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Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 |
Archiving is not a technique to remove discussions. These discussions are still very relevant. Likebox ( talk) 14:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
The intro currently says: The Australian debate centres on whether the history of European settlement since 1788 was:
This is surely too simplistic a breakdown. Every argument has at least 2 extremes and a spectrum of views in between. So obviously (c) is the correct answer, before you even know anything about the topic, regardless of the spectrum of views.
Can we rewrite this so that the history wars are framed as ongoing attempts by certain people/academics to set the record more firmly in one direction or the other? Not as a kind of multiple choice test with 3 distinct positions. Exactly the same thing happens in analysing the negative and positive effects of the British empire. Generally the more recent and mature the writings the more clearly the "somewhere in between" is elucidated. Donama ( talk) 01:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The Australian debate centres on whether the history of European settlement since 1788 was:
In general the history wars are framed as ongoing attempts to set the record more firmly in one direction or the other, for broadly "political" reasons. Every argument has examples of these two extremes and a spectrum of views in between." regards, Keepitshort ( talk) 13:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Likebox I do not agree with many of the changes you recently made to the section "Genocide debate". Do you need me to list them, or are the previous discussions enough to cover my objections? -- PBS ( talk) 13:35, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The problem with the section on genocide is that the position of Windschuttle, which is a fringe minority position is being treated with respect. Let us be clear:
In this article, the majority position about the Tasmanian genocide is not given any weight at all. This must be rectified.
A long discussion occured regarding this. Since it has been archived, I will make every single point I made before once again, going over every source in excruciating detail. Likebox ( talk) 15:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The source says exactly what PBS has said it does and is easily found via the link PBS provided. There is no need for PBS or anyone else to provide you with that information yet again. We have been over this issue before and your preferred wording still has no support from any other users. Webley442 ( talk) 03:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, try this: Saying “Ever since the introduction of the modern term in the 1940s, Raphael Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars have considered the events of the Black War on Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide.” implies that they were using Tasmania as a defining example of genocide in 1950, 1955, 1960, 1965 and so on. They weren’t. Tasmania wasn't even on their radar at that time. Genocide scholarship was almost exclusively focussed on the Holocaust in those days with some (not much) attention given to the Armenian Genocide and very little else got mentioned.
As the text in the links say, Lemkin never published his work on Tasmania.
In the linked page of Genocide and settler society by Dirk Moses it says: “in one of the first major works on the subject, published in 1981, Leo Kuper referred to the “systematic annihilation” of Aborigines in Tasmania.” It then goes on to discuss work published in 1985, 1986, 1990, 1995 and so on.
In the linked page of Empire, Colony, Genocide also by Dirk Moses, it says that: “Genocide scholarship had really got underway in the 1970s, and grew dramatically in the 80’s………”
So we are looking at a period AFTER the introduction of the word ‘genocide’ in the 1940’s but the period in which ‘comparative genocide scholars’ start referring to ‘Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide’ starts in the 1970s and really takes off in 1980s.
Can you cite works by ‘comparative genocide scholars’ in use in the 1950s or the 1960s in which they say anything like Tasmania is a ‘defining example of a genocide’?
If not, please let's move the discussion on to your next sentence. Webley442 ( talk) 08:09, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
If you have sources that you can cite showing that comparative genocide scholars have been using Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide "ever since" the 1940s, i.e. they were saying it in the 1950s, the 1960s and all the way through to the present day, let's see them. Not just vague phrases like "repeated in several sources" but give us verifiable citations, otherwise, how about you just admit you can't support your preferred wording with appropriate sources and we go on from there. Webley442 ( talk) 13:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
There has been debate among certain Australian historians as to whether the European colonisation of Australia resulted in the genocide of groups of Aborigines, and in particular the Tasmanian Aborigines.
Ever since the introduction of the modern term in the 1940s, Raphael Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars have considered the events of the Black War on Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide. citation needed During the Black War, European colonists in Tasmania nearly completely annihilated the Tasmanian Aborigines. [1] From a population of approximately 5,000 individuals, they were hunted down and killed until only a few hundred individuals were left. These were then relocated to Flinders Island, where disease and neglect reduced their numbers still further, until the last full blooded native Tasmanian died in 1876.
Most Australian historians don't dispute the historical events, but some of them don't agree that it should be called a genocide. [2] [3] Some of the debate is over to what extent the governing body of the settler outpost had the goal of complete extermination in mind [4]. What is known is that in 1826, the Tasmanian Colonial Times declared that "The Government must remove the natives -- if not they will be hunted down and like wild beasts and destroyed." [5] Governor George Arthur [6] declared martial law in November 1828, and empowered whites to kill full blooded Aboriginals on sight. A bounty for was declared for the head of a native, £5 for the killing of an adult, £2 per child. [7] Journalist and publisher Henry Melville [8], described the results in 1835: "This murderous warfare, in the course of a few years destroyed thousands of aborigines, whilst only a few score of the European population were sacrificed” [9] [10]
While accepting that most of the natives were killed by exterpationist settlers, Henry Reynolds has nevertheless rejected the label of genocide, because he believes that the settler's goal of extermination did not include every native, and that the governor of the island did not intend annihilation. Tatz has criticized Reynolds position as follows:
Genocide of a part of a population is still genocide... criminality is inherent in incitement participation and complicity [11]
Mindful of these disputes between genocide scholars and Australian historians, Anne Curthoys has said: "It is time for a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship if we are to understand better what did happen in Tasmania in the first half of the nineteenth century, how best to conceptualize it, and how to consider what that historical knowledge might mean for us now, morally and intellectually, in the present. [12]
The political scientist Kenneth Minogue and historian Keith Windschuttle disagree with the mainstream historical narrative, and believe that no mass killings took place on Tasmania. [13] [14] Minogue thinks Australians fabricated this history out of white guilt, [15] while Windschuttle believes that most of the native Tasmanians died of disease. Disease is not believed by other historians to have played any major role in Tasmania before the 1829 relocation to Flinders Island. [16]
Regarding events on mainland Australia, there have been occasional accusations of genocide, but no clear consensus. Many of the deaths on the mainland were due to smallpox, which is commonly believed to have come from Europe with the settlers. Many historians, like Craig Mear, support the thesis that the settlers introduced smallpox either intentionally or accidentally. [17] Intentional introduction would be considered a form of genocide. [18]
Historian Judy Campbell argues that the smallpox epidemics of 1789-90, 1829-32, did not start with the Europeans. She believes that the smallpox was not a result of contact with British settlers, but instead spread south from the far North of Australia, and was due to contact between Aborigines and visiting fishermen from what is now Indonesia. [19] While this has always been the accepted consensus about the source of the later smallpox epidemics of the 1860s, for the earlier epidemics this view has not met with widespread acceptence [20], and has been specifically challenged by historian Craig Mear. [21] Mear writes:
They had been coming to this coast for hundreds of years, yet this was the first time that they had brought the deadly virus with them.
He also argues that the scientific model that Campbell uses to make her case is flawed, because it modelled the smallpox at significantly higher teperatures than those recorded at the time. It has also been argued by Lecture in Indigenous Studies Greg Blyton that smallpox did not reach the Awabakal people north of Sydney in 1789-90 and that non-genocidal violence including massacres accounted for depopulation there after 1820[36] [37]
In the April 2008 edition of The Monthly, David Day wrote that Lemkin considered genocide to encompass more than mass killings but also acts like "driv[ing] the original inhabitants off the land... confin[ing] them in reserves, where policies of deliberate neglect may be used to reduce their numbers... Tak[ing] indigenous children to absorb them within their own midst... assimilation to detach the people from their culture, language and religion, and often their names." [22] These questions of definition are important for the stolen generations debate.
