December 14.
“A Portrait of Australia With Important Bits Missing” by Glenn Loughrey
Killing statistics
Ratios of the killings
The Black War deserves to be considered a conflict of significance. Nowhere else in Australia did so much frontier violence occur in such a small area over such a short period. And this violence was by no means one-sided. Henry Reynolds and Richard Broome are historians [who have made] serious Australia-wide casualty estimates for frontier conflict. Extrapolating from regional counts, both suggested a ratio of ten Aborigines killed for every European, though Broome stressed that this was just an average. Ratios, he argued, could be as high as 40 to one in regions such as Gippsland, Victoria, and as low as four to one in Tasmania. [1] In fact, between 1824 and 1831, 219 colonists and 260 Aborigines were reported killed in eastern Tasmania, which implies a ratio of just over one to one. [2] In earlier research I argued that the Aboriginal death toll was probably closer to 600, but this still implies a ratio of less than three to one. [3] In other words, the Black War was also the most evenly matched frontier conflict in Australia's history, and the Tasmanians the most effective Aboriginal combatants.
The Tasmanians' effectiveness as guerilla fighters places them in a similar league to the Maori, despite the latter's fearsome warrior culture, fortifications and guns. [4] During the largest of the New Zealand wars, Te Kooti's War (1868-72), 212 British colonists and Kupapa (loyalist Maori) were reported killed, compared to 399 anti-government Maori. These casualties are comparable to those suffered in Tasmania.
...Historian Mark Finnane has shown that the Black War was an extraordinarily violent conflict, even when using the most conservative casualty figures. [5] In contrast to the World Wars the Black War appears tiny, but this simple comparison is misleading. When it comes to experience, per capita death rates are far more important that absolute death rates. To use the measure most favoured by social scientists., the recorded European death rate in the Black War equated to 15 killed per 10,000 colonists per year, averaged over the eight years of the conflict. This was half the death rate of Australians in World War I – 30 per 10,000 per year, averaged over four years – but much higher than World War II, which on average cost the lives of six out of every 10,000 Australians in each of its six years. [6]
If the European death rate in the [Tasmanian] Black War was high, the Aboriginal death rate was astronomical. In earlier research I estimated that the eastern Aboriginal population was around 1,000 at the war's outset, and the colonists killed about 600. [7] By accepting these figures we arrive at a staggering annual death rate of 1364 per 10,000 per year, again averaged over the eight years of the conflict. Even if we only acknowledge the 260 recorded killings, the reduced Aboriginal death rate of 591 per 10,000 is still extremely high. In fact, it is 11 times higher than the average death rates for wars between non-state societies around the world and 60 times higher than those between state societies. [8] Per capita, then, the Black War was one of the most destructive wars in recorded history.
Broome, 'Statistics of frontier conflict', pp. 89-90.
Clements, 'Frontier conflict', pp. 279-339, pp. 339-41.
Clements, 'Frontier conflict', pp. 323-31.
H Reynolds, Forgotten war, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2013.
See M Finane, 'Just like a “nun's picnic”? violence and colonisation in Australia', Current Issues in Criminal Justice, vol. 14, no. 3, 2003, pp. 299-306.
J Grey, Military History of Australia, 3rd edn, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 119-20. Australia had the highest casualty rate of any Commonwealth country during World war I.
Clements, 'Frontier conflict', pp. 323-31.
S Pinker, The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined, Viking, New York, 2011, p. 53. Pinker sampled 27 conflicts between non-state societies and nine conflicts between states.
Acknowledgment: Nicholas Clements, The Black War, pp. 1-4, 219 n.1, n.2, n.3, n.4, n.7, n.9, n.10, n.11.