They were?
I don’t think they’re good examples. But perhaps it depends on what you mean by ‘founded on racism’. The British didn’t send convicts to Australia because they were racist, they sent convicts to Australia because they had a social problem they wanted to go away.
They weren’t wiped out as part of government policy. With regard to the Tasmanian Aborigines, I’m going to quote from Henry Reynolds, one of the most pro-Aboriginal Australian historians in the history wars.
Social Darwinism contributed to disregard for the fate of the Aborigines. Spoiler tags to save space.
[spoiler]"The rapid population decline, which Darwin had thought in the 1830’s was due to some mysterious agency, was no longer seen in that light in the second half of the 19th century. The change of perception was largely, if not soley, due to Darwin’s own work on evolution and published in The Origin of the Species (1859), and The Descent of Man (1871).
A host of followers applied evolutionary theory to society and to the Aborigines, who were viewed as primitive, stone-age people who were earlier and less evolved than were Europeans. Their fate was wrought in the iron laws of evolution; they would eventually die out, having failed to survive in the struggle for existence."
Henry Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, 2001, page 145[/spoiler]
[spoiler]"The Australian colonists deeply influenced by Social Darwinism had come to accept that, as a consequence of settlement, the indigenous people were dying out and the process would probably continue until it was complete. Some regret was expressed, but in general the impending disappearance was met with equanimity, and little sense of moral responsibility. ‘All effort to preserve them’, wrote the Aboriginal ‘expert’ Archibald Meston in 1889, ‘though creditable to our humanity, is a poor compliment to our knowledge of those inexorable laws whose operations are as apparent as our own existence’.
In his letter to the press, A.C.G adopted a similar view of the matter, remarking:
‘…those who know the nigger best feel most the impossibility of doing much to ameliorate his condition or protract the existence of his race. This callousness as a rule arises from no lack of sympathy with the blacks, but from a firm conviction that their stage of civilization is too many hundred or perhaps thousand years behind our own to allow their race to thrive side by side with ours.’
The Victorian historian A.G. Sutherland observed in 1888 that the colonisation of Australia was a distinct step in human progress ‘involving the sacrifice of a few thousand of an inferior race’. It was beyond all individual volition: human beings were ‘governed by animal laws which urge them blindly forward upon tracks they scarce can choose for themselves’; they acted under the sway of ‘natural laws over which they had no control’."
Henry Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, 2001, page 146[/spoiler]
The Tasmanian government took steps to preserve the Aborigines when it was clear they had become endangered (largely by disease, though also by internal conflict and repeated attacks by settlers and police or soldiers).
[spoiler]Between 1830 and 1834 the surviving Tasmanians were removed from the mainland to Wybalenna, a settlement on Flinders Island in Bass Strait. What happened to them there must now be considered in order further to explore the question of genocide and Tasmanian history. Did the move expedite their mass murder? Did they retain the right to existence?
The most important fact about Wybalenna was that it was a place of death. As stated earlier, Aboriginal numbers declined from about 220 in 1833 to 46 in 1847. By then, any hope of demographic recovery had passed. The question that must be asked is: Did the Tasmanian government intend this outcome?Was it a consequence of neglect? Could it be construed as the final act of genocide?
Many writers have thought so over the years. Hughes characterised Flinders Island as ‘a concentration camp where genocide was committed’ .29 Diamond believed that the government deliberately neglected the settlement and reduced expenditure ‘in the hope that the natives would die out’ ,30 while Morris observed that they were taken to Flinders Island to die like ‘unwanted old relatives consigned to an institution’. 31
Mr Justice Wilcox took a similar view in his judgement in Nulyarimma v. Thompson. When considering the question of genocide in Australian history, he thought that some of the destruction clearly fell into this category. A ‘notable example’ was the ‘rounding-up of the remaining Tasmanian Aboriginals in the 1830s, and their removal to Flinders Island’. 32 Given the importance attached to the question of intent, it is necessary to consider the motives of the government in establishing Wybalenna and their expectations of what would happen to the transplanted Aboriginal community.
