This is a copy of a an article by Keith Windschuttle, published by the Australian in 2003, defending the claims he had made in The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2002), after a book edited by Robert Manne, Whitewash, sought to debunk his claims.

My history Thesis still stands

Keith Windschuttle says none of the three major arguments of his Fabrication is seriously challenged by Robert Manne's Whitewash

The first volume of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History makes three main points:

there was no genocide in Tasmania;
there was no frontier warfare; and
academic historians have grossly exaggerated and, in some cases, invented the conflict between Aborigines and colonists that did occur.

While guilt for genocide remains a live political issue, Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell told the Hobart Mercury last month that to commemorate the imminent bicentenary of British settlement in Tasmania would be like celebrating the arrival of the Nazis. That Tasmania recorded the one clear case of genocide in the British Empire is widely accepted internationally.

In Robert Manne's new anthology Whitewash, Martin Krygier and Robert van Krieken absolve academic historians of responsibility for the way that journalists and others have used their work. But historians did the primary research and it is from their findings that activists draw comparisons between colonial Australia and Nazi Germany.

None of the authors in Manne's book addresses the empirical evidence for genocide. Henry Reynolds had previously claimed falsely, that Tasmanian settlers demnaded the extermination of the Aborigines. Lyndall Ryan had claimed that three-quarters of the Aboriginal population in the settled districts were deliberately killed.

She said that even if only half of the stories in the diaries of George Augustus Robinson were true, they amounted to 700 Aborigines shot dead. I pointed out that anyone who does a count from the diary entries will come to a total of only 188, and many are dubious cases. Ryan's total is a complete fabrication. Manne's book ignores this easily disproved falsehood.

Whitewash is supposed to be the place where Reynolds and Ryan answer my major charges against them. Their complete silence over genocide and extermination is telling. The principal advocates have walked away from the topic, unwilling to defend it. I take this to mean that my thesis that there was no genocide in Tasmania is now proven by default.

Some essays in Manne's book do defend the frontier warfare thesis but ignore my major arguments against it. Ryan originally claimed the Black War began in 1824 when the Big River tribe launched patriotic attacks on the invaders. I pointed out that assaults on whites from 1824-7 were actually made by a small gang of detribalised Aborigines who were either from Sydney or had grown up since infancy in white houselholds. They were bushrangers who happened to be black. Only romantic leftism could interpret them as guerilla warriors defending Aboriginal territory.

Instead, Reynolds focuses on my case that the Aborigines did not have a word for land. He largely distorts what I wrote. My point was not primarily about Aboriginal language, but about Aboriginal behaviour. I demonstrated the Tasmanian Aborigines did not act as if they demanded exclusive usage of land. They had no sanctions against trespass. They cetainly identified themselves with and regularly foraged in particular territories, known as their "country", which I openly acknowledge.

But none of them confined themselves to these regions, nor did they deter other Aborigines or British settlers from them. And anyway, none of the vocabularies — and, contrary to Reynolds, I read them all — records an Aboriginal term corresponding to the English word "land".

Manne's book also fails to address my disclosure that Reynolds had altered the wording of a statement by Lieutenant-Governor Arthur to make it appear that Aboriginal "guerilla warfare" threatened Hobart. Reynolds was forced to publicly admit he was wrong but has yet to actually withdraw the case he made. Manne should have insisted that Reynolds retract not just the offending words but the entire argument. He fails to do so.

My book lists 17 cases where Ryan has either fabricated evidence or invented archival sources that do not exist, plus another seven cases where she grossly exaggerates statistics. In Whitewash she responds to 12 of the former and two of the latter. None of them properly answers my charges.

She now claims two reports by John Oxley, which she had mistakenly omitted to cite, support her contention that 100 Aborigines were killed between 1803 and 1810.

But neither of Oxley's documents mention 100 dead or any other number.

Ryan now says her claim that a vigilante group of stockmen massacred the Port Dalrymple tribe at Norfolk Plains in 1827 is supported by the following passage in the journals of the Land Commissioners: "Mysterious Murders have also been committed in this recess [a piece of Crown Land] and have hitherto remain undetected."