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There is no need for a "collapse box". The text above substitutes for the badly broken text in the article. There is no need to hide it. Likebox ( talk) 21:17, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
In particular--- the text above is no longer than the corresponding text in the article, and allows a reader to visually diff the two to see where the biases in the current text are. In addition, the sources must be clearly visible, as I will be refering to them again and again and again. Likebox ( talk) 21:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
When a page has awful, offensive material on it, it is difficult to only make small edits. A small edit sort of implies that you agree with the stuff you didn't touch. When the rest of the stuff is a racist fiasco, this can be very discouraging. So we need a big edit, and it needs to stick.
The same mechanism prevents well meaning readers from adding new things, like the massacres on the mainland, because to do so would be to implicitly support the rest of the nonsense on the page. This means we need to have a big change, and go on from there. I have made an attempt at a big change. I will do so periodically until it sticks. Likebox ( talk) 20:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
"Faces of hate", by Chris Cunneen, David Fraser, Stephen Tomsen, Hawkins Press, 1997, ISBN 1876067055. ( pp 5-forward) may contain some useful information as it links John Howard's views to those of the extreme Right. -- PBS ( talk) 20:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
The Political Methodology of Genocide Denial, Elizabeth Strakosch ("recently completed a BA (Hons) in the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland."), Dialogue (2005) 3:3, pp 1-23, Political Science & International Studies. She compares holocaust denial techniques with some of those techniques used in the history wars. (She seems unaware that she too is taking a social/political position in this analysis) -- PBS ( talk) 16:47, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
I've come here from from WP:ANI as an uninvolved admin. I know absolutely nothing about the subject matter, which does mean that I am totally neutral. I do have some experience in getting warring sides out of article deadlock. Theresa Knott | token threats 10:50, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Just a few points: if you did want to refer to the book written to rebut Windschuttle, it isn't called "Contra Windschuttle", it's called "Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History" edited by Robert Manne 2003. It's not surprising that Likebox couldn't remember the name correctly. It sunk pretty much without a trace. Even ardent supporters of the 'contra Windschuttle' position tend to be embarrassed to mention it, as it has become pretty much a byword for 'how not to write a rebuttal'. It was so bad that an entire book called "Washout" (by John Dawson) was written just about the flaws in "Whitewash".
As for Likebox's claims that he/she doesn't object to Windschuttle getting as much space as anyone wants: yet virtually every edit he/she makes deletes large portions of the material on the work and arguments of Windschuttle, Campbell and others. He/she's been asked to ADD material on the mainstream position if he/she feels it isn't adequately represented but he/she persists in doing it his/her way.
Re his/her objection to "the current sentence, which says that Lemkin et. al were working based on "previously published histories", and that "more recent histories challenge the details on which the consensus is based".": 1. Lemkin did base his work on "previously published histories", he certainly did no original research on Tasmania, Likebox has been cited sources which confirm that. The same is true of most of the other sources he/she refers to, like Tatz. As for "more recent histories challenge the details on which the consensus is based" - that's what the debate is about. The more recent works of Keith Windschuttle, Judith Campbell, Josephine Flood and others do challenge those details and the arguments for the 'mainstream' position. (As does some of the material included in older history books written by people like James Bonwick, NJB Plomley, Geoffrey Blainey and others.) Webley442 ( talk) 23:14, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Once again we have the mysterious "(t)housands of people who have done primary research..." of whom Likebox names a grand total of .... one, Madley. That's right up there with "those sources don't google, and I'm not about to go do research" and "I know the general picture, because I read references to this in popular books many times over". One on the 3 key Wikipedia policies is VERIFIABILITY. There is no point getting upset with me (or PBS, for that matter) because we can cite and quote from verifiable sources to support our positions. If you want to put material in the article and have it stay there, get some verifiable sources for it. Webley442 ( talk) 23:02, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
- "Windschuttle's argument that genocide was not committed in Van Diemen's land should be driected towards popular historians and journalists who hold this idea rather than those in academia who generally do not." (John Connor The Australian frontier wars, 1788-1838, UNSW Press, 2002 ISBN 0868407569, 9780868407562 p. x).
- "However it is notable that while comparative genocide scholars assume the specifically Tasmanian case to be one unmitigated genocide, the majority of Australian experts are considerably more circumspect." (Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: The rise of the West and the coming of genocide, I.B.Tauris, 2005 ISBN 1845110579, 9781845110574 p. 344 footnote 105).
Sorry that I left a note offering to help then disappeared! Events IRL have kept me away, but I'm back now with a lot of reading to get through. Theresa Knott | token threats 12:58, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
A quick explanation about the disagreement. POV1) who holds it? what are their arguments? Are their any supporting facts (Numbers not opinions) POV2) Who holds it? What are their arguments. Again are their any supporting facts. Some kind of summing up perhaps. The whole section needs to be trimmede down to th3e basics to ensure that the text is lively and readable. If this is a lively debate it should read like one. Quotations should be used only if they add to the understanding of the argument. Ther3e are far to many quotes in the section at the moment. Theresa Knott | token threats 16:43, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
Could I ask a favor of you? When you type something on this talk page could you do a quick scan before you hit save and look for phrases such as "You'll probably soon hear the screams of outrage" and just remove them. There is a tendency for people who have been in a long running battle to assume that the problems are unsolvable. This attitude is natural but unhelpful. Far better to be positive, assume that we will be able to work out a solution, and its not them and us but just us. By removing defeatist language from our arguments it lightens the tone of the talk page and makes collaboration much more likely (IMO anyway). This advice is for everyone. You are not the only one who has spoken this way on this page. Theresa Knott | token threats 17:24, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
To establish undue weight all you need is reference counting, and some informed opinion. In order to say that "flat Earth" is a minority opinion, I don't need a source that says "most scholars believe that the Earth is round". Likewise, that most natives were violently killed by settlers is undisputed in Tasmanian history, except Windschuttle disagrees. When you have a crackpot with a personal denialist history, don't treat him like a scholar.
The debate here on undue weight is ill informed, because Webley throws a lot of smoke in the air. There is no dispute between reasonable people about what happened on Tasmania.
That is the consensus on the events. That's called genocide by genocide scholars, it's called "an unfortunate incident" by Australian historians. But at least they agree on the events. Likebox ( talk) 15:38, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
A quote from Likebox: “But Australian experts don't deny that about 3-4 thousand natives were killed by settlers, except Windschuttle. They ALL agree that disease had nothing to do with it, except Windschuttle. That's what makes Windschuttle crazy, and this is the part that needs to be "extirpated" from this article.”
Now what do the historians really say?
Henry Reynolds in Fate of a Free People reports that James Bonwick in The Last of the Tasmanians, 1870, p85, records another similar conversation.
Historian Geoffrey Blainey (Professor of Economic History, then Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, and Dean of Melbourne's Faculty of Arts, foundation Chancellor at the University of Ballarat.) says that by 1830 in Tasmania:
Then we have George Augustus Robinson, appointed Conciliator to the Tasmanian Aborigines, whose contemporary hand-written journals were found in Britain in the 1950's by historian NJB Plomley, transcribed and reproduced in Friendly Mission, Plomley, N. J. B., 1966, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart.
On Bruny Island, 1829/1830: After the arrival of whites on Bruny Island in 1829, 22 Aborigines are recorded as dying of respiratory disease over that winter. By January 1830, of over 40 Bruny Island Aborigines who were there when Robinson arrived, there were only 17 still alive, the others having died of disease. Robinson's diary, Plomley, NJB: Friendly Mission, p 77
At Recherche Bay, February 1830: Robinson's travelling party discovered the body of a woman who had been left to die by her tribe after becoming ill. As recorded by Robinson:
Robinson's diary, 2 February 1830, Friendly Mission, p113 (nb: 19th century spelling can be a little variable, hence Brune/Bruny)
GA Robinson, note with letter, MacLachlan to Colonial Secretary, 24 May 1831, Friendly Mission, pp461-2 (nb: in those days, catarrhal fever was a term used for influenza, although it is applied to other diseases today)
In North and West Tasmania, September 1832:
Robinson writing to Edward Curr, 22 Sept 1832, Friendly Mission, p 695.
