible impact of the phenomenon of settler massacre, that is the killing of an undefended group of Aborigines in one action. Unlike the sporadic killing of one or two Aborigines, a massacre makes an immediate impact on the long-term survival of the targeted Aboriginal group. Could settler massacres have been a critical factor in the Aboriginal population collapse in the colony of Victoria?
- Subject
- Australian colonial history; colonialism; massacres; genocide
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1058144
- Identifier
- uon:16341
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780857452993
- Language
- eng
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