Australian history wars

The History wars in Australia are an ongoing public debate over the interpretation of the history of the European colonisation of Australia, and its impact on Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.

Historian Stuart Macintyre has said similar debates about history occur in many countries, and are often driven by current political conflicts. He likens the Australian History wars to the Enola Gay controversy in the US) (see also National Museum of Australia controversy below) though the core question is closer to one asked by Washington Irving in the US in 1809

What right had the first discoverers of America to land, and take possession of a country, without asking the consent of its inhabitants, or yielding them an adequate compensation for their territory?

The Australian debate centres on whether the history of European settlement since 1788 was:

1. humane, with the country being peacefully settled, with specific instances of mistreatment of Indigenous Australians being aberrations;
2. marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession, violent conflict and cultural genocide; or
3. somewhere in between.

The History Wars also relates to broader themes concerning national identity, as well as methodological questions concerning the value and reliability of written records (of the authorities and settlers) and the oral tradition (of the Indigenous Australians), along with the ideological biases of those who interpret them.

Background

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", 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 Aborigines 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".

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 began to publish books and articles which they saw as correcting a selective historiography which had misrepresented or ignored Indigenous Australian history.

During these years, writers in the literary and political journal Quadrant opposed these new arguments (see Black Armband Debate, below). This became part of a wider political debate during the tenure of the Coalition government from 1996-2007, with the Prime Minister of Australia John Howard publicly championing the views of those associated with Quadrant. . This debate extended into disputes over history as presented in museums (see National Museum of Australia controversy below) and the content of high school history curricula..

The academic History Wars 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 debates as 'war porn' and an 'intellectual dead end':

The crisis in Aboriginal society is now a public spectacle, played out in a vast ‘reality show’ through the media, parliaments, public service and the Aboriginal world. This obscene and pornographic spectacle shifts attention away from everyday lived crisis that many Aboriginal people endure – or do not, dying as they do at excessive rates. ... in the last three decades, rational thinking and sound theory ... have been side‐tracked into the intellectual dead‐end of the ‘culture wars’. This has had very little to do with Aboriginal people, but everything to do with white settlers positioning themselves around the central problem of their country: can a settler nation be honourable? Can history be recruited to the cause of Australian nationalism without reaching agreement with its first peoples? ... The bodies that have piled up over the last thirty years have become irrelevant, except where they serve the purposes of the ‘culture war’.

Black armband debate

The 'black armband' view of history is a phrase used by Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey in his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture to describe views of history that focus, for example, on the dispossession of Indigenous Australians, which he contrasted with the 'Three Cheers' view of history. The lecture was subsequently published in the political and literary journal, Quadrant., which at the time was edited by Robert Manne and is now edited by Keith Windshuttle, two of the leading "history warrriors". The phrase then began to be used pejoratively by Australian social scientists, politicians, commentators and intellectuals for historians they viewed as writing critical Australian history 'while wearing a black armband' of mourning and grieving, or shame. They contested interpretations of Australia's history since 1788 that called attention to both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession and cultural genocide.. The equally pejorative response by their opponents was to refer to the 'white blindfold' view of history.

Although it is claimed that Blainey coined the term, the phrase in the context of Australian history predates Blainey's 1993 speech by more than a decade. On the bicentenary of Captain James Cook's landing at Kurnell on April 29 1970, protesters who could not afford to wear black clothing were asked to wear "black armbands or bows". Leading up to the 1988 Bicentenary, Aboriginal protesters and Anglo-Celtic sympathisers used the phrase 'black armband' to describe the post-1788 history of Aboriginal Australia, and a 1986 poster in Alice Springs asked Australians to 'wear a Black Armband' for the 'Aboriginal year of mourning'

John Howard's involvement in the National Museum of Australia controversy and Keith Windschuttle's claims about Tasmanian settlement constitute arguments within this theoretical perspective. Howard claimed in the 1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture:

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.