What was the source of the `mortality'? Most likely, it was the earlier visit by Robinson's party. In his role as the Great Conciliator, Robinson, accompanied by a mixed group of white and Aboriginal servants/interpreters, travelled repeatedly throughout Tasmania and especially into remote areas, far from the settled regions, to extend a germ-laden hand of friendship to the Aborigines.
In January 1839, Robinson visited the Melbourne area of Victoria, caught the Spanish flu that was afflicting the colonists there and took it back to the Establishment on Flinders Island with him. 8 Aborigines at Wybalenna promptly died of it. Plomley, Weep in Silence, pp937-947; Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, p, 193; Journal of George Robinson jr., Robinson Papers, 28 March 1839, vol 50, ML A7071.
There are numerous other reports regarding disease and its devastating effects on the Tasmanian Aborigines. Because of the close proximity of white observers, there are records of how lethal influenza, in particular, was amongst the Aborigines at Flinders Island and Oyster Cove. Virtually every time a supply ship visited, more Aborigines would catch the latest strain of the flu, it would rapidly develop into pneumonia and they'd die within days.
Venereal disease had sterilised most of the women on Flinders Island and at Oyster Cove, which is why the birth rate was abysmal.
Until relatively recently, the fact that introduced disease killed a lot of Aborigines in colonial Tasmania was pretty well known but very little understood; i.e. just how badly people with no prior immunity were affected was not understood and still isn't by many people. The `denialism' regarding the devastating effect of disease on the Tasmanian Aboriginal population started in the mid-1970's, when Lyndall Ryan claimed in her PhD thesis which was reworked and published in 1981 as Aboriginal Tasmanians, p 175 (the sarcastic remarks in brackets after each claim are all mine, of course):
Back to Flood -
And before Likebox tries to pin a label like `right wing zealot' on her, here's how others describe her and her work:
Well, perhaps one reason that the extinction isn't universally accepted as genocide is because unintentionally introduced disease isn't widely accepted as being an instrument of genocide, although there are those like Barta who argue that it should be. Webley442 ( talk) 10:27, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
There have been a couple of pretty dumb counter-arguments made regarding disease, originating from Robert Manne and James Boyce.
One argument is that almost all the accounts of imported disease are from 1829 on and become more common after the transportation of the Aborigines to Flinders Island and later to Oyster Cove. The implication is that something changed in 1829, which somehow made disease a problem that it hadn’t been before. (Manne does mention ‘a conversation recorded by James Bonwick’ about disease before 1829 but carefully avoids disclosing that the account is of an oral tradition of a major epidemic prior to colonisation, presumably caught from passing sailors or sealers, which greatly ‘thinned’ the Tasmanian Aboriginal population and ‘swept off’ ‘whole tribes’... It’s the information that the black armband historians and their supporters withhold that is often of more importance than what they do tell you.) This argument is associated with a suggestion that conditions on Flinders Island were so deplorable that they caused the disease problem. However, even Henry Reynolds admits that it was the ‘best equipped and most lavishly staffed Aboriginal institution in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century’. The food supplied and standards of accommodation built for the Aborigines were good for the day. Aborigines were free to roam the island, which abounded with bush tucker, and they were often absent from the main settlement for extended periods on hunting trips.
The other argument is basically that the Aboriginal women who went with the sealers did not succumb to disease so it couldn’t have been that serious, i.e. the Aborigines couldn't have been that susceptible to disease.
However...1829 wasn’t a ‘magic’ year in which Aborigines suddenly became more susceptible to disease than they had been before. If they were highly susceptible to dying from, say influenza, after 1829, then they were highly susceptible to dying from it before 1829. The only difference was the presence of literate white observers to record what was happening. G.A. Robinson began his travels around Tasmania in 1829 by moving to Bruny Island and so became one of the main recorders of Tasmanian Aboriginal life and death.
Historians pretty much universally agree that relations between settlers and Tasmanian Aborigines were peaceful in the first couple of decades after colonisation (with some exceptions, Risdon Cove on 3 May 1804 being one). During that time the Aborigines got into the habit of paying visits to the settlements and to outlying settlers’ homes, where they were given food and other presents like blankets and clothing. (There was also a certain amount of trading going on including the trading of the sexual services of Aboriginal women to white men.) But after such interactions, the Aborigines would leave peacefully with no harm done or so it seemed. Except that during those peaceful visits, they’d unknowingly risk acquiring some unwanted presents from the white settlers; germs, which they could then have taken back with them and spread around to any other Aborigines they came into contact with. Entire tribes could be ‘swept off’ by fatal diseases or large numbers infected with venereal diseases that destroyed their reproductive abilities with no white observers out in the bush to record it.
The Tasmanian Aborigines believed that the evil spirits (disease) inhabited particular places so it's likely that they would often move away from the place where a member of the band got sick. As an band with already infected members moved around, trying to escape the evil spirits, they’d increase their chances of coming into contact with other bands and spreading the infection further. Individual members of a dying band would be highly likely to seek refuge with another band and so carry the disease to them, too.
The black armband historians want it both ways. They want us to believe that white settlers violently murdered thousands of Tasmanian Aborigines out in the bush with less than 200 of those killings being documented in some way. But we aren’t supposed to realise that it’s more likely that large numbers of Tasmanian Aborigines died of, or were rendered infertile by disease out in the bush with no documentation of it.
Why didn’t the Aboriginal women who went with the sealers succumb to disease?
1. We don’t know how many of the Aboriginal women who went with the sealers did die of disease. It may be that the sealers simply went and got ‘replacements’ when women died. The Aboriginal women who survived and developed some level of immunity are likely to just be a percentage of the total taken.
2. A Canadian study (McGill University) indicates that the female sex hormone oestrogen gives women's immune systems an enhanced ability to fight off infection. Since women have a stronger natural resistance to disease than men do, you’d expect a greater survival rate amongst women.
3. A considerable percentage of Aborigines who’d fall into the category of ‘died of disease’, would actually have died of a lack of care. One known response of the Aborigines to disease was to believe it was caused by evil spirits and for them to abandon the sufferers to their fate. Rather than abandoning sick women, the sealers, having gone to a certain amount of trouble to acquire women and not having a superstitious fear of what were to them familiar diseases, are likely to have supplied them with whatever remedies and medicines they had, kept them warm and provided water and food. So the survival rate for women living with the sealers would naturally be higher, probably much higher, than that for Aboriginal women living in an Aboriginal band.
4. As a matter of self-protection, the sealers may have prevented men with a venereal disease from getting access to ‘their’ women.
5. Sexual exclusivity and jealousy also play a role in limiting the spread of venereal diseases. It appears that some, if not all, of the sealers’ women lived with one man only, i.e. they were not ‘shared’ between a group of men and so were less likely to get infected with a venereal disease. Webley442 ( talk) 04:16, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Well this may of happened or that may of happened and little green men may have whisked them off in a spaceship. All this is speculation. The only thing that matters as far as this article is concerned is what argument are historians actually making?
Theresa Knott |
token threats 17:40, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Webley and Windschuttle are indistinguishable. They both believe that disease "took off" the natives, a pathetically ignorant version of history that was commonly repeated in textbooks of the irredemably racist Australia of the 1950s.
Genocide historians and Tasmanian historians both dismiss the "disease theory". They say that the hunting of the natives for sport and for space was what killed the natives. This killing began in the 1820s, and culminated in the 1829 black line, a human line of settlers that swept the island end to end, in order to exterminate all blacks. The black line was psychologically devastating to the survivors. Defeated, outnumbered and starving, they cast their lot with a white man who promised to protect them if they agreed to relocate. They were herded into a concentration camp on Flinders Island, and there they were left to die of disease and neglect, until the last surviving members, objects of ridicule and contempt, died in the 1870s, and their corpses were mutilated for medical experiments.
