Colonisation and Conflict Notes
Discrimination Against Non-European Immigrants
During the period discussed, non-European immigrants, particularly Chinese workers on the goldfields from the 1850s, faced significant discrimination.
Pacific Islanders, employed on Queensland's sugar plantations, also experienced strong prejudice.
Written Sources and Bias
Historical written sources, like official reports, diaries, letters, and newspaper articles, primarily come from the colonizers.
This creates a potential bias, presenting only one side of many historical events.
Even biased sources hold value by revealing the attitudes of the people who created them.
Killings of settlers by First Nations Australians were documented and punished by white authorities, while killings of First Nations Australians by settlers often went unrecorded or were distorted.
Diverse European Perspectives
Not all Europeans held the same views; some recognized the injustices suffered by First Nations Australians and other non-Europeans.
Captain John Hunter's Journal (1793)
Captain John Hunter (second governor of New South Wales) described early contacts with First Nations Australians, expressing the belief that friendship and confidence could be established by laying aside arms and demonstrating amity.
He believed that through peaceful interaction, First Nations Australians would realize the settlers were not their enemies.
Oral History
Oral histories passed down through generations of First Nations Australians recount loss of land, massacres, and injustices, often corroborated by other evidence.
Visual Records
Few artworks by First Nations Australians depict contact and conflict with Europeans, as their art focused on lore, law, and spiritual beliefs.
Some European artists' paintings and drawings offer useful visual evidence, along with photographic evidence from the mid-nineteenth century.
Convict Transportation to Australia
British transportation of convicts to Australia occurred between 1788 and 1868, with around 160,000 convicts being sent.
Crimes included pick-pocketing, petty theft, and forgery, which seem minor compared to the punishment of transportation.
The Industrial Revolution in Britain led to enclosure, where wealthy landowners bought small farms, fenced off common land, and displaced poor farmers.
Similarly, the Highland Clearances in Scotland forced country people from their homes to improve agricultural output.
The shift to more efficient, mechanized farming reduced the need for agricultural workers, leading to increased unemployment and migration to towns.
The government responded to growing social problems with harsher criminal punishments, with about 200 crimes punishable by death.
Public hangings were intended as a warning but became carnival-like events.
Sentences could be commuted to transportation, banishing convicts to distant colonies.
Initially, convicts were sent to America, but the American Revolution ended this option.
West Africa was briefly used, but disease, starvation, desertion, and mutiny made it a disastrous failure.
Overcrowded Prisons and Hulks
Despite harsh punishments, prisons in Britain remained overcrowded.
Old naval ships were converted into floating prisons called hulks as a short-term solution, but they quickly became overcrowded and unsanitary.
New South Wales as a Solution
The British government faced major social problems: overflowing prisons and the loss of America as a destination for convicts.
Transportation to New South Wales emerged as a solution, due to Captain James Cook's charting of the eastern coastline in 1770.
Joseph Banks advocated for Botany Bay as an ideal settlement location.
Establishing a colony in New South Wales served multiple purposes: compensating for the loss of American colonies, establishing a military and imperial presence in the southern Pacific, and providing a place for convicts, whose labor could be used to build the colony.
In August 1786, the British government decided to establish a convict settlement in New South Wales.
Colonization Begins
The First Fleet carried nearly 1500 people, mostly convicts, to colonize Australia, commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip, the first British governor of New South Wales.
The first British settlement was founded on 26 January 1788, at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour).
Instructions Regarding First Nations Australians
New South Wales was founded as a penal colony, with debates among historians about whether it was a dumping ground for convicts, a strategy to exploit resources, or a second chance for lawbreakers.
Early colonial governors had broad powers and were instructed to cultivate friendly relations with First Nations Australians and offer them British law's protection.
Governor P.G. King stated that he regarded First Nations Australians as the 'real Proprietors [owners] of the Soil' but also permitted settlers to 'fire on any natives they see'.
Terra Nullius
The British described Australia as a wasteland, an important concept in British law that described unoccupied or unproductive land that could be taken without permission.
This understanding later became known as terra nullius, a Latin term for 'nobody's land', used in legal and political debates about land rights.
Culture Clash
The Dharug, Ku-ring-gai, and Tharawal Peoples observed the new arrivals clearing land, fencing waterholes and hunting grounds, and trampling around sacred sites.
These actions violated First Nations Australians' laws, and they viewed the Europeans as invaders occupying the land without negotiation.