Manning Clark was identified as being on the liberal left of the debate and was specifically 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." Particular historians and histories that are challenged include Henry Reynolds and the histories of massacres, particularly in Tasmania but also elsewhere in Australia.

In his book Why Weren't We Told? in 1999, Reynolds referred once more to Stanner's "Great Australian Silence", and to "a 'mental block' which prevented Australians from coming to terms with the past". He argued that the silencing of 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.

Genocide debate

There has been debate among certain Australian historians as to whether the European colonisation of Australia resulted in the genocide of groups of Aborigines, and in particular the Tasmanian Aborigines.

Raphael Lemkin coined the word genocide in the 1940s with the specific example of the Black War of the 1820's and 1830's in mind. The actions of the colonial government in Tasmania during this period is widely acknowledged to have led to the complete annihilation of the Tasmanian Aborigines, who were reduced from a population of several thousands in 1800 a few hundred in 1829, and then to zero by 1876. More recent studies by Australian historians have raised questions about the appropriateness of the genocide label for these events.

The mainstream debate is to what extent the governing body of the settler outpost had the goal of extermination in mind. What is known is that Governor George Arthur declared martial law in November 1828, and empowered any soldier to shoot any Aboriginal on sight. Journalist and publisher Henry Melville, described the results in 1835: "This murderous warfare, in the course of a few years destroyed thousands of aborigines, whilst only a few score of the European population were sacrificed”

The political scientist Kenneth Minogue and historian Keith Windschuttle disagree with the mainstream historical narrative, and believe that no genocide took place on Tasmania. Minogue does not try to define genocide but argues that the use of the term is an extreme manifestation of the white guilt in modern Australian society regarding the past misconduct toward Aborigines. In his opinion this 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. Windschuttle believes that most of the native Tasmanians died of disease, and not at the hands of settlers.

Regarding events on mainland Australia, there have been occasional accusations of genocide, but no clear consensus. Many of the deaths on the mainland were due to smallpox, which is commonly believed to have come from Europe with the settlers. Many historians, like Craig Mear, support the thesis that the settlers introduced smallpox either intentionally or accidentally.

Historian Judy Campbell considers the smallpox epidemics of 1789-90, 1829-32,and 1860s. She argues that the smallpox was not a result of contact with British settlers, but instead spread south from the far North of Australia, and was due to contact between Aborigines and visiting fishermen from what is now Indonesia. This view has not met with widespread acceptence, and has been specifically challenged by historian Craig Mear. Mear writes:

They had been coming to this coast for hundreds of years, yet this was the first time that they had brought the deadly virus with them.

He also argues that the scientific model that Campbell uses to make her case is invalid, because it models the spread of smallpox at significantly higher teperatures than those recorded at the time.

Historians such as Tony Barta argue that for the victims, it makes little difference if they were wiped out as part of a planned attack. If a group is decimated by European smallpox, or starve to death because of the introduction of European farming, the result is in his opinion genocide.

In the April 2008 edition of The Monthly, David Day 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." These questions of definition are important for the stolen generations debate.

Stolen Generations debate

Main article: Stolen Generations

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 and by the anthropologist Ron Brunton in a booklet published by the Institute of Public Affairs that was criticised in turn by the lawyer Hal Wootten. 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.

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. 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. In reply, Manne stated that he supplied a documented list of 250 names 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". .

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 ,or testimony from those who were called on to implement the policies, 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.

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. One first hand account referring to events in 1935 stated:

I was at the post office with my Mum and Auntie [and cousin]. They put us in the police ute and said they were taking us to Broome. They put the mums in there as well. But when we'd gone [about ten miles (16 km)] they stopped, and threw the mothers out of the car. We jumped on our mothers' backs, crying, trying not to be left behind. But the policemen pulled us off and threw us back in the car. They pushed the mothers away and drove off, while our mothers were chasing the car, running and crying after us. We were screaming in the back of that car. When we got to Broome they put me and my cousin in the Broome lock-up. We were only ten years old. We were in the lock-up for two days waiting for the boat to Perth.