The records and newspapers of the time document hundreds of unpunished murders of Aboriginal Tasmanians, cheered on by polite society. The settlers wanted the natives gone, exterminated, because they felt that they were subhuman. The actual number killed during the rampage is most commonly estimated at 3-4 thousand people (out of 5 thousand total). This comes from eyewitness estimates, before/after population estimates and the widely acknowledged fact that disease played no role from 1820-1829. This history went essentally undisputed from the 1840s to the present day.
In the 1940s, Lemkin outlined the modern concept of "genocide", and identified the behavior of the Tasmanian settlers as an early example. The notion caught on in the 1960s, and the events on Tasmania were then classified as a genocide by most of the world. This made Australian conservatives angry. They deny that it was genocide, for one reason or another.
But Windschuttle boldly goes where no man has gone before. He theorizes that virulent colds and VD were responsible for the deaths! This new theory is so STUPID that it's hard to argue against. I ask new editors to please do a quick google search. Likebox ( talk) 04:18, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
FYI I've started rewriting (and moving around) some of the material in the article so far mainly in the Background and Black Armband debate sections but I propose to move on to other sections as I develop ideas on what to do there. Both these sections were, in my opinion, pretty unreadable, with excessive quotes and disjointed text. I've also added some material in the Black Armband Debate section to explain the change in the debate from how it originally started over whether there was an excessive focus on negative aspects of Australian history to a debate over whether, or to what extent, there had been fabrication of the history. I don't think anything I've put there so far would be controversial. (When I get to anything that is a controversial issue, I'll raise it in the talk page first.)
I believe that there is more needed in that section regarding the counter arguments to the 'fabrication' arguments and plan to put some more material on it in there, however, I'm trying to clarify the article. I don't believe that we should be trying to put all the evidence and arguments in the article, people need to read what's in the links and the books if they want to go into that much detail. Our job should be to summarise the relevant material in a reasonably readable form and get rid of what is irrelevant to the debate (eg all the material that had been there about previous uses of the term 'black armband' was very interesting but irrelevant to the debate over the 'black armband' view of history so it just served to bloat the article).
CONSTRUCTIVE input is always welcome, no-one 'owns' this article. Make suggestions on the talk page or do some rewriting of your own in the article but, obviously, if what you put in the article is unsourced, flat out wrong or biased, don't expect it to have a long life there. If you think what you want to put in the article may raise the hackles of other users, I'd recommend that you raise it in the talk page first and see how much support it gets. Webley442 ( talk) 23:37, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
This page is full of crackpot history written by Webley, supported by PBS. I do not intend to cite a SINGLE SOURCE for this statement, because it is too obvious to cite. I will unilaterally assert it, again and again, until somebody fixes the problem. The natives on Tasmania DID NOT die of disease as everyone knows--- they were murdered by settlers. There is no debate about this among sane historians. Please do not be intimidated by the administrator status of PBS, he has taken an unsupportable position. Do not be intimidated by Webley's hot air--- his historical research is biased. Neither should touch this page, since everything they write is garbage. Likebox ( talk) 14:16, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
The actions on Tasmania were the first modern genocide. It was the smallest in scale, only a few thousand victims, but the most successful--- everyone was killed and the culture destroyed forever. The patterns laid down here propagated and evolved: in the Boer War, then in the Armenian genocide, finally perfected by the Nazis. But all the main ideas were first cooked up in Tasmania.
Incredible. all the modern ideas about the ingredients for a successful genocide are already there! So this is a test case. The deniers start by denying this little example, and if they succeed, they can move on. Likebox ( talk) 15:22, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
See also Talk:History wars/Archive 2#Did European colonisation of Australia resulted in genocide 2
I intend to edit the genocide section and add to the paragraph "Much of the debate on whether ..." to include mention of Moss's distinction between "Intentionalists" (intentional genocide like the Holocaust) and "structuralists" (structural genocide which "averts the issue of perpetrator agency and intention by highlighting anonymous 'genocidal processes' of cultural and physical destruction."), and Madley's term "frontier genocide".-- PBS ( talk) 11:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
I also intend to remove the paragraph "Reynolds also points out that Raphael Lemkin,..." as it now just repeats what is written in the paragraph that starts "After the introduction of the word genocide...". -- PBS ( talk) 11:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Neither Webley nor PBS should edit They both misrepresent historical consensus without shame or remorse. I hope someone else will get involved to get rid of their influence. It is impossible to talk to them. Likebox ( talk) 18:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I have just protected this article for one week to allow for dispute resolution. The edit warring over its content appears to be escalating and is not productive. Please use this time to civilly discuss options to improve the article. As a disinterested observer, I'd suggest that the best way of handling the current dispute is to stick to a simple narrative of what the different views are rather than attempt to write thematic paragraphs which discuss multiple views. Nick-D ( talk) 05:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Still wrong Likebox, I've never edited Genocides in History either. A sentence by sentence discussion would be more productive than what's going on at present. There are a lot more problems with your preferred text than just the first sentence. Webley442 ( talk) 23:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Regarding a source or support for "based on previously published histories": After referring to art critic Robert Hughes' book The Fatal Shore and to economic historian, N.G. Butlin and their claims that what happened in Tasmania was genocide, Henry Reynolds wrote: “Few international genocide scholars would have faulted these condign judgments. Many of them have named Tasmania in their lists of legitimate case studies, although their usually slight grasp of island history might have counselled caution.” Chapter 5 by Henry Reynolds "Genocide in Tasmania?" in A. Dirk Moses, Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, p 128. I think it’s pretty clear that Reynolds is referring to the fact that most international genocide scholars base their claims regarding Tasmania on histories published by others as opposed to doing their own research in the Tasmanian Archives. Plus, of course, there is no mention in his biography of Lemkin ever visiting Tasmania. Webley442 ( talk) 10:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
In the ‘Was it Genocide?’ section of the chapter, Reynolds wrote: “One problem with much of the international literature concerning Tasmania is that most writers appear to be unaware that at the critical period in question, the colony was immersed in fierce guerrilla warfare. Lacking this essential information, the writers cannot understand the actions of the colonial government beyond assuming there was a brutal but generalized desire to get rid of the Aborigines. Linked to this failure to understand settler motivation is an entirely patronizing view of the Aborigines as helpless but pathetic victims of the colonists’ murderous impulses or the violence of psychologically disturbed or even psychotic convicts. The reality was quite different. For five years the Colony was seriously disrupted by Aboriginal aggression.” and “The settlers in the countryside lived in high anxiety for years on end.” p 146 Henry Reynolds "Genocide in Tasmania?"
“Whether Governor Arthur strayed over the unmarked border between warfare and genocide cannot be answered with any certainty. As always, it depends on what is meant by genocide. It was clear that he was determined to defeat the Aborigines and secure the permanent expropriation of their land, but there is little evidence to suggest that he wanted to reach beyond that objective and destroy the Tasmanian race in whole or in part.” p 147 Henry Reynolds "Genocide in Tasmania?" Webley442 ( talk) 10:53, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- We have two sources that state what is the position of most Australian experts/historian: John Connor "Windschuttle's argument that genocide was not committed in Van Diemen's land should be directed towards popular historians and journalists who hold this idea rather than those in academia who generally do not." and Levene (which is used as a source in the article) "The debate about whether the term genocides is applicable to the broad Australian context... However it is notable that while comparative genocide scholars assume the specifically Tasmanian case to be on of unmitigated genocide, the majority of Australian experts are considerably more circumspect." both are already cited on this talk page, so I will not repeat the citations. The sentence [in the article that starts "After the introduction..."] states exactly what the two sources say and quotes a third source Anne Curthoys, who holds a similar opinion is also quoted later in the paragraph. ...
