November 24.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Military police state and POWs
A report from one side of the encounter.
By early 1828 [Lieutenant Governor] Arthur presided over something closely resembling a military-run police state where the operational reality of Van Diemen's Land saw a close alliance of the civil and military powers.
...By 1827 Arthur had...combined the civil and military powers, appointing Major Tobias Kirkwood of the 40th Regiment as 'Commandant of the Field Police'. [1] in July 1827, Arthur reportedly spent some time personally 'directing the movements of the Field Police and Military'. [2] Their actions often went unrecorded, but they were an active presence in the colony. In one incident in November 1827, when three field police were capturing a runaway convict, they reportedly encountered 'about 150 natives who attacked them with stones'. [3] The Hobart Town Courier reported that one of the field police was hit in the head. In response, these field policemen:
expended seventeen rounds of ball cartridge and killed two of the dogs, but are not certain whether any of the natives were hurt, on fixing their bayonets and charging, the natives retreated. The plan of the Field police cannot be too highly appreciated, they are a most useful and active set of men.
Arthur clearly thought so too. With instructive timing, and revealing his wider strategic thinking, Arthur reviewed the administration of field police rewards in early March 1828. He had found the force 'highly beneficial' and 'an Augmentation of the Band' was being implemented. [4] Because field police duties were potentially onerous, and could make them decidedly unpopular with the broader convict population, these convicts were offered reduced sentences in return for this special service. The new incentives would, the Colonial Secretary informed the police magistrates, come into force in April 1828 – just in time for the Proclamation.
Government Order, 19 February 1827.
Hobart Town Gazette, 7 July 1827, p. 2.
Hobart Town Courier, 24 November 1827, p. 2.
CSO41/1/1, pp. 2-5.
Acknowledgment: Nick Brodie, The Vandemonian War – The secret history of Britain's Tasmanian Invasion, pp. 14, 15, 385 n.18, n.19, n.20, n.21.
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“Prisoners of war” or “subjects of the British crown”?
[Governor] Macquarie's conflated criminal and military language has led to confusion about this period of war ever since. In the same sentence, referring to the same people, he could use the terms 'prisoners of war' and 'subjects'. Up to 1817 the various colonial administrations grappled with what Robert Forster calls a 'language of concealment', the 'inherently ambiguous status of Aboriginal people as subjects of the Crown'. Military campaigns were employed to suppress resistance warfare, but the ideal of the rule of law at least required a pretence be maintained that Aboriginal people were also being protected. Feasts, clothing, blankets, schools, brass name plates and even land grants (of their own land) were rewards for those who would 'sue for peace' and adopt the 'plan of life' Macquarie had devised for them. [1]
SL, DLDOC, 132, 19 July 1816, 22, 29 Dec. 1816; A773, 12 Jan. 1817; p. 79; HRA, vol. 9, 342 (Macquarie to Bathurst, 4 Apr. 1817); Forster, p. 68.2.
Acknowledgment: Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars, pp.254, 306 n.24.
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Population growth...and decline.
By the census of April 1854, the city of Melbourne and its neighbouring seaport towns (Sandridge, Williamstown) recorded a population of some 65,000 males and 45,000 females. That represents a near five-fold increase in a mere three years...By August, 1854, there were over 115,000 men, women and children on the goldfields alone. The official figures did not include the 'dying race' of Aborigines (estimated at around 2500, a fraction of the 25,000 likely to have occupied the Port Phillip district prior to European occupation) or the Chinese, neither of whom were considered worth counting.
Acknowledgment: Clare Wright, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, pp. 91-92.