This nebulous statement gives no indication whether the victims were black or white, or whether the murderers themselves were black or white. It gives no date and does not mention vigilantes. Ryan's interpretation remains pure invention.

On other serious issues, Raysn now defends herself with "I surmised" and "I deduced", withour offering any credible evidence.

On her bogus claim that stockmen of the Van Diemen's Land Company gave Aborigines poisoned flour, she remains completely silent.

In short, none of the three major theses of my book is seriously challenged by Whitewash. Conceived as a definitive reply and a defence of the orthodox story of genocide and warfare, Manne's book fails to deliver.

Instead of a response to the evidence, Manne tries to shift the debate to politics and morality by claiming my views indermine reconcilliation. However, I cannot see how a story about violence and warfare between blacks and whites, if untrue, assists reconcilliation at all. What good does it do Aborigines to tell them the settlers wanted to exterminate them when they never did?

Indeed, many Aboriginal people themselves now recognise this. I have been invited to attend a ceremony on September 12, which the Liah Pootah community will conduct with other residents of Hobart to commemorate the bicentenary of the British arrival in 1803. Like all present descendants of the Tasmanian Aborigines, the Liah Pootah people are also descendants of the British settlers. Their ceremony will acknowledge both sides of their heritage.

Compare this to the consequences of the Reynolds, Ryan and Manne version of Australian history. Its message is that the British arrival was like an invasion of Nazis. This interpretation does not foster reconcilliation. It only fans hostility and hatred. It is not only historically untrue. It is racially divisive and politically inept.

Keith Windschuttle is author of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One, Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847. Robert Manne's (edited) Whitewash: on Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Black Inc. Books), will be launched in Sydney this week.

* * END OF ARTICLE * *

IGB Comments: Windschuttle published The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One in December 2002. I only heard about it yesterday (15th March 2023).
A Google search of the author and title brought up this article on the University of Tasmania web site. (article)

This utas article claims that after 'Whitewash': 'It seemed that Fabrication's 'counter history' had been soundly and rigorously rebuffed.' Whilst emotive terms such as 'offensive theories' are used, the the only serious criticism of the factuality of Windschuttle's claims relates to the number of Aborigines killed by British colonists. In the article written by Windschuttle, he states that a count of aboriginal deaths reported in the stories in the diaries of George Augustus Robinson, amounts to 118 deaths. The utas article claims that this figure of '118' is what Windschuttle claims is the total of all aboriginal deaths (not just recorded by that one author).

The main link from the utas article is to a page on 'Frontier Conflict',(article), which purports to be a clear statement of Tasmanian colonial history. This page, unlike the previous one, has some detailed references e.g.

2. Letter from Arthur to Goderich, 10 January 1828, in AGL Shaw (ed), Van Diemen's Land: Copies of all correspondence..., Hobart, 1971, p 3; Knopwood's Diary 5 March 1805, cited in NJB Plomley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash in Van Diemen's Land 1803–1831, Occasional Paper No 7, Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, p 54; Hobart Town Gazette, 10 December 1824; Plomley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash, p 66.

It would be interesting to be able to click on each reference and see a scan of the actual document, so I will put copies of these two articles as attachments to this page.

Attachment 1.
Copied from https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/F/Fabrication.htm

THE FABRICATION OF ABORIGINAL HISTORY?

In November 2002 appeared a book by Keith Windschuttle that was to make Tasmanian history, for the first time, a national public issue. Through the sponsorship of the Australian newspaper in particular, The fabrication of Aboriginal history volume one Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847, was given an unparalleled level of media exposure. Windschuttle claimed to have exposed a deliberate fabrication of evidence regarding the extent of violence against Aborigines by left-wing historians seeking to promote Aboriginal claims to compensation or redress based on past wrongs. Fabrication claimed that 'British colonists killed very few Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land'. Such was Windschuttle's faith in the comprehensiveness of the official documents and newspaper reports describing violence against Aborigines, he produced a definitive tally of 'only' 118 'plausible' deaths. This proved a popular line. Ever since Prime Minister John Howard said in 1996 that he hoped to make Australians feel 'relaxed and comfortable' about their past, such sentiments enjoyed powerful patronage.