Henry Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, 2001, pages 78-9[/spoiler]
[spoiler]George Augustus Robinson cast doubt on the possibility of negotiating a settlement with ‘their Chiefs’ to partition Tasmania because they did not have sufficient power over the tribes to enforce obedience. He was of the opinion that:
‘…the Natives generally would not object to be removed to an island in Basses Straits {sic}, and . . . it would be humane policy towards them, as {I feel} satisfied the government can never sufficiently protect them from the outrages the sealers and runaway convicts inflict upon the tribes.’
Henry Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, 2001, page 79[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Of more direct relevance to the present investigation is what the government officials did and said once the community had been established in Bass Strait. Having been warned by his chief justice about the likely consequences of forced expatriation, Arthur became increasingly anxious to keep the exiles alive and well. He wrote to the first superintendent of the settlement, Lieutenant William Darling, to explain that he had ‘no wish more sincerely at heart than that every care should be afforded these unfortunate people’. 37
For his part, the lieutenant strongly promoted the Aboriginal cause and believed that, while the cost of the settlement was a heavy burden, it was evident that the ‘poor savages being deprived of their own country must be maintained by the colony and rendered as happy and comfortable as it is possible to make them’ .38 He was fully aware of the great brutality suffered by the remnant tribes and believed that the Bass Strait islands were a secure asylum.
‘Under the present circumstances’, he wrote to the governor, no more humane measure could be adopted than that of placing them on this island, that is, if proper means be taken to civilize and improve them, and to render them contented and happy. Should this poor remnant of the original inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land be thus rescued from destruction, as it were, to show the world that they are possessed of intellect and feeling equally with those whose skin is of a lighter colour, it will surely confer a lustre on the present Government of the Colony. . .’ 39
Henry Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, 2001, pages 80-81[/spoiler]
[spoiler]The governor’s attitude to the settlement was most fully outlined in several interviews he had with Robinson in May 1836. Robinson noted in his diary that Arthur’ seemed deeply interested about the settlement’ He granted all the assistance Robinson asked for and ‘begged I would omit nothing which I conceived necessary for the comfort and good of the aborigines’ .41 The governor said that if in the future there was any difficulty about receiving supplies, Robinson should ‘write to him direct’.
Reacting to news of shortages on the island, Arthur wrote a memo to his officials requiring them to notify the departments concerned that he was ‘particularly anxious’ that provisions for Flinders Island be dispatched ‘with utmost regularity’. He reminded his officials that this request had 'frequently been most expressly directed’41 and told Robinson that the Aborigines ‘were not to want for anything’.42
Above all else, Arthur ‘begged and entreated’ that the superintendent would ‘use every endeavour to prevent the race from becoming extinct’.43 Similar views were expressed by the senior military officer, Major Thomas Ryan, who was sent to Flinders Island in March 1836 to report on conditions at the settlement. He found that it had suffered from ‘disgraceful neglect’ and informed Robinson that his wish was to ‘work hand and heart with you for the preservation of these poor people’ . He hoped that a new era was dawning for ‘this interesting, this wronged, and feeble people’ , emphasising that fresh meat and pure water were indispensable ‘if the propagation of these people is desirable’.
Henry Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, 2001, pages 80-81[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Later in the history of the settlement, officials were still making the same sort of commitment to the Aboriginal cause. In 1847 the superintendent ofWybalenna, Dr Henry Jeanneret, concluded his annual report with the declaration that he wished
‘…to preserve this remnant of the race as a palpable demonstration of the readiness and even anxiety of civilized and Christian man to remedy and repair the evils perpetrated by his progress.’ 46
Later in 1847, when the Colonial Office recommended the return of the surviving Aborigines to mainland Tasmania, Governor William Denison wrote that he believed it was due ‘to the former owners of the soil that they should be carefully tended and kindly treated’ and if the race ‘were to become extinct’ it was important that the result ‘ought not to be accelerated by any positive acts of government’ .47 Despite the neglect and inefficiency of the Tasmanian administration, it was clear that the intention was that Wybalenna become home to a permanent population, with buildings and equipment commensurate with that intention.