While you are looking for that source Likebox, what is your source for your claim that there are “hundreds if not thousands of scholars, like Madley, who did primary research on Tasmania and who wholeheartedly agree that it was a genocide”. The paper in Archive 2 that you linked to as Madley’s primary research contains no evidence of primary research that I can see; in that he cites only secondary sources (like Plomley). I can find no source elsewhere that indicates that Madley ever did primary research on Tasmanian colonial history.
Jesse Shipway, who lives in Tasmania, went to University there and who DID do his PhD on Tasmanian colonial history, does agree that it was a genocide but his argument is based on a much broader definition of genocide than the legal one; his incorporates unintentionally introduced disease as an agent of genocide.
“Jesse Shipway disputed the analysis of Dirk Moses by suggesting that the Tasmanian genocide “was a by-product of modernisation [the Bauman thesis]. The indigenes died of disease and interruptions in fertility functioning that resulted from incidental encounters with the European interlopers, but the keenness of the administrators to move the Aborigines out of areas suitable for pastoral expansion cannot be separated out from this larger diorama of mortality.”” John Cooper: Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention, Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0-230-51691-5, ISBN-10: -0-230-51691-2, p248 (Jesse Shipway: PhD thesis, Scars on the Archive, Vision of Place: Genocide and Modernity in Tasmania)
While I disagree with the notion that unintentionally introduced disease is genocide, at least Shipway, with access to the primary sources, knows about the role of disease and acknowledges it. Webley442 ( talk) 22:41, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
(deindent) The sentence that the "majority of Australian experts are more circumspect" is correct if the phrase "Australian experts" is interpreted as "experts within Australia". It is also correct if "more circumspect" means that they are not sure if the events qualify as a full scale genocide, or if it something close but not quite there. You are not correct if it is interpreted as "The majority of Australian experts agree with Windschuttle about the scale of the massacres". That phrase is just plain wrong. Likebox ( talk) 21:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
"A strong oral tradition indicates that a catastrophic epidemic occurred even before British settlement. Robert Clark, a teacher at Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment, reported that Aborigines told him they were originally `more numerous than the white people were aware of ' but `their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English, entire tribes of natives having been swept off.' Before 1803, disease may have come from sailors or early sealers." Flood, Josephine, The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People, published by Allen & Unwin, 2006 pp 66-67, citing Bonwick, James: The Last of the Tasmanians, 1870, p85
Historian Geoffrey Blainey (Professor of Economic History, then Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, and Dean of Melbourne's Faculty of Arts, foundation Chancellor at the University of Ballarat.) says that by 1830 in Tasmania: “Disease had killed most of them but warfare and private violence had also been devastating.” Geoffrey Blainey, A Land Half Won, Macmillan, South Melbourne, Vic., 1980, p75
"The natives informed me that plenty of natives had been attacked with Raegerwropper or evil spirit, and had died. Thus the mortality with which the Brune natives had been attacked, appears to have been general among the tribes of aborigines." George Augustus Robinson's diary, 2 February 1830, Friendly Mission, , Plomley, N. J. B., 1966, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart. “The aborigines of this colony are universally susceptible to cold and that unless the utmost providence is taken in checking its progress at an early period it fixes itself on the lungs and gradually assumes the complaint spoken of i.e. the catarrhal fever.” GA Robinson, note with letter, MacLachlan to Colonial Secretary, 24 May 1831, Friendly Mission, pp461-2 (nb: in those days, catarrhal fever was a term used for influenza, although it is applied to other diseases today) Robinson writing to Edward Curr, 22 Sept 1832, Friendly Mission, p 695, in North and West Tasmania, September 1832: "The numbers of aborigines along the western coast have been considerably reduced since the time of my last visit. A mortality has raged amongst them which together with the severity of the season and other causes had rendered the paucity of their number very considerable."
“Jesse Shipway disputed the analysis of Dirk Moses by suggesting that the Tasmanian genocide “was a by-product of modernisation [the Bauman thesis]. The indigenes died of disease and interruptions in fertility functioning that resulted from incidental encounters with the European interlopers, but the keenness of the administrators to move the Aborigines out of areas suitable for pastoral expansion cannot be separated out from this larger diorama of mortality.”” John Cooper: Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention, Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0-230-51691-5, ISBN-10: -0-230-51691-2, p248 (Jesse Shipway: ‘Modern by Analogy: Modernity. Shoah and the Tasmanian Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research 7:2 (2005): 218-19) Webley442 ( talk) 06:50, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
"Theory 2" is your invention, Likebox, the combination of factors argued by Windschuttle to have lead to the extinction were: 1. The pre-colonisation Aboriginal population of Tasmania was low to start with. 2000, 4000, 5000, whatever guess you use and they are all pretty much guesswork, it was low. 2. Life expectancy was low as it was for most hunter-gatherer societies. 3. Infant mortality was high. 4. There was ongoing internal violence: casual violence, feuds, killings over suspected sorcery, and raids on other tribes/bands for women or for other reasons. 5. Deaths through introduced diseases. Diseases could have been introduced not only through the British settlement but also through contact with passing ships including the French visits in 1792 and 1793. The Tasmanian Aborigines were the most isolated group of people on the face of the Earth at the time of British colonisation. Having been isolated since the land bridge to mainland Australia was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age, they had an exceptionally high susceptability to introduced disease. 6. Infertility through introduced venereal diseases. Untreated venereal diseases can lead to infertility. 7. The loss of a significant number of women of childbearing age from the full-blooded Aboriginal gene pool to white sealers and settlers. Some Aboriginal women were abducted, some (possibly including captives taken from other tribes or bands) were traded, i.e. sold by Aboriginal men, some may have been given as ‘gifts’ meant to incorporate the new arrivals into Aboriginal society through marriage and a not insignificant number voluntarily associated themselves with various white sealer and settler groups (easier life, better and more certain food supply). 8. Deaths through conflict between the Aborigines and the British. Webley442 ( talk) 07:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Likebox, you say: "The sources show just how fringe Windschuttle's history is. To use it as a basis for comments such as the settlers were guilty of only of "acts of omission", and that genocide scholars base their views on the Tasmanian genocide on "previously published histories" is a gross mischaracterization." It appears that you haven't read the text in the article carefully. The quote "the term 'genocide' only applies to cases of deliberate mass killings of Aborigines by European settlers, or ... might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by the reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers." doesn't come from Windschuttle. It comes from Debates on Genocide - Part One Debates on 'Genocide' in Australian History from the Australian Government Department of Education Science and Training website. Also the source I cited in support of the text "basing their analysis on previously published histories" was, again, not Windschuttle. It was Henry Reynolds. It appears that you are letting your opposition to Windschuttle get in the way of accuracy, again. Webley442 ( talk) 13:03, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
The evidence, as listed above, includes a record of a strong oral tradition amongst Tasmanian Aborigines of a widespread epidemic before British colonisation that is believed to have wiped out a considerable percentage of the Aboriginal population. There are also records of epidemics there after colonisation, which also are believed to have wiped out a significant part of the Aboriginal population. In other words, the epidemics started with the first contact between Aborigines and passing ships and continued through the period of colonisation as a result of contact between Aborigines and sealers, British convicts and settlers. These records fit in well with what is currently known about the effects of introduced disease on non-immune indigenous populations.
Many of the recorded incidences of epidemic disease amongst the Aborigines were recorded by GA Robinson. Rather than try to whitewash violent conflict by lying about disease, Robinson was only too eager to record reports of violent conflict too (so much so that some people played upon his gullibility by telling him tall tales of murderous attacks upon the Aborigines which he dutifully recorded as fact).
Actually the traditional view in Australia was that diseases played a large role in the demise of the Tasmanian Aborigines though violent conflict played a role too and it is still widely regarded as the most credible explanation for what happened.
