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Question of intent
Did Australians intend to exterminate the Aborigines?

Historian Henry Reynolds looks for evidence of genocide in his latest book, An Indelible Stain?

Professor Henry Reynolds

For much of the time that James Stephen was under-secretary of the Colonial Office (1836 -47), he expressed a consistent view about relations between colonists and indigenes in NSW. He was convinced that the Aborigines were doomed to destruction. He no doubt appreciated the importance of disease, change of lifestyle and deprivation in furthering this process, but he constantly referred to the impact of the frontier violence and the disproportionate deaths of blacks as opposed to whites. He was fully aware that much of the conflict arose from the rapid and uncontrolled occupation of Aboriginal land, but also pointed to psychological factors, to the presence of attitudes which today would be termed racist. For example, he referred to the hatred with which the white man regards the black which resulted from fear - from the strong physical contrasts which intercept the sympathy which subsists between men of the same race - from the consciousness of having done them great wrongs and from the desire to escape this painful reproach by laying the blame on the injured party.

The views of James Stephen mattered at the time and they continue to be of interest. Although he had never set foot in Australia, he probably had a more comprehensive understanding of developments all over that continent than anyone in the antipodes. He read dispatches from the four colonies - NSW, Van Diemen's Land, South Australia and Western Australia - and was able to see Australian developments in the perspective of the empire as a whole. He had been associated with the Colonial Office, in one way or another, from 1813 and was undoubtedly one of the outstanding officials of the period, a measured, astute man who did not rush to judgment.

What Stephen said over and over againwas that the frontier settlers were in the process of exterminating the Aborigines, they were guilty of what, since the 1940s, has been called genocide and that the British government was powerless to stop them. This was an extraordinarily frank admission to come from the permanent head of the Colonial Office and has to carry considerable weight in any historical assessment of the question. Stephen clearly believed that the settlers had the psychological and emotional drive - the dolus specialis - to carry out genocide. He believed that his government was in the position of a powerless bystander - the situation described by the Venezuelan delegate to the Ad Hoc Committee on the Genocide Convention, Perez Perozo, who referred to a "weak government unable to prevent the extermination of a group occupying a distant region".

If governments are the main agents of genocide - either by intent or inability to prevent it happening - then James Stephen provided us with a form of confession. He clearly felt, however, that the moral responsibility lay with the "squatters of bad character", over whom the law had little power, rather than with the imperial government that had set the whole process of colonisation in motion.

But was there ever enough evidence to give substance to Stephen's confession and to conclude that genocide was perpetrated in NSW in the late 1830s and early 1840s?

There is no doubt that there was a great loss of life among the Aboriginal tribes of south eastern Australia between 1835 and 1850, coinciding with the occupation of the land in question by the squatters and their flocks and herds. We will never know how many people died at this time, nor the precise causes of death. Introduced diseases, disruption of traditional life and malnutrition would all have played a part. Rampant venereal infections greatly reduced the fertility of Aboriginal women, which curtailed the possibility of replacing those who died prematurely.

But many Aborigines also died in conflict with the Europeans. This conflict was at its height in the late 1830s and early 1840s and was apparent in all areas of new European settlement, from northern NSW and what was to become southern Queensland in a great arc through the Murray-Darling basin to the outskirts of Adelaide. Evidence about frontier conflict abounds and can be found in NSW and South Australian government reports, in dispatches to the Colonial Office, in newspapers published in Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Maitland, Portland and Geelong, and in letters and books written by the settlers themselves and by visitors to the colonies.

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Conflict was, then, widespread and resulted in considerable loss of Aboriginal life.

So was James Stephen right? Were the frontier settlers of NSW extirpationists? Clearly some of them were, and they said so publicly. Whether such people were in the majority in the bush, or in the colony as a whole, is impossible to say. But as we saw in Tasmania, it appeared to be acceptable to advocate extermination without fear of social opprobrium. The same views were expressed by prominent landowners and frontier shepherds, in remote bush huts and from the desks of colonial newspaper editors. A British military officer, Colonel G.C. Mundy, who travelled extensively in the colonies, was both shocked and surprised when "men of station and cultivation" advocated indiscriminate retaliation against the Aborigines. A frontier settler told him he would shoot "a blackfellow wherever he met him as he would a mad dog".

The explorer Edward Eyre was also struck by the "recklessness" of conversation in the bush, where men thought as little of firing at a black "as at a bird, and which makes the number they have killed, or the atrocities they have attended" a matter for a tale, or a jest or a boast "at their pot house revelries".

There were always colonists who denounced indiscriminate killing and took up the Aboriginal cause in public and private. Even in the most troubled frontier regions there were squatters or officials who attempted to achieve reconciliation and who were appalled at the extent of the violence and at the inhuman deeds of those whose motto is extermination, and whose atrocities have stained with blood - their unoffending brothers' blood - the page of colonial history.

The army surgeon Thomas Bartlett, who was in NSW at the height of the squatting rush, concluded that there were two views "diametrically opposed to each other" respecting the character of the Aboriginal population.

All this does not advance the question of whether it is appropriate to employ the term genocide to the particular circumstance of NSW in the 1830s and 1840s. Indeed, it merely adds to the difficulties. In a situation where the government was not involved, how is it possible to judge the situation beyond saying that some colonists clearly were advocates and perhaps practitioners of extermination? What percentage of a population's involvement is required before the society itself can be considered to be genocidal? There were no organisations of extirpationists, no societies with genocide as their avowed objective, no institutional structures to further the cause.

The most we can say is that in some parts of the colony, public opinion at least tolerated the killing of Aborigines in a sweeping and indiscriminate fashion and that witnesses were not forthcoming with evidence that would have facilitated prosecution.

© Henry Reynolds 2001

Lack of proof

Debra Jopson looks at the book's conclusions.

Using the United Nations Genocide Convention as a gauge, Reynolds examines whether the smallpox epidemic of 1789 which wiped out many Sydney Aborigines was deliberately started, whether the frontier wars in NSW, Tasmania and Queensland were officially condoned and whether last century's assimilation and indigenous child removal policies amounted to genocide. The key to deciding, writes Reynolds, is intent. These are his findings:

• Dried smallpox scabs brought to NSW by surgeons for innoculating against the disease may have been used to start the epidemic among Aborigines. Two junior officers of a British commander who had approved using smallpox against native Americans sailed with the First Fleet, so knowledge of germ warfare was possible. But, there is no conclusive evidence.
  
  
  
• Tasmania is usually counted among international genocide scholars as "one of the world's most authentic cases of genocide" in the 1820s and 1830s. The Colonial Office "sanctioned war but not genocide" while Governor Arthur wanted to win the war, but not to "destroy the Tasmanian race ..."
  
  
  
• In late 19th-century Queensland, police were involved in numerous killings of Aborigines. There was enormous social acceptance of such killings. There is "certainly much evidence available for retrospective prosecution" of the charge of genocide, but little is known of the settlers' true intent and most Native Police records have been lost.
  
  
  
• Nationwide government assimilation policies of the 1920s and '30s were based on "breeding out the colour". This aim was, by definition, genocidal, although the objective of eradicating Aboriginality failed. The Human Rights Commission has described policies of family separation as genocidal. It can be seen two ways. Under one definition, the effect was genocidal. However, many participants in the removal program believed it was in the best interests of the child and therefore it is questionable if their intent was genocidal.

Clip from The Sydney Morning Herald

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