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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lJames Cook Unplugged or Cook-ing HistoryBy Jim Duffield
The lack of evidence, though this is questioned, of any Portuguese settlement has also fed the myth that nothing significant happened in Australia prior to English settlement, a myth epitomised in the statement repeated by generations of school children that Captain Cook 'discovered' Australia in 1770. The european invasion of Australia was conducted without the consent of the Aboriginal owners of the land. James Cook, R.N., apparently ignored the imperial government's orders when he claimed the east coast of Australia for Britain in 1770. The instructions, in part:
McIntyre debunks the myth of Cook in a number of ways; mathematically (plane vs. spherical geometry), logically, archaeologically, historically and politically. He demonstrated that the Portuguese 'discovered' Australia in accordance with the Treaty of Tordesillas dictated by pope Alexander VI in 1494, and also proves that the Portuguese did venture east of the reciprocal of the Papal line through the Atlantic, contrary to the pope's treaty. This is supported by previous events in the division of American spoils of Atlantic ventures by Portugal and Spain:
and McIntyre comments that:
This 'line' in the Atlantic is the theoretical division of the world in today's terms based on pope Alexander VI's ruling to mitigate against conflict between these two 'catholic' nations. It must be accepted that at the time of discussion (~1500CE) the cartographic view of the world was significantly different to the view provided in the late 20th century, or even the late 18th. This distorted view of the globe in the 16th century accounts for the displaced W.A. border - it was the then international date line! Garrett proposes that any ventures before Cook's were Spanish and from the East (around Cape Horn - South America), the writer proposes that ventures from the west (Africa through India and the Indonesian archipelago) must also have occurred - and they were by the Portuguese, in the same manner that they successfully negotiated their way down the African coast and around it to India. Many will be aware that the Portuguese ventured down the coast of Africa by trial and error. They would sail south a given distance, then turn east. The kept making landfalls on the coast of Africa until - no coast! They were past Africa. Literally, 'backup a bit' and the cape was contacted. By this means they charted, in european terms, the west and then the east coast of Africa, eventually to arrive by further ventures in India. By 1516 the Portuguese had established a colonial outpost on Timor and thus by the time an accepted pre-English nation, the Dutch, made their first sighting of this continent in 1606, the Portuguese had already been resident in the area for nearly a century! Philosophically, it is noteworthy that if Columbous' "discovery" of America is accepted and attributed to him when his landfall was some six hundred of miles from the mainland of the Americas, then the Portuguese in sighting Timor sometime before 1516 must equally be attributed with the "discovery" of Australia, Timor is less than three hundred miles from the coast of Australia! Clearly the european definition of "discovery" is just colonial eurocentrism. McIntyre goes to great length to describe the advances in mathematics, cartography - and therefore navigation in this period to prove that the Portuguese did make landfalls in Australia, suffice to say that if plane geometry is converted to spherical geometry, then the recorded tracks of Portuguese navigators do locate Australia on Portuguese maps in the early 1500s. Further, as a result of these ventures a map of "Java le Grande" was generated that has become known as the Dieppe or Dauphin's map. History has completely overwhelmed the name of Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808). This man, an official of the East India Company, was the proponent of the voyage to the South Pacific to ...observe the passage of Venus.. that Cook was ultimately to command and execute. Dalrymple was to demonstrate some angst against Cook after his first voyage, and later to provide some of the information that today survives as evidence of Banks or Cook carrying a copy or copies of the Dieppe map. It is noteworthy that at the time of Cook's voyage planning, the English had just defeated Spain and the French, in the Seven Years War. The Royal Navy Officer who charted the new, ex-French possessions in North America, many will be familiar with the imagery of Wolf at Quebec, James Cook, R.N. Dalrymple was ejected from his scientific /geographic mission to the Pacific, after having selected the Endeavour as the vessel, and summarily replaced by Captain James Cook. Thus the "Spanish" pond, the Pacific, could now be said to be English, or at best unattached. This ocean had been subject to both Spanish and probably Portuguese navigators for over two centuries. Dalrymple had prepared but not yet published a book of maps on the Pacific before Cook's departure that included:
Consider, not only the maps available to Cook, but the land ownership ethic of the european, and the Papal knife, and the now Western Australian border, this together with competition between the Dutch and English/British at the time. The Dutch had displaced the Portuguese in East Indies (Indonesia) and the English the Spanish, indeed the English were in Manilla at the time of discussion. Thus the Dutch conceived west of the Papal line as theirs and the English conceived east of the line as theirs. Banks in 1811, in an unpublished and subsequently amended Forward to Flinders' A Voyage to Terra Australis describes the boundary between New South Wales and New Holland as ...nearly corresponds to the ancient Line of Separation.... Apparently Peel, the then Prime Minister ...was horrified...as it might give the Dutch every right to colonise New Holland, and this notwithstanding the words of Cook on making his claim for George III at Kurnell in 1770 vis a vis "...the east coast...:" Consider also the Dauphin (Portuguese) map:
On comparing the maps many similarities appear, but perhaps the most striking is that a safe harbour on the south-east coast of Australia was named by the Portuguese as the Capé de Herbiages, literally - Botany Bay, the Portuguese map is dated circa 1524, who said Banks the botanist named it Botany Bay? Further, in Cooks venture, north up the eastern coast of Australia, when the Endeavour was holed and in need of safe harbour adjacent to what is now north-Queensland, Cook did not venture back (south) to known waters, he ventured north-west into unknown waters to repair his vessel in what is known today as Cooktown. This is surprising bravado for a known conservative seafarer. Is this the action of a Royal Navy Captain who would be subject to a Courts Martial for "grounding" his ship? I suggest it is the action of someone who knew where he was going in terms of quality and quantity of harbour for the safety of his ship and venture. Cook had a map. With the knowledge of Spanish activities into the Pacific from the east, and now the knowledge of the travels of the Portuguese from the other side of the globe, and the displacement of both by the Dutch and English immediately after the conclusion of the Seven Years War, Cook needs redescribing as a military/political tool. Cook may have been a notable Royal Navy officer, sailor, perhaps navigator (to someone else's map), but the cartographer and adventurer was someone else, almost certainly Portuguese. Cook was demonstrably not a great adventurer in terms of venturing into the unknown, he had a two hundred year old (plus) map of the region. At this point the McIntyre thesis should be accepted. The first europeans to set foot in "Java le Grande" were most probably Portuguese, and the creation of the myth of Cook was and continues to be an Anglocentic instrument that still attempts to justify British occupation of this "new" continent. In the name of truth, the myth must go. Take a trip to the town of Eden on the south coast of New South Wales and see the remains of a european cut stone building with key-stones marked in Roman numerals 1524, or ask the Victorian government about their $100 000 reward for the uncovering of the "Mahogany Galleon." It is, perhaps, one of three Portuguese vessels to navigate the south and east coast of Java le Grande in 1522-24(?), or ask of the cannon in the Western Australian Maritime Museum found on Carronade Island off the west coast, and dated as early 1500s from a Portuguese gun founder, or as mentioned, consider at last the British colonial icon of Botany Bay, on the Dieppe map of the 16th century it had already been named as Capé de Herbiages. Better still, read McIntyre and debunk the myth in detail. Cook was a tool of the British colonial military industrial establishment. He knew where he was going and therefore was not the great navigator alleged in the histories re-told to our children, and failure to acknowledge the Portuguese source amounts to de-facto plagiarising of the work of the cartographic and navigational thinkers, adventurers and oceanic trailblazers of europe - the Portuguese. They, the successors to the great Henry the Navigator, were the adventurers and navigators not the British, anyway, I'll placate the Anglocenetrics - Henry's father was a Pom. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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