How evidence regarding the issue of whether the Aborigines mostly died from disease rather than violence is irrelevant to the genocide debate escapes me.
Windschuttle's argument isn't that historians make mistakes, everyone knows that. It is that certain historians have extensively fabricated and falsified evidence to support their arguments. It is only those historians and their supporters who are arguing that it was "a few minor mistakes". If you strike through the fabricated and falsified material in the books and articles of these historians, there is little or nothing left to support those arguments.
As it happens, those same historians and their supporters have behaved similarly with regard to their criticisms of Windschuttle. Many of the alleged errors that they claim Windschuttle made are actually fabrications on their part. They claim that Windschuttle said X and prove that wrong, counting on the fact that only those willing to read his work thoroughly and pay attention know that Windschuttle never said X in the first place; they simply misrepresented his words. Another tactic used (in particular by Lyndall Ryan)has been to claim that further evidence that they produced afterwards proved Windschuttle was in error but if you look closely, it is all smoke and mirrors and the further evidence produced doesn't prove anything of the kind. You've got to pay attention to the details with this mob.
So far, just off the top of my head, the only errors in Fabrication that seem to stand up to scrutiny as genuine errors as opposed to differences in interpretation are 1. where he says a particular Tasmanian colonial painting is in a particular gallery in Tasmania and 2. where he states his belief that an especially bad post-war history textbook was only used in far north Queensland. Apparently that painting is on display in another gallery (although the painting is owned by the gallery he indicated) and that textbook was apparently made use of in NSW. Big deal! Webley442 ( talk) 03:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Likebox you wrote above that "The current article is written as if there were a consensus about widespread diseases, as if genocide by massacre and persecution was not the majority opinion." The part of the article that specifically mentions the Tasmanian Aboriginies' extinction does not mention desease. The article cites Mark Levene (and another source, John Connor has been cited on this talk page), that states that the majority of Australian experts do not consider the extenction to be a genocide. I have repeatedly ask you to supply a source that contradicts them in their assesment of the debate. To date you have not done so. So why do you repeatedly make statements on what the majority postion is without a source to back it up? -- PBS ( talk) 06:39, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Just to jump back to the source you keep recommending everyone read, Likebox. One of Lyndall Ryan’s papers, of course. What a reliable source for you to recommend! This is the historian who cited the diaries of Reverend Knopwood as the source for the claims in her book The Aboriginal Tasmanians that between 1804 and 1808 British colonists killed 100 Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land. When Windschuttle pointed out, not unreasonably, that the Knopwood diaries mention only four Aboriginal deaths in that period, Ryan claimed in an interview that her ‘real’ source was an 1810 report by the explorer John Oxley. Unfortunately for her, the journalist had done her homework and questioned her about the fact that the Oxley report doesn’t mention 100 Aboriginal deaths either. Ultimately when backed into a corner and asked by the journalist: “So, in a sense, it is fair enough for him to say that you did make up figures? Ryan answered: “Historians are always making up figures.” Great source, I'd dissect out and comment on all the misrepresentations and fallacies in the linked paper but it would run to pages and pages and it’s not worth my time. For anyone who reads it and can’t spot the misrepresentations and fallacies for themselves, a warning….if you are ever in Sydney and a local comes up to you and offers to sell you that big bridge over the Harbour cheap, don’t give him your money. Webley442 ( talk) 08:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Seeing as Webley has such an intimate familiarity with the events, it is possible that there is a COI. How does one verify that indeed the editing is COI free? Likebox ( talk) 04:49, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I’d call your comments above a bit hypocritical, Likebox, coming, as they do, from someone with a history of WP:3RR violations and other forms of edit warring on other articles (and of denying it). You seem to have become accustomed to getting your way by repeatedly reverting or replacing other people’s work and by denying that what you write is disputed or inaccurate until they give up, abandon the articles and let you edit them as you please.
You are well known for your tactics, Likebox, and I can understand why you have been so frustrated with regard to this article. Instead of giving up on an article that you have tried to ‘take over’ like others have in the past, the other editors working on this article, including PBS and myself, have stuck with it and called upon you to justify the changes that you want to make (which you have still failed to do satisfactorily) and have not let you dodge the issue with diversions and misrepresentations.
What you call neutral text, I call heavily biased as well as extremely simplistic, demonstrating your lack of detailed knowledge of this subject.
And what you call verbosity, I call being forced, over and over again, to provide other editors (whom you have repeatedly called upon to ‘suppress’ us by weight of numbers) with enough information about the subject that they might understand that your claims don’t withstand even the briefest scrutiny.
The history of relations between white settlers and Aborigines in Australia is a complex issue and Tasmanian colonial history has been particularly vexed with people trying to use and abuse it to suit their own agendas going all the way back to Henry Melville in the 1830’s. It isn’t possible for anyone to get an accurate idea of what happened and what the majority of Australian historians have said about the history based on what you can google. You have to do the hard work and read the long, dry history books by reputable authors, and you have to read a broad range of them, not just those whose opinions you agree with.
Lastly, there is no COI here. If it were to become necessary to establish that fact to an administrator, I can do so with no difficulty. Webley442 ( talk) 10:16, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I suspect that you are alone and always outnumbered because others with an interest in this article simply don’t agree with you. Isn’t that telling you something?
As for it being just two on our side, no doubt a lot of people don’t have the patience to keep on dealing with your tactics and that this is what you have counted on with regard to other articles. You just keep it up till everyone else ‘goes away’ and lets you win by default. Wearing everyone else down to the point where they give up trying to contribute and you can edit as you like is not a way to achieve a balanced article. Here it seems that everyone else is content to let PBS and myself deal with you. I know that a work colleague and good friend of mine, who recently ‘outed’ himself to me as being The Schoolteacher, gave up on these pages because you make him too angry and that’s not good for his health. (Get well soon!)
Your text gets edited out not because of the sources but because of the unsupported interpretations that you include with them. Once again, it’s fine to say “Tatz argues X, Madley says Y”. (Though there are better sources and if you lived in Australia and had easy access to an Australian University library, you’d know that; just as you would have reason to know that there is a lot more diversity of opinion regarding conflict between settlers and Aborigines and the impact of introduced disease amongst historians than you claim.) That Tatz, Madley and Mear are representative of the majority opinion held by historians is your unsupported contention.
Try putting up for consideration some text that accurately reflects what Tatz, Madley and Mear say without construing it as the TRUTH as believed by everyone in the world and the opinions of those on the other side as lies and the work of ‘kooks’ and ‘nutcases’.
Personally I prefer the work of experts in Australian history, to that of ill-informed international genocide ‘experts’. Of the 3 sources you name, Tatz, Madley and Mear, only Mear was born and educated in Australia (and even so it strikes me as somewhat 'ambitious' for a historian to be disputing the opinion regarding smallpox given by a medical expert, Frank Fenner, a virologist who is a recognized authority on smallpox). Tatz was born and educated in South Africa. Madley was born and educated in the US.
This is an article about the public debate known as the History Wars, not a forum for you to try to disprove Windschuttle’s arguments. Once again, if you lived in Australia and had access to an Australian University library, you’d know it’s not just him arguing that the level of violent conflict (particularly in colonial Tasmania) was not as great as it has been claimed by some historians and that the impact of introduced disease has been grossly underestimated.
Since you seem unaware of much of the historical literature by reputable Australian historians with expertise on this subject, you aren’t in a position to say what is undue weight. Webley442 ( talk) 02:05, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
As the introduction to an article on a debate between opposing positions, the opening paragraphs need to be neutral. An introduction which effectively 'decides' the outcome of the debate is unsuitable. Wikipedia doesn't rule on who wins debates, it reports what secondary sources say about the debates. Properly sourced text regarding claims made about the aims and motivations of participants in the debate belong further into the body of the article. Webley442 ( talk) 22:33, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
The History wars in Australia are a debate over the history of British colonisation of Australia, and its impact on Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. It resembles internal historical debates about past oppression in other countries. [1]
Mainstream history has described Australian colonization as marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession, violent conflict and genocide. This version of history, nearly unanimously supported by academics, is still largely denied by the Australian authorities.