The new Australian Government elected in 2007 isued 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 February 13, 2008, Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia moved a formal apology in the House of Representatives , which was moved concurrently by the Leader of the Government in the Senate . It passed unanimously in the House of Representatives on March 13, 2008. In the Senate the Australian Greens moved an amendment seeking to add compensation to the apology, against which all other parties voted, after which the motion was passed unanimously.

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 actual number of Aborigines 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 Aborigines, 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 Aborigines was raids by Aborigines, 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 Aborigines, feared that conflict arising from Aboriginal attacks upon settlers would result in the extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines and advocated the adoption of courses of action to prevent this happening.

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 author 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.

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 Aborigines although, in most cases, the historians’ “discussions were not to Stanner’s taste” and the Aborigines “might not have been treated in the way Reynolds and his colleagues would have liked”. Foster argues that Windschuttle is “merciless with those who get their facts wrong” and that the fact that Windschuttle has also made mistakes 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 misrepresenting, misquoting, exaggerating and fabricating evidence relating to the level and nature of violent conflict between Aborigines and white settlers.

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. On 20 January 2006, Windschuttle was reported as saying that the second volume would be published "within twelve months". On 9 February 2008, however, it was announced that the second volume, 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. . No recent reference has been made to the originally projected second and third volumes. As of March 2009, Windschuttle's Sydney Line website contained no reference to " 'Volume 2: The "Stolen Generations".

Stuart Macintyre's The History Wars

In 2003 Australian historian Stuart Macintyre published The History Wars, written with Anna Clark.. 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. 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." 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." Keith Windschuttle said that Macintyre attempted to "caricature the history debate." 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."

National Museum of Australia controversy

In 2001, writing in Quadrant, historian Keith Windshuttle 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. 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." While the report concluded that there was no systemic bias, it recommended that there be more recognition in the exhibits of European achievements.

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 (see Black armband debate, above). 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'" .

History wars and culture wars

The "history wars" are widely viewed, by external observers and participants on both sides as an extension of the "culture war" originating 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". Windschuttle and other conservative participants in the debate are frequently described as "culture warriors". .

The defeat of the Howard government in the Australian Federal election, and its replacement by the Rudd Labor government has altered the dynamic of the debate. In an article published in 2006, Rudd argued that Howard's use of the history and culture wars was "a fraud" aimed at diverting attention away from more important issues , a view contested by Windschuttle.

Since 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 has argued: "the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate", a view contested by others, including commentator Janet Albrechtsen..

Protagonists

• Geoffrey Blainey
• Stuart Macintyre
• Robert Manne
• Henry Reynolds
• Lyndall Ryan
• Keith Windschuttle

See also

• History of Australia
• Australian frontier wars
• Indigenous Australians
• Tasmanian Aborigine
• Black War
• List of massacres of indigenous Australians
• New Historians (comparable Israeli phenomenon)
• Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country

References

• Stanner, W.E.H. (ed), (1979). "After the Dreaming" in White Man Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938-1973, ISBN 0-7081-1802-X. W.E.H. Stanner pp. 198-248
• Macintyre, Stuart and Clark, Anna (2003). The History Wars,Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, Victoria, ISBN 0-522-85091-X
• Reynolds, Henry (1999), Why Weren't We Told?, ISBN 0-14-027842-7
• Windschuttle, Keith (2002). The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, ISBN 1-876492-05-8

Further reading

Books

• Attwood, Bain (2005). Telling The Truth About Aboriginal History , ISBN 1-74114-577-5
• Dawson, John (2004). Washout: On the academic response to The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, ISBN 1-876492-12-0
• Manne, Robert(ed), (2003). Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History. ISBN 0-9750769-0-6

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
• Foster, S.G. Contra Windschuttle, Quadrant, March 2003, 47:3
• Francis, P., The Whole Truth...?, (2000) , The Journal of GEOS
• History Wars Special in the Sydney Morning Herald
• Who plays Stalin in our History Wars? Stuart Macintyre
• 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 bibliograohy of colonial history). [6]