History wars

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

The debate centres on whether Australia's history of European settlement since 1788 was:
a) humane, with the country being peacefully settled, with specific instances of mistreatment of Indigenous Australians being aberrations;
b) marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession, violent conflict and cultural genocide; or
c) 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.

Contents 1 Background 2 Black armband debate 3 Genocide debate 4 Stolen Generations debate 5 Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History 6 Stuart Macintyre's The History Wars 7 National Museum of Australia controversy 8 History wars and culture wars 9 Protagonists 10 See also 11 References 12 Further reading 13 Footnotes

[edit] 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"^[1], 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".^[2]

A new strand of Australian historiography subsequently emerged which gave much greater attention to the negative experiences wrought on Indigenous Australians by the British settlement of Australia. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of progressive historians such as Manning Clark and Henry Reynolds began to publish books and articles which they saw as a corrective to the narrow, selective historiography which had, in their view, hitherto misrepresented or simply ignored Indigenous Australian history.

During these years, a circle grouped around the conservative literary and political journal Quadrant resisted these arguments. Chief among these critics was Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey, who in his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture popularised the phrase "black armband view of history" (see below). This phrase began to be used pejoratively by some right-wing and conservative Australian social scientists, politicians, commentators and intellectuals about historians whom they viewed as having presented an overly critical portrayal of Australian history, and as being preoccupied with mourning, grieving or shame. These critics have, in turn, been said to hold a 'white blindfold' view of history.^[3]

These critics gained greater prominence after the election of the conservative federal Coalition government in 1996, with the former Prime Minister of Australia John Howard publicly championing their views. Conservative scholars, intellectuals, journalists and politicians have publicly challenged historians and others who interpret Australian settlement as being characterised by extensive violent conflict between the European settlers and Indigenous Australians.

Though originally waged primarily in the academic environment, an increasingly large proportion of the History Wars has in recent years been played out in the Australian print media, with regular opinion pieces being published in major broadsheets such as The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. More recently, arguments surrounding the History Wars have become intertwined with the debates about the content of high school history curricula.

[edit] Black armband debate

The 'black armband' view of history is a phrase used by Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey in his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture to describe a view of history that focuses, as an illustrative example on the dispossession of Indigenous Australians. The lecture was subsequently published in conservative political and literary journal, Quadrant.^[4] Blainey contrasted this view with the Three Cheers 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 at least more than a decade. 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. In particular, a 1986 poster in Alice Springs asked Australians to 'wear a Black Armband' for the 'Aboriginal year of mourning'.^[5]

The phrase is used pejoratively by some Australian social scientists, politicians, commentators and intellectuals about historians who are seen to be writing critical Australian history 'while wearing a black armband' of mourning and grieving, or shame. They contest interpretations of Australia's history since 1788 that argue that the history is marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession and cultural genocide.^[5]

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. As was argued by Howard 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.[5]

”

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."^[4] 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"^[6]. 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:

“

[T]he records are there in the libraries and archives. They overflow with evidence of violence. The message they carry is incontrovertible. To hide the violence it is necessary to hide the history. What I found most surprising in the records of colonial Australia was the frank and open discussion of racial violence and the public acceptance of violence which that discussion signalled. The newspapers were the most revealing and most copious source of material. This was particularly true in Queensland, which had many small provincial newspapers which began publication when violence still haunted local hinterlands. There was little reticence or fastidiousness in discussion about how to 'deal with the blacks', although there was always debate and disagreement. There were invariably citizens who counselled clemency. But there were also journalists and correspondents from the frontier who spoke openly of their own brutal deeds, who boasted of deadly prowess or of involvement in massacres, or who advocated atrocity from the comfort of editorial desks.[7]

”

Reynolds quotes many such 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:

“

In that wild, yelling, rushing mob it was hard to avoid shooting the women and babies, and there were men in that mob of whites who would ruthlessly destroy anything possessing a black hide. [...] It may appear cold blooded murder to some to wipe out a whole camp for killing, perhaps a couple of bullocks, but then each member of the tribe must be held equally guilty, and therefore, it would be impossible to discriminate. [...] The writer never held a man guilty of murder who wiped out a nigger. They should be classed with the black snake and death adder, and treated accordingly.[8]

”

Reynolds commented that violence against Aboriginals, far from being hushed up or denied, was openly talked about: "[This] was printed in the daily newspaper of a major provincial city in 1907, six years after Federation. The writer confessed to mass murder without the slightest concern about prosecution or even social opprobrium."^[9]

[edit] Genocide debate

There has been much debate amongst certain Australian historians as to whether the European colonisation of Australian resulted in the genocide of groups of Aborigines, and in particular the Tasmanian Aborigines. Much of this debate centers on whether "the term 'genocide' only applies to cases of deliberate mass killings of Aborigines by European settlers, or whether the term 'genocide' might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by the reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers."^[10]

Historians such as Tony Barta argue that for the victim group it matters little if they were wiped out as part of a planned attack. If a group is decimated as a result of smallpox introduced to Australia by British settlers, or introduced European farming methods causing a group of Aborigines to starve to death, the result is in his opinion genocide.^[11]

Henry Reynolds points out that European colonists and their descendants frequently use expressions that included "extermination", "extinction", and "extirpation" when discussing the treatment of Aborigines during the colonial period, and as in his opinion genocide "can take many forms, not all of them violent"^[10] this is an indicator of genocide.