But Fabrication was about much more than the publicity suggested. Fabrication explicitly aimed to produce 'an alternative version of its subject, a counter-history of race relations in this country'. The book pitted itself against a range of writers over 170 years, of varying political persuasions, lumped together as the 'orthodox' school. They had documented a high level of violence against Aborigines, and claimed that Aboriginal resistance was a consequence of the negative impacts of British settlement, especially the explosion in numbers of white people and sheep moving to Aboriginal hunting grounds in the 1820s. Fabrication's 'counter history' claimed that Aborigines overwhelmingly died from disease and their culture's purported abuse and neglect of women, while Aborigines' primary motivation for killing nearly 200 whites from 1824 to 1831 was to steal whites' goods.

The limitations of historical debate in the media were apparent in a lack of public scrutiny of Fabrication's 'alternative version'. It was not until August 2003 with the publication of Whitewash: on Keith Windschuttle's fabrication of Aboriginal history, that historians were able to defend allegations levelled against them, and question the evidence for Fabrication's own case. Whitewash charged that Windschuttle seemed to have read few primary sources other than the Colonial Secretary's Office papers, had almost no evidence for his principal claims about the cause of Aboriginal deaths or motivation for their resistance, and misunderstood or ignored the frontier context. Moreover it argued that Fabrication had methodological flaws and numerous errors. Of most concern were the offensive theories Fabrication propounded about pre-settlement Tasmanian Aboriginal culture that, it claimed, were not based on the reading of any primary source material or recent research.

It seemed that Fabrication's 'counter history' had been soundly and rigorously rebuffed. No one with any expertise in the subject matter supported Fabrication's alternative version of the causes of widespread violence and Aboriginal deaths. Even Windschuttle's own response to Whitewash in the October 2003 issue of Quadrant did not address these issues. Fabrication's broader cultural and political impact however remained profound. As Robert Manne had written in Whitewash, Fabrication was 'singing a song many people wanted to hear'. A more local concern was whether Tasmanian history had been misrepresented to serve a national political campaign. Certainly in the bicentenary year the most immediate task at hand for all historians of Van Diemen's Land was clearing up the confusion and hurt left in its wake. (See also Frontier Conflict.)

Further reading:

K Windschuttle, The fabrication of Aboriginal history, Sydney, 2002; and
'Whitewash confirms the fabrication of Aboriginal history', Quadrant 47/10, 2003;

R Manne (ed), Whitewash, Melbourne, 2003.

James Boyce

Attachment 2.
Copied from https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/F/Frontier%20Conflict.htm

FRONTIER CONFLICT

Colonial frontiers were ambiguous places, comprising official borders that marked the advancing limits of colonial incursion, areas allocated for settlement, governed by colonial authorities. They were not static, as they changed in size to accommodate new immigrants with their stock, and in nature as successive administrators explored new possibilities for development. There were also the unofficial frontiers, regions that extended beyond the reach of government scrutiny, inhabited by adventurers, by entrepreneurs not wishing to be restricted by intrusive legislation and competition, and by those who wished to escape the law. On the other side of these frontiers were the indigenous people, occupying the unbuffered borders, the vantage points where Aboriginal tribes experienced and interpreted the activities of European settlement. With these tribes unable to distinguish between official and unofficial conduct nor grasp the enormity and speed of the changes thrust upon them, it is little wonder that the frontiers were often places of conflict. When resistance sparked into open warfare, these border regions became the battleground of choice, as Aboriginal tribes often disunited by language and traditional enmities and divided by internal borders, lacked the numbers and force to strike directly at the colonial beachhead.

Click for larger picture

The voices that inform us of the conduct of conflict on both sides of the frontier are invariably those of the colonisers, but there was sufficient diversity of opinion and open public debate to provide insights into contemporary attitudes and behaviours regarding race and the process of colonisation.

