Australian Genocide
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Category: Regional History or Period History
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URL: http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=22103
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Topic: Australian Genocide
Posted By: hoffdaddy
Subject: Australian Genocide
Date Posted: 11-Oct-2007 at 09:30
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Hi,
Thought I would start a topic by asking what do people know of an Australian Genocide? This refers to the treatment of European colonisers of Australia's indigenous population. I think it is a concept that is rarely used in Australian society. Obviously there are many reasons for this. But I thought, as an Australian myself, it would interesting to see what people outside of the nation know of this incident and any thoughts on how such a historically significant event should be treated in the 21st century.
Cheers
Hoffdaddy
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Replies:
Posted By: Constantine XI
Date Posted: 11-Oct-2007 at 10:07
Firstly I think it is worth pointing out that the topic has been framed
from a specific point of view: that an actual policy of genocide was in
place. In mainland Australia this was simply not the case. There were
clashes between natives and Europeans on occasion, but overall the
occupation was one of the least bloody in history. In Tasmania, the
numbers of natives killed by European violence was only recorded as
being in the couple of hundreds.
The reason for the lack of natives in Tasmania (and there are still
some) is the small native population to begin with (tiny due to poor
hunting and foraging grounds) and the disease which subsequently wiped
out most of the population.
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Posted By: aslanlar
Date Posted: 11-Oct-2007 at 10:29
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I don't see how if a government labels the people as animals, that there is any way that the killings don't respresent genocide.
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"The league is alright when sparrows dispute but it can do little when eagles argue" -Mussolini
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Posted By: Constantine XI
Date Posted: 11-Oct-2007 at 10:51
Originally posted by aslanlar
I don't see how if a government labels the people as
animals, that there is any way that the killings don't respresent
genocide. |
How about providing some evidence of things like armed expeditions to
kill aborigines, or concentration camps. The government for a time did
consider that people living in the stone age were part of the native
fauna of the country. It doesn't prove there was an organised campaign
of genocide like we are used to hearing about from Europe etc.
The colonisation of Australia was simply another invasion, and one of the least bloody in all of history.
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Posted By: hoffdaddy
Date Posted: 11-Oct-2007 at 11:42
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Maybe we could begin by considering the definition of Genocide as stated by the UN. It is as follows.
“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” From the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Now we can begin to ask ourselves do any acts committed in the history of Australian colonisers fit into these categories?
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Posted By: Constantine XI
Date Posted: 11-Oct-2007 at 12:13
With that definition, every single war and invasion in history is a
genocide. And this includes lots of acts of piracy, border skirmishes
and the like.
The problem is that this word often brings to mind things like Nazi
Death camps, when the reality in Australia was very different. Of all
the wars and invasions in history, Australia's colonisation ranks as
one of the least brutal qualitatively and saw some of the lowest destruction of the native people through violence in quantitative terms.
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Posted By: Leonidas
Date Posted: 11-Oct-2007 at 12:45
What happened in Tasmania was shameful, I mean some of the stories a quite sadistic. But Constantine is making some valid points, especially on the size of the population. We are talking about a rather small,stone age population with no resistance to disease. Contact alone would of decimated them and it did, much more so than the violence.
What can we accuse the authorities of, im not sure. Did the government actaully set out to kill every Tasmanian Aboriginal? if not, does their actions or better still inactions still constitute genocide? The end result looks like genocide, in parts of that chapter of our history it also look like it, however it also lacks that co-ordinated or planned dimension.
They certainly can be accused of ethnic cleansing, because after they rounded up the last of the locals and relocated them. The government at the time can also be accused of allowing the white population and it own forces in using unpunished violence. lastly they are guilty of complete neglect of their captives when they relocated them. This last part to me comes closest to that term, not the so much the conflict.
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 11-Oct-2007 at 20:02
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I think we should distinguish something important in here. The policies of the states doesn't necessarily matches the attitudes of the settlers.
Since the second part of the 19th century, up to the beginning of the 20th (or 1970 in Brazil) it was common that governments claimmed to protect natives, and even given food and shelter, while at the same time the European settlers engage in personal campains of genocide. So, one shouldn't automatically blame the Australian government for what the European immigrants did to the natives.
These kind of genocides of small ethnic group was common when European settlers of the second part of the 20th century established in new lands and "cleaned" it for them. We have a painful experience in Chile with the Onas of the Land of Fire, exterminated by European settlers (yugoslavia, germany, austrians, etc.) that settled there to exploit the whool of sheeps. Now, the main genocide it was a Romanian adventurer called captain Popper. And then I could ask you how to blame the central governments when they hardly had control over the lands were those Europeans settled?
The same happened in the Amazonas of Brazil well into the 20th century, when any rascal pick a rifle and when to the jungle, and did what he chosed with the Indigenous people. Today, in some places, those rascals from the east are shoted on spot by Brazilian soldiers that are mainly indigenous in the Amazon. Times change.
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Posted By: aslanlar
Date Posted: 12-Oct-2007 at 09:44
Originally posted by Leonidas
They certainly can be accused of ethnic cleansing
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Forgive me if i'm wrong, but isn't ethnic cleansing and genocide directly linked? The purpose of genocide is not to kill a bunch of people, but to 'ethnically cleanse' an area.
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"The league is alright when sparrows dispute but it can do little when eagles argue" -Mussolini
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Posted By: Leonidas
Date Posted: 12-Oct-2007 at 15:45
Originally posted by aslanlar
Originally posted by Leonidas
They certainly can be accused of ethnic cleansing
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Forgive me if i'm wrong, but isn't ethnic cleansing and genocide directly linked? The purpose of genocide is not to kill a bunch of people, but to 'ethnically cleanse' an area.
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no they are not linked. One is to remove a population but not necessarily exterminate them because that not the aim or intention. While genocide basically speaking, is the extermination of a group as a whole or in parts.
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Posted By: toyomotor
Date Posted: 03-Jan-2014 at 13:35
Originally posted by hoffdaddy
Hi,
Â
Thought I would start a topic by asking what do people know of an Australian Genocide? This refers to the treatment of European colonisers of Australia's indigenous population. I think it is a concept that is rarely used in Australian society. Obviously there are many reasons for this. But I thought, as an Australian myself, it would interesting to see what people outside of the nation know of this incident and any thoughts on how such a historically significant event should be treated in the 21st century.
Â
Cheers
Â
Hoffdaddy
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No, the last Tasmanian Aborigine died over 125 years ago. What remains today are people of mixed race, including Polynesian, European and Melanesian. The Aboriginal language and culture is lost. True, the English committed genocide against the Tasmanian Aborigines, aided by disease to which they were not immune.
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Posted By: opuslola
Date Posted: 03-Jan-2014 at 22:06
Some things never change!
Ron
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http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/history/
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Posted By: toyomotor
Date Posted: 04-Jan-2014 at 20:01
Originally posted by opuslola
Some things never change!
Ron |
The Tasmanian Aborigines were either killed or captured as the result of the notorious "Black Line". Troops and settlers actively hunted the Aborigines, killing indiscriminately or capturing some of them. Those captured were moved to small islands off Tasmanian north coast where they were further raided by the crew of seal and whale hunting ships. Many of the women were taken for "on board" entertainment. This is one of the reasons for the admixture in the modern day descendants.
To further address the original question, the Australian mainland Aborigines saw strange woolly animals appear on the scene after the whites arrived. These animals were easy to spear for food, and so they did. The white settlers objected to the unfettered killing of their sheep, so in some cases, they shot the Aborigines. While there was no doubt mass killing of mainland Aborigines, I don't think it's accurate to call it genocide.
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