October 13.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Racism within imperial expansion
“[The settlers’] interest says ‘annihilate the race’.”
[Lancelot] Threlkeld's unpopularity with the settlers was not surprising. He took a very jaundiced view of the whole process of colonisation. 'No man', he wrote bitterly, 'who comes to this Colony and has ground and corn can dispassionately view the subject of the blacks, their interest says annihilate the race'. He was censorious of those who were accumulating wealth from their expropriation of Aboriginal land and who did not devote a portion of those riches to assist the dispossessed or take up the cause of philanthropy. Like his brother missionaries he wielded the threat of God's displeasure, asking rhetorically, 'will not the cry of a brother's blood, occasioned too often to be shed through the thirst for wealth...ascend into the ears of God?' And will not 'the wealthy possessors of the land', by apathy to the Aborigines, 'subject themselves to that imprecation of the Angel in the day of retribution. “Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help”'. [1]
Threlkeld was distressed by the brutal language used in relation to the Aborigines. In a letter to the London Missionary Society in 1826, he declared that he would forbear from repeating the 'many revolting things which have been said publicly in the Colony' and in the presence of leading citizens who should have been 'real Champions for such injured persons'. [2] But the erroneous impression did not arise solely from ignorance of Aborigines' habits and customs. Threlkeld argued that it was a time-honoured tactic of those who wished 'determinedly to carry a point' first to brand with obloquy their intended victim 'and then destroy him'. So the murderers of the blacks 'boldly maintained that the blacks were only a specie of baboon, that might be shot down with impunity, like an Ourang Outang [sic]!' [3]
Threlkeld to Blunder, 13 Oct. 1825, Gunson, op. Cit., 2, p.187.
Gunson, op. Cit., 1, p.69.
R. Milliss, Waterloo Creek, McPhee Gribble, Ringwood, 1992, pp.259, 437.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts, pp.63-64, 257 n.36, n.37, n.38
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A wider context for the European invasion of Australia through imperial expansion:
Imperial interests in the region, illustrated by French and British voyages of exploration in Australia and New Zealand, were never just the dispassionate geographical and scientific explorations that they were presented as. Each side wanted to gain whatever strategic advantages they could through colonisation, be it actual or threatened, of new territory, which would in turn force their rival to expend energy and resources countering the threat. The years of uneasy peace following the Seven Years War [1756-1763] can be seen as something of a nautical chess game. Tellingly, this was the period when Greater Australasia was mapped in detail by Britain.
And this came in the wake of two major British successes, which helped provide the leeway they needed for such bold action. First, victories in North America gained Britain control of the northern French territories – the origin of the English-ruled but French-speaking Canadian regions. This had many ramifications for the later colonisation of Australia and New Zealand. Suffice it to say that frontier wars with indigenous peoples in North America facilitated the development and spread of certain frontier mentalities, [and] sharpened notions of sovereignty...The second British success concerned India...
Acknowledgment: Nick Brodie, 1787 – The lost chapters of Australia's beginnings, hardie grant books, Richmond, 2016, p.114.