May 7.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
The country was occupied by force
Varied colonial views and an aggressive (and not silent) majority
Debate about the morality and practice of colonisation intensified in the 1830s and 1840s. During those years settlement was propelled outwards from the already established districts close to the port cities of Hobart, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth. Wool became the great export staple; the pastoral interest grew in wealth and political power. At the same time the humanitarian movement reached the height of its authority, influence and moral certainty. With the triumphant abolition of slavery in 1833 the humanitarians turned their attention to the Indigenous people of the Empire, a development symbolised by the important House of Commons Select Committee on Native Peoples in 1836-37* and the great expansion of missionary endeavour.
The humanitarian impulse collided with the drive to force the pace of colonial development and take up Aboriginal territory on an unprecedented scale. Colonial society divided deeply over the assessment of Aboriginal society, over Indigenous rights and the obligations of the colonists towards those whom they had dispossessed. The army surgeon Thomas Bartlett who visited Australia in the early 1840s found that there were two points of view 'diametrically opposed to each other, respecting the character of the Aboriginal population'. He realised that the ideas had important practical applications. 'These opinions', he explained 'demand attentive consideration, as on them depends the justice, or otherwise, of the manner in which the natives are treated'. One class of settlers, which Bartlett was sorry to confess to his English audience, was a numerous one, maintained that the Aborigines were not 'entitled to be looked upon as fellow creatures'. As a result they adopted the harshest and most severe measures towards them. 'There are persons in these colonies', he observed,
…in what are considered respectable stations in society, who have the hardihood to defend savage butcheries that have been committed by the whites on the natives, by asserting they resemble so many wild beasts, and that it is proper to destroy them accordingly.
He was even more concerned with colonists who went so far in their attempts at justification to impiously declare that it was God's will that the 'black should recede before the white man'.
The second point of view was held by philanthropic individuals who were more common in Britain itself than in the colonies. They viewed with horror the 'inroad made into the possession of the native' and the forcing of the 'unfortunate Aborigine' to submit to British law and to be administered by a people 'through whom they have endured much injury'. [1]
...'It must not be forgotten', Thomas Bartlett remarked, that the country was occupied by force, that the Aborigines attempted 'but in vain to beat off the English settlers'. [2]
Thomas Bartlett, New Holland, Longman, London, 1843, pp. 65-66.
Ibid. p. 78.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, This Whispering In Our Hearts, pp.9-11, 15-16, 253, n.10, 254, n.24.
* This parliamentary Committee was chaired by Thomas Buxton, noted member of the evangelical Clapham Sect. While concerned over the harsh treatment of Indigenous people in the Empire, it yet had strong ambitions for the British Empire. “The fight which Wilberforce had taken up against slavery broadened itself into a general crusade on behalf of the rights of native peoples and so involved Britain in the extensive annexation of territory to protect them. The Aborigines Protection Society became one of the major pressure groups campaigning for the extension of the British Empire...” - Ian Bradley, The Call to Seriousness – The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians, Jonathan Cape, London, 1976, p. 89.