The colonisation of Van Diemen's Land produced a number of frontiers, the earliest established by the arrival of sealers into the Furneaux Islands in 1798. By 1810, the over-exploitation of seals saw this activity move to other fields such as New Zealand. The industry, now marginalised, was taken over by more permanent inhabitants of the islands who became increasingly reliant on free labour provided by Aboriginal women. The sealers obtained most of these women by force, in raids. These kidnappings soured Aboriginal/European relations wherever the sealers operated, and contributed significantly to the demise of the Aboriginal population in the east and north-east. In 1830 GA Robinson reported three women among 72 males in the north-east, and in 1831 only four women remaining out of a total of 66 eastern Aborigines.^**1 Arthur complained about the daily injuries inflicted on the Aborigines by stockmen and sealers who attempted to 'deprive them of their women whenever the opportunity offered'. Occasionally, Aborigines were able to retaliate when catching sealers unawares on the mainland. In 1805, Aborigines attacked eight sealers and burnt 2,000 of their seal pelts at Great Oyster Bay, four sealers were killed at Cape Portland in 1824 and two more at Eddystone Point in 1828.^**2

The first official frontier was established at Risdon Cove in September 1803 by Lieutenant Bowen. In the north Colonel Paterson established a colony at York in 1804. In effect there were now three frontiers, as the northern settlement did not come under the jurisdiction of Hobart until 1812. The first confrontation with Aborigines occurred on 3 May 1804 at Risdon Cove when a large party of Aborigines came close to the camp in pursuit of kangaroos. The acting commander, Moore, wrongly assuming that he was under attack, fired a carronade into the hunting party and his soldiers followed up with musket fire, killing and wounding an unknown number of Aborigines.

The second incident occurred later in the same year in the north, where, perhaps due to the earlier influence of the sealers, the Aboriginal response to European presence took a more aggressive tone. On 12 November, a party of Aborigines visited Paterson's camp and after an initial friendly interchange attempted to throw a sergeant from a rock into the sea. The guard responded with musket fire, wounding one and killing one.^**3 Apart from these fatal encounters, records indicated that the period from 1804 to 1824 was relatively calm, with Aborigines making numerous contacts with the colonists while engaging in small-scale trade for tobacco, tea, flour and highly prized dogs. However, this assumption of peace must be tempered by the knowledge that official records for this period are patchy at best. There are reports of sporadic encounters, some fatal, as Aborigines sought to protect their rights over food reserves now subjected to intense European hunting activity. The scarcity of these reports may be a consequence of the death penalty in force for the murder of Aborigines; there would be many colonists reluctant to chance the colonial authorities' arm in this matter.

In 1824 the situation changed dramatically with the onset of the Black War in which nearly 200 Europeans and an unknown number of Aborigines died. Hostilities were fuelled by competition for native game including seals and kangaroo), the assumption of Aboriginal hunting grounds for the grazing of stock, and the progressive dispossession of Aborigines from their tribal lands. It is no accident that in 1823, the year before the escalation in hostilities, some 441,871 acres were granted to settlers, a ten-fold increase on land allocated in 1821.^**4

The target of Aboriginal resistance was undoubtedly the lives of the settlers. In 1824 twelve Aboriginal assaults produced twelve Europeans deaths and one wounding, with only one case of plunder recorded. In 1828 Arthur wrote of the Aborigines 'evincing an evident disposition systematically to kill and destroy the white inhabitants'. Although Aborigines such as Mosquito and Black Tom (Kickerterpoller) familiar with European culture played a prominent role during this early period, they were capitalising on existing discontent rather than fomenting it.^**5

The appropriation of Aboriginal lands was extended to the north-west when 250,000 acres granted to the Van Diemen's Land Company was to open yet another frontier. On taking possession of these lands in 1826, Edward Curr, who was both company manager and magistrate, operated with little regard for the policies of the colonial administration in distant Hobart. The fact that the eight tribes displaced by the Company had taken no part in the Black War did not prevent Curr from encouraging their decimation by his employees. The Cape Grim Massacre of 10 February 1828 was the most widely known example of the excesses perpetrated under Curr's regime.^**6

After a failed attempt to restrict Aboriginal movements to the unsettled districts, Arthur declared martial law on 1 November 1828 and organised the formation of roving parties. Aboriginal attacks for that year had risen to 126, involving 33 European fatalities including women and children. The roving parties, each consisting of five convicts and a police constable, were to be deployed in an attempt to capture Aborigines in the bush. Parties led by Gilbert Robertson, Jorgen Jorgensen and later John Batman had mixed success, with many more Aborigines killed than taken alive.^**7 In January 1830, a more benign strategy was employed with the establishment of the Friendly Mission led by George Augustus Robinson, aided by cooperative Aborigines, including Trugannini and Wooraddy.