Conservatives within Australia maintain, along with their government, that the history of European settlement was humane, peaceful, with specific instances of mistreatment of Indigenous Australians being aberrations. They claim that that the standard story of dispossession and genocide is harmful for Australian national identity, and is based on bad Historiography tainted by leftist ideological biases.
How does that look to you? Likebox ( talk) 03:39, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
Likebox, claims of it being an Australian Government conspiracy might have had some kind of 'relevance' under the previous conservative government. They don't really work too well since the election in which the conservatives were kicked out and a left of centre government elected. Webley442 ( talk) 13:27, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
New reference, the content of which, probably could be mentioned somewhere in the article: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/27/2669177.htm Donama ( talk) 23:37, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
"Many historians have described Australian colonization as ..." are weasel words unless there is a source that can be cited the old wording is better ( Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words). So I am reverting the older wording until such time as there is a proposal of how to avoid weasel words such as "Xyz has stated that many historians..." or some other formulation. -- PBS ( talk) 13:48, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
"Mainstream history has described Australian colonization as marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession, violent conflict and genocide." Like box do you have a source for the statement of what is "mainstream history" and its description of Australian colinisation? -- PBS ( talk) 20:38, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
<--The purpose of the talk page is to discuss changes to the article. Likebox, you are in part justifying you edits to the article, by making sweeping statements on the talk page. But unless you can present sources to justify such statements, all you are doing is using this talk page as a forum for presenting you own opinions. If you have no sources, then please do not edit the article and please do not use this talk page as a forum for you own opinions ( WP:V, WP:POV, WP:TALK). -- PBS ( talk) 19:10, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 |
Archiving is not a technique to remove discussions. These discussions are still very relevant. Likebox ( talk) 14:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
The intro currently says: The Australian debate centres on whether the history of European settlement since 1788 was:
This is surely too simplistic a breakdown. Every argument has at least 2 extremes and a spectrum of views in between. So obviously (c) is the correct answer, before you even know anything about the topic, regardless of the spectrum of views.
Can we rewrite this so that the history wars are framed as ongoing attempts by certain people/academics to set the record more firmly in one direction or the other? Not as a kind of multiple choice test with 3 distinct positions. Exactly the same thing happens in analysing the negative and positive effects of the British empire. Generally the more recent and mature the writings the more clearly the "somewhere in between" is elucidated. Donama ( talk) 01:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The Australian debate centres on whether the history of European settlement since 1788 was:
In general the history wars are framed as ongoing attempts to set the record more firmly in one direction or the other, for broadly "political" reasons. Every argument has examples of these two extremes and a spectrum of views in between." regards, Keepitshort ( talk) 13:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Likebox I do not agree with many of the changes you recently made to the section "Genocide debate". Do you need me to list them, or are the previous discussions enough to cover my objections? -- PBS ( talk) 13:35, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The problem with the section on genocide is that the position of Windschuttle, which is a fringe minority position is being treated with respect. Let us be clear:
In this article, the majority position about the Tasmanian genocide is not given any weight at all. This must be rectified.
A long discussion occured regarding this. Since it has been archived, I will make every single point I made before once again, going over every source in excruciating detail. Likebox ( talk) 15:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The source says exactly what PBS has said it does and is easily found via the link PBS provided. There is no need for PBS or anyone else to provide you with that information yet again. We have been over this issue before and your preferred wording still has no support from any other users. Webley442 ( talk) 03:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, try this: Saying “Ever since the introduction of the modern term in the 1940s, Raphael Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars have considered the events of the Black War on Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide.” implies that they were using Tasmania as a defining example of genocide in 1950, 1955, 1960, 1965 and so on. They weren’t. Tasmania wasn't even on their radar at that time. Genocide scholarship was almost exclusively focussed on the Holocaust in those days with some (not much) attention given to the Armenian Genocide and very little else got mentioned.
As the text in the links say, Lemkin never published his work on Tasmania.
In the linked page of Genocide and settler society by Dirk Moses it says: “in one of the first major works on the subject, published in 1981, Leo Kuper referred to the “systematic annihilation” of Aborigines in Tasmania.” It then goes on to discuss work published in 1985, 1986, 1990, 1995 and so on.
In the linked page of Empire, Colony, Genocide also by Dirk Moses, it says that: “Genocide scholarship had really got underway in the 1970s, and grew dramatically in the 80’s………”
So we are looking at a period AFTER the introduction of the word ‘genocide’ in the 1940’s but the period in which ‘comparative genocide scholars’ start referring to ‘Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide’ starts in the 1970s and really takes off in 1980s.
Can you cite works by ‘comparative genocide scholars’ in use in the 1950s or the 1960s in which they say anything like Tasmania is a ‘defining example of a genocide’?
If not, please let's move the discussion on to your next sentence. Webley442 ( talk) 08:09, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
If you have sources that you can cite showing that comparative genocide scholars have been using Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide "ever since" the 1940s, i.e. they were saying it in the 1950s, the 1960s and all the way through to the present day, let's see them. Not just vague phrases like "repeated in several sources" but give us verifiable citations, otherwise, how about you just admit you can't support your preferred wording with appropriate sources and we go on from there. Webley442 ( talk) 13:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
There has been debate among certain Australian historians as to whether the European colonisation of Australia resulted in the genocide of groups of Aborigines, and in particular the Tasmanian Aborigines.
Ever since the introduction of the modern term in the 1940s, Raphael Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars have considered the events of the Black War on Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide. citation needed During the Black War, European colonists in Tasmania nearly completely annihilated the Tasmanian Aborigines. [1] From a population of approximately 5,000 individuals, they were hunted down and killed until only a few hundred individuals were left. These were then relocated to Flinders Island, where disease and neglect reduced their numbers still further, until the last full blooded native Tasmanian died in 1876.
Most Australian historians don't dispute the historical events, but some of them don't agree that it should be called a genocide. [2] [3] Some of the debate is over to what extent the governing body of the settler outpost had the goal of complete extermination in mind [4]. What is known is that in 1826, the Tasmanian Colonial Times declared that "The Government must remove the natives -- if not they will be hunted down and like wild beasts and destroyed." [5] Governor George Arthur [6] declared martial law in November 1828, and empowered whites to kill full blooded Aboriginals on sight. A bounty for was declared for the head of a native, £5 for the killing of an adult, £2 per child. [7] Journalist and publisher Henry Melville [8], described the results in 1835: "This murderous warfare, in the course of a few years destroyed thousands of aborigines, whilst only a few score of the European population were sacrificed” [9] [10]
While accepting that most of the natives were killed by exterpationist settlers, Henry Reynolds has nevertheless rejected the label of genocide, because he believes that the settler's goal of extermination did not include every native, and that the governor of the island did not intend annihilation. Tatz has criticized Reynolds position as follows:
Genocide of a part of a population is still genocide... criminality is inherent in incitement participation and complicity [11]
Mindful of these disputes between genocide scholars and Australian historians, Anne Curthoys has said: "It is time for a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship if we are to understand better what did happen in Tasmania in the first half of the nineteenth century, how best to conceptualize it, and how to consider what that historical knowledge might mean for us now, morally and intellectually, in the present. [12]
The political scientist Kenneth Minogue and historian Keith Windschuttle disagree with the mainstream historical narrative, and believe that no mass killings took place on Tasmania. [13] [14] Minogue thinks Australians fabricated this history out of white guilt, [15] while Windschuttle believes that most of the native Tasmanians died of disease. Disease is not believed by other historians to have played any major role in Tasmania before the 1829 relocation to Flinders Island. [16]
Regarding events on mainland Australia, there have been occasional accusations of genocide, but no clear consensus. Many of the deaths on the mainland were due to smallpox, which is commonly believed to have come from Europe with the settlers. Many historians, like Craig Mear, support the thesis that the settlers introduced smallpox either intentionally or accidentally. [17] Intentional introduction would be considered a form of genocide. [18]
Historian Judy Campbell argues that the smallpox epidemics of 1789-90, 1829-32, did not start with the Europeans. She believes that the smallpox was not a result of contact with British settlers, but instead spread south from the far North of Australia, and was due to contact between Aborigines and visiting fishermen from what is now Indonesia. [19] While this has always been the accepted consensus about the source of the later smallpox epidemics of the 1860s, for the earlier epidemics this view has not met with widespread acceptence [20], and has been specifically challenged by historian Craig Mear. [21] Mear writes:
They had been coming to this coast for hundreds of years, yet this was the first time that they had brought the deadly virus with them.