European Reactions to First Nations Australians
Educated Europeans saw First Nations Australians as 'noble savages' living in harmony with nature.
Uneducated convicts and soldiers often feared First Nations Australians because they could not understand their kinship systems or their lack of European-style towns, churches, and farms.
Early Encounters and Violence
In May 1788, two convicts were killed in Rushcutters Bay, leading to other clashes.
Governor Phillip initially blamed the convicts for the violence.
Phillip wanted to develop cross-cultural contacts and resorted to kidnapping First Nations Australians to encourage their people to accept British ways.
Arabanoo was the first captured but died of smallpox within six months. Bennelong and Colebee were later captured. Colebee escaped, but Bennelong was sent to England and later returned, unable to fit into either society.
Smallpox Epidemic
First Nations Australians had no resistance to smallpox, which arrived with the colonists.
In April 1789, smallpox began to kill many First Nations Australians near Sydney, wiping out approximately half the population by 1790.
Landscape and Society Transformed
The arrival of British settlers and their introduced animals, plants, weeds, and diseases devastated the land and First Nations Australians.
First Nations Australians, having lived in isolation, had no immunity to European and African diseases.
European diseases led to numerous deaths, including influenza, tuberculosis, typhoid, measles, and leprosy.
Within a century, introduced animals, such as sheep and cattle, consumed native herbs and grasses, displacing traditional foods and causing extinction of some native animals.
Pemulwuy
Pemulwuy was a Bidjigal warrior of the Eora language groups who led attacks against colonial farms and settlements between 1790 and 1802.
His raids were motivated by dispossession, hunger, and revenge for atrocities committed by Europeans.
Governor King offered rewards for Pemulwuy's head, and in 1802, Pemulwuy was murdered, with his head sent to England for study.
Yagan
Yagan was a Noongar leader and resistance fighter from south-western Western Australia.
Initially, the Noongar Peoples lived in harmony with the Europeans, but conflicts arose over land and resources.
Yagan sought revenge for the killing of a Noongar man, and a reward was offered for his head.
Despite being sought by soldiers, Yagan survived repeated wounds but was eventually killed in July 1833.
Devastation in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
By 1832, only 203 Palawa (First Nations Tasmanians) survived out of an estimated pre-colonisation population of 4000 to 7000.
Some historians consider this a genocide.
Official government policy was to treat Palawa Peoples with friendship, but a state of war existed by the 1820s.
George Augustus Robinson moved survivors from different language groups to Flinders Island, where many died of disease and despair.
Windschuttle and Reynolds' Perspectives
Keith Windschuttle argued that the impact of British colonization on the First Nations Australians population has been exaggerated.
Henry Reynolds claims attacks on Europeans were numerous in 1828.
Violence in New South Wales
In the Bathurst Plains in the 1820s, Windradyne led resistance by the Wiradjuri Peoples, resulting in martial law in 1824 and massacres.
In the early 1830s, Major Nunn led a massacre of at least 100 Kamilaroi Peoples at Vinegar Hill.
The Myall Creek Massacre
The Myall Creek massacre involved the killing of more than 30 Wirrayaraay women, children, and elderly men by stockmen in 1838.
The trial that followed marked one of the first instances where whites were punished for murdering First Nations Australians under British law.
'Becoming Civilised'
From 1788, the British government's policy was to treat First Nations Australians with friendship, though this was often not the case.
After 1835, there was increasing concern in London, and in 1837, authorities recognised that First Nations Australians had a right to the land.
Governor Macquarie set aside areas for farming and tried to encourage First Nations Australians to take up British ways.
Schools and Missionaries
Governor Macquarie set up a school at Parramatta to educate First Nations Australian children so they abandon their traditional ways.
By the 1830s, missionaries took on the role of converting children, separating them from their parents.
Cultural Resistance
Some young First Nations Australian men joined the Native Police Forces.
Port Phillip Protectorate
In the 1830s, the British government established a protectorate system with four protectors to investigate crimes against First Nations Australians.
Billibellary, a ngurungaeta, reported the despair that First Nations Australians felt at the loss of their land and remembered as a man of peace who sent his own children to the Europeans' schools and joined the Native Police Forces.
Coranderrk Reserve
By the 1870s, Kulin residents had farms. In 1874 the Board for the Protection of Aborigines attempted to close Coranderrk but was saved due to protest. Finally, in 1924, Coranderrk was closed.
Killing Times
1885 marked a year of continued violence on the Australian frontier with the remote settlers, First Nations Australians, and other groups.