The mission's first task was to travel up the west coast and establish peaceful contact with local tribes for future negotiations. In other parts of the colony a reward was offered for the capture of Aborigines, £5 for every adult and £2 for every child taken alive. However, the continuation of hostilities encouraged Arthur to resort to military force and remove the Aborigines totally from the settled districts by initiating a dragnet of 2200 men. The six-week operation commenced on 7 October 1830 and yielded only two captives, a man and a boy, as most of the Aborigines had little trouble in passing through the line undetected. However, this massive show of strength did impress upon them the growing vulnerability of their position.^**8

Robinson, now engaged in removing the Aborigines from their tribal lands, found this task easier as demoralised Aborigines were more likely to place their trust in his promises and offers of protection. Robinson's mission played a central role in removing Aborigines from the Tasmanian mainland to establishments in the Furneaux Islands. On 3 February 1835, Robinson reported that: 'the entire aboriginal population are now removed'. However, persistent reports of an Aboriginal presence in the Van Diemen's Land Company lands necessitated a further expedition in 1836. This new search party contacted an Aboriginal family near Cradle Mountain, but they refused to join the Mission and escaped back into the bush, only to be recaptured later.^**9

Further reports continued to emerge of a persistent and hostile Aboriginal presence in the north-west. A small band of the Tomeginner tribe from Table Cape had evaded capture and were mounting regular attacks upon Company servants, stock and huts. An attack on two Company servants at Table Cape on 27 February 1842^**10 marked the final recorded incident in the Black War. The fate of this small band is open to speculation, but a few months later the newly appointed Company manager James Gibson reported to his directors that there were no other Aborigines left in Company lands.^**11

Further reading:
S Murray-Smith, 'Beyond the pale', THRAPP 20/4, 1973;
A McMahon, 'Tasmanian Aboriginal women as slaves', THRAPP 23/2, 1976;
B Plomley & K Henley, 'The sealers of Bass Strait and the Cape Barren Island community', THRAPP 37/2, 3, 1990;
N Plomley (ed), The Aboriginal settler clash in Van Diemen's Land, 1803–1831, Launceston, 1992; and
Friendly mission, Hobart, 1966;
L Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Sydney, 1996;
I McFarlane, 'Aboriginal society in North West Tasmania', PhD thesis, UT, 2002.

Ian McFarlane

Footnotes:

1. Murray-Smith, p 172; the Furneaux Group had large populations of the much sought after New Zealand Fur Seal, whose pelts were regarded as superior to the Australian Fur Seal that predominated in the North West Islands; McMahon, pp 44–45; Plomley and Henley, p 54.

3. Paterson to King, 26 November 1804, HRA, III, I, Canberra, 1921, pp 606-607.

4. S Morgan, Land Settlement in Early Tasmania, Cambridge, 1992, p 169; there were no land grants in 1822.

5. P Chapman (ed), The Diaries and Letters of G.T.W.B, Boyes, Melbourne, 1985, p 286; Mosquito was captured and hung on 25 February 1825.

6. AL Meston, The Van Diemen's Land Company 1825–1842, Launceston, 1958, p 14; Inward Despatch No,42, Curr to Directors, 13 February 1827, AOT VDL 5/1.

7. J West, The History of Tasmania, 1852; reprinted AGL Shaw (ed), Sydney, 1971, p 279.

8. Shaw, Van Diemen's Land, p 72; West, pp 295–300; Shaw, Van Diemen's Land, p 47, Arthur to Murray, 1 January 1831 .

9. NJB Plomley, Friendly Mission, Hobart, 1966, p 926; This family is commonly assumed to be that of William Lanney, see Examiner, 21 July 1990; Ryan,pp 197-198; and T Murray (ed), Archaeology of Aboriginal Australia, Sydney, 1998, p 223

10. I McFarlane, 'Aboriginal Society in North West Tasmania: Dispossession and Genocide', PhD thesis, UT, 2002, pp 199–200.

11. Inward Despatch No, 23, Gibson to Court, 10 December 1842, AOT VDL 5/7:111.

* * * * * * *