Reynolds also points out that Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, considered "the action of the Tasmanian colonial government in the 1820s and 1830s" as genocide.^[10]

The political scientist Kenneth Minogue and other historians such as Keith Windschuttle disagree and think that no genocide took place.^[12][13] Minogue does not try to define genocide but argues that its use is an extreme manifestation of the guilt felt by modern Australian society about the past misconduct of their society to Aborigines. In his opinion its use 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.^[14]

Historian Judy Campbell argues that some historians, including Henry Reynolds, influenced by an idea of European ‘blame’ for an attempted genocide of the Australian Aborigines, have used tenuous evidence to link smallpox epidemics to British colonists. She suggests that these historians have overlooked evidence which indicates that the smallpox epidemics which devastated the Aboriginal population were not a result of contact with British settlers, but instead spread south from contact in the far North of Australia between Aborigines and visiting fishermen from what is now Indonesia.^[15]

In the April 2008 edition of The Monthly, David Day wrote further on the topic of genocide. He 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."^[16]

[edit] 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 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 failure to cross-examine has been the basis of criticism by the anthropologist Ron Brunton as well as by the conservative Liberal Party Federal Government.^[17] 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 fails 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.^[18]

Some conservative critics, such as Andrew Bolt, have publicly questioned the very existence of the Stolen Generation. Bolt considers 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 has responded that Bolt's failure to address the wealth of documentary evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generations amounts to a clear case of historical denialism.^[19] Bolt has publicly challenged Robert Manne to produce ten cases in which the evidence justifies the claim that they were "stolen" as opposed to having been removed for legitimate reasons such as neglect, abuse, abandonment, etc. He argues that Robert Manne's inability to produce as few as ten credible cases is a good indicator of how unreliable the claims that there was policy of systematic removal are.^[20] In reply, Manne stated that he supplied a documented list of 250 names^[21][22] Bolt indicates that prior to a debate with Manne, Manne provided him with a list of 12 names that Bolt states he was able to show during the debate was “a list of people abandoned, saved from abuse or voluntarily given up by their parents”. During the actual debate, Manne produced a list of 250 names without any details or documentation as to their circumstances. Bolt has subsequently been able to identify and ascertain the history of some of those on the list and claims he has yet to find a case where there is evidence to justify the term ‘stolen’. 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". ^[23]

The Bringing Them Home report 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.[24]

”

On February 13, 2008, the Parliament of Australia unanimously, Labor and Conservative members alike, apologised to the Stolen Generations:

“

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.[25]

”

[edit] 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 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. ^[26]

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.^{[citation needed]} 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. ^[27]

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”.^[28] 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.^[29]

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.^[30] On 20 January 2006, Windschuttle was reported as saying that the second volume would be published "within twelve months". [^[31] 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 generation from their families in the 20th century. ^[32]. No recent reference has been made to the previously projected second and third volumes.

[edit] Stuart Macintyre's The History Wars

In 2003 Australian historian Stuart Macintyre published The History Wars, written with Anna Clark.^[33] 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."^[34] 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."^[35] Keith Windschuttle said that Macintyre attempted to "caricature the history debate."^[36] 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."^[37]

[edit] National Museum of Australia controversy

In 2003 the Howard Government commissioned a review of the National Museum of Australia. The investigating panel found that many of the historical narratives contained within the Museum exhibits were incoherent, confusing and unbalanced. While the report concluded that there was no systemic bias, it recommended that there be more recognition in the exhibits of European achievements.^[38]

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 Geoff Blainey called "the three cheers" version of Australian history (all the good things), rather than the so called "black armband" view.^[39]

Others claimed that the National Museum was already grossly politicised and that a National Museum should present a more balanced view of the nation's history rather than a relentless focus on the negative.^[40]

[edit] 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"^[41]. Windschuttle and other conservative participants in the debate are frequently described as "culture warriors". ^[42][43].

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 John Howard's use of the history and culture wars was "a fraud" aimed at diverting attention away from more important issues ^[44], a view contested by Windschuttle. ^[45]

Since the change of government, and the passage, with support from all parties, of a Parliamentary apology to indigenous Australians, it has been claimed that "the culture wars are over", a claim normally taken to encompass the history wars ^[46]. This view has been rejected by a number of conservative commentators.^[47].

[edit] Protagonists

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

[edit] See also

• History of Australia
• Indigenous Australians
• Tasmanian Aborigine
• Black War
• List of massacres of indigenous Australians

[edit] 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
• Windschuttle, Keith (2002). The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, ISBN 1-876492-05-8

[edit] 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

• 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"

[edit] Footnotes