The Black Line in Van Diemen's Land: success or failure?

Title: The Black Line in Van Diemen's Land: success or failure?
Creator: Ryan, Lyndall
Relation: Journal of Australian Studies Vol. 37, Issue 1, p. 3-18
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2012.755744
Publisher: Routledge
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2013
Description: The Black Line in Tasmania in 1830 was the largest force ever assembled against Aborigines anywhere in Australia. Tasmanian historians have dismissed the Line as an aberration by Governor George Arthur and a complete fiasco by virtue of the fact that only two Tasmanian Aborigines were recorded captured and two others killed. This article contests this view by locating the Line within British imperial policy at the time, and it makes three important new findings. Far from being an aberration, the Line was a common strategy employed across the British Empire to forcibly remove indigenous peoples from their homelands. Further, there was not just one but three Lines in force over the fifteen-month period of the entire operation, and they played a decisive role in ending the Black War. The article concludes that in making George Arthur the scapegoat, historians have overlooked the Line's significance as an important instrument of British imperial power in the early nineteenth century.
Subject: Tasmania; Aborigines; Black Line
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1055591
Identifier: uon:15903
Identifier: ISSN:1444-3058
Language: eng
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