Robinson was determined to build in brick and in less than three months 12 000 bricks had been made on the settlement. Archaeologists who excavated the site in 1972 recorded that the houses were
'…extremely well built, with lime wash over brick and limestone and carefully made and laid bricks. Glass was found from windows, lead from door fittings, brass door handles and washers, and iron pothooks in the fireplaces.'48
Henry Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, 2001, page 82[/spoiler]
[spoiler]A vast range of commodities was dispatched to the island to equip the community fully. Historian John West observed in 1852 that Wybalenna was furnished:
‘…with every article of domestic use, far more numerous than usually fall to the lot of the English cottager, and which to an Irish peasant, would suggest the idea of shop keeping.’ 49
Robinson asked for and got the convicts he required to work at the settlement, including many tradesmen who were in great demand elsewhere in the colony. During the second half of 1836 he recorded the arrival of two batches of assigned servants. In June, for example, the island greeted a ploughman, shepherd, gardener, farm labourer, carpenter, bricklayer, shoemaker and dispenser. There was a larger and more diverse draft at the end of the year, including a baker, another shoemaker, a brickmaker and bricklayer, a boatman, a mason, a carpenter, a pit-sawyer and top-sawyer, another ploughman, a butcher, a plasterer, a seaman, a blacksmith, a water-carter and a bullock-driver. 50 Wybaienna was thus by far the best-equipped and most lavishly staffed Aboriginal institution in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century.
Henry Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, 2001, pages 82-83[/spoiler]
[spoiler]Expenditure on the establishment declined over time, but not as quickly as the population. There is no evidence to support Diamond’s contention that the population was deliberately reduced in the hope that the Aborigines would die out. Though it is difficult to draw definite conclusions, it seems that the Aborigines at Wybalenna were better provided for than other groups dependent on the government. In the 1840s the colony’s orphans cost the government 7 pence a day, infirm and destitute paupers 8 pence, convicts 10 pence and hospital-bound paupers 1 shilling.
The Aborigines cost between 1/ 3d and 1 /5d a day and this figure would have been considerably higher if the settlement had been charged for the labour of the large convict workforce that kept the community running. The convicts and Aborigines received similar rations of meat, flour, biscuits, tea and sugar, but unlike the felons, the Aborigines were able to supplement their diet with a range of shellfish from the seashore and wallaby caught on hunting expeditions.
[…]
There is no evidence to suggest that the colonial officials at Flinders Island or on mainland Tasmania were anything other than distressed by the constant deaths. In December 1835 Robinson wrote in his journal:
‘The aborigines, poor people, evince great fortitude under these awful, dispensations. It is an appalling sight to view the mounds of earth now before us where the people are buried, as they are single graves. Each one reminds us that the body of a native lies there. This is their repository of the dead - no white man lies here. These are the remains of persons once animated as we are but now the crimson fluid ceases to circulate in their veins. . . of all ages and sexes, of all ranks and degrees of the aboriginal inhabitants, but alas no mixture of colour. These numerous graves contain only bodies of aborigines.’ 51
There is little evidence that the Aborigines ‘pined away’. They pleased themselves, refusing to work, demanding better conditions and rations, coming and going as they wished and often spending long periods out in the bush on hunting expeditions. They regarded the settlement as theirs, and the clothes and rations as mere tokens in return for the loss of their land. They were exiles, but were far from being prisoners - or inmates of a concentration camp. When they sent a petition to Queen Victoria in 1846 complaining about the behaviour of Dr Jeanneret, they described themselves as the ‘free Aborigines Inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land now living upon Flinders Island’ .52
Henry Reynolds, ‘An Indelible Stain?’, 2001, pages 83-85[/spoiler]
Provision has been made in Australian law for the recovery of land by Aborigines, though not to the extent I believe is properly moral. For that you can thank the triumph of capitalism in the West.
Why do you say that? They have the same meaning.