He also argues that the scientific model that Campbell uses to make her case is flawed, because it modelled the smallpox at significantly higher teperatures than those recorded at the time. It has also been argued by Lecture in Indigenous Studies Greg Blyton that smallpox did not reach the Awabakal people north of Sydney in 1789-90 and that non-genocidal violence including massacres accounted for depopulation there after 1820[36] [37]
In the April 2008 edition of The Monthly, David Day wrote that Lemkin considered genocide to encompass more than mass killings but also acts like "driv[ing] the original inhabitants off the land... confin[ing] them in reserves, where policies of deliberate neglect may be used to reduce their numbers... Tak[ing] indigenous children to absorb them within their own midst... assimilation to detach the people from their culture, language and religion, and often their names." [22] These questions of definition are important for the stolen generations debate.
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There is no need for a "collapse box". The text above substitutes for the badly broken text in the article. There is no need to hide it. Likebox ( talk) 21:17, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
In particular--- the text above is no longer than the corresponding text in the article, and allows a reader to visually diff the two to see where the biases in the current text are. In addition, the sources must be clearly visible, as I will be refering to them again and again and again. Likebox ( talk) 21:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
When a page has awful, offensive material on it, it is difficult to only make small edits. A small edit sort of implies that you agree with the stuff you didn't touch. When the rest of the stuff is a racist fiasco, this can be very discouraging. So we need a big edit, and it needs to stick.
The same mechanism prevents well meaning readers from adding new things, like the massacres on the mainland, because to do so would be to implicitly support the rest of the nonsense on the page. This means we need to have a big change, and go on from there. I have made an attempt at a big change. I will do so periodically until it sticks. Likebox ( talk) 20:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
"Faces of hate", by Chris Cunneen, David Fraser, Stephen Tomsen, Hawkins Press, 1997, ISBN 1876067055. ( pp 5-forward) may contain some useful information as it links John Howard's views to those of the extreme Right. -- PBS ( talk) 20:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
The Political Methodology of Genocide Denial, Elizabeth Strakosch ("recently completed a BA (Hons) in the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland."), Dialogue (2005) 3:3, pp 1-23, Political Science & International Studies. She compares holocaust denial techniques with some of those techniques used in the history wars. (She seems unaware that she too is taking a social/political position in this analysis) -- PBS ( talk) 16:47, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
I've come here from from WP:ANI as an uninvolved admin. I know absolutely nothing about the subject matter, which does mean that I am totally neutral. I do have some experience in getting warring sides out of article deadlock. Theresa Knott | token threats 10:50, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Just a few points: if you did want to refer to the book written to rebut Windschuttle, it isn't called "Contra Windschuttle", it's called "Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History" edited by Robert Manne 2003. It's not surprising that Likebox couldn't remember the name correctly. It sunk pretty much without a trace. Even ardent supporters of the 'contra Windschuttle' position tend to be embarrassed to mention it, as it has become pretty much a byword for 'how not to write a rebuttal'. It was so bad that an entire book called "Washout" (by John Dawson) was written just about the flaws in "Whitewash".
As for Likebox's claims that he/she doesn't object to Windschuttle getting as much space as anyone wants: yet virtually every edit he/she makes deletes large portions of the material on the work and arguments of Windschuttle, Campbell and others. He/she's been asked to ADD material on the mainstream position if he/she feels it isn't adequately represented but he/she persists in doing it his/her way.
Re his/her objection to "the current sentence, which says that Lemkin et. al were working based on "previously published histories", and that "more recent histories challenge the details on which the consensus is based".": 1. Lemkin did base his work on "previously published histories", he certainly did no original research on Tasmania, Likebox has been cited sources which confirm that. The same is true of most of the other sources he/she refers to, like Tatz. As for "more recent histories challenge the details on which the consensus is based" - that's what the debate is about. The more recent works of Keith Windschuttle, Judith Campbell, Josephine Flood and others do challenge those details and the arguments for the 'mainstream' position. (As does some of the material included in older history books written by people like James Bonwick, NJB Plomley, Geoffrey Blainey and others.) Webley442 ( talk) 23:14, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Once again we have the mysterious "(t)housands of people who have done primary research..." of whom Likebox names a grand total of .... one, Madley. That's right up there with "those sources don't google, and I'm not about to go do research" and "I know the general picture, because I read references to this in popular books many times over". One on the 3 key Wikipedia policies is VERIFIABILITY. There is no point getting upset with me (or PBS, for that matter) because we can cite and quote from verifiable sources to support our positions. If you want to put material in the article and have it stay there, get some verifiable sources for it. Webley442 ( talk) 23:02, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
- "Windschuttle's argument that genocide was not committed in Van Diemen's land should be driected towards popular historians and journalists who hold this idea rather than those in academia who generally do not." (John Connor The Australian frontier wars, 1788-1838, UNSW Press, 2002 ISBN 0868407569, 9780868407562 p. x).
- "However it is notable that while comparative genocide scholars assume the specifically Tasmanian case to be one unmitigated genocide, the majority of Australian experts are considerably more circumspect." (Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: The rise of the West and the coming of genocide, I.B.Tauris, 2005 ISBN 1845110579, 9781845110574 p. 344 footnote 105).
Sorry that I left a note offering to help then disappeared! Events IRL have kept me away, but I'm back now with a lot of reading to get through. Theresa Knott | token threats 12:58, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
A quick explanation about the disagreement. POV1) who holds it? what are their arguments? Are their any supporting facts (Numbers not opinions) POV2) Who holds it? What are their arguments. Again are their any supporting facts. Some kind of summing up perhaps. The whole section needs to be trimmede down to th3e basics to ensure that the text is lively and readable. If this is a lively debate it should read like one. Quotations should be used only if they add to the understanding of the argument. Ther3e are far to many quotes in the section at the moment. Theresa Knott | token threats 16:43, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
Could I ask a favor of you? When you type something on this talk page could you do a quick scan before you hit save and look for phrases such as "You'll probably soon hear the screams of outrage" and just remove them. There is a tendency for people who have been in a long running battle to assume that the problems are unsolvable. This attitude is natural but unhelpful. Far better to be positive, assume that we will be able to work out a solution, and its not them and us but just us. By removing defeatist language from our arguments it lightens the tone of the talk page and makes collaboration much more likely (IMO anyway). This advice is for everyone. You are not the only one who has spoken this way on this page. Theresa Knott | token threats 17:24, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
To establish undue weight all you need is reference counting, and some informed opinion. In order to say that "flat Earth" is a minority opinion, I don't need a source that says "most scholars believe that the Earth is round". Likewise, that most natives were violently killed by settlers is undisputed in Tasmanian history, except Windschuttle disagrees. When you have a crackpot with a personal denialist history, don't treat him like a scholar.
The debate here on undue weight is ill informed, because Webley throws a lot of smoke in the air. There is no dispute between reasonable people about what happened on Tasmania.
That is the consensus on the events. That's called genocide by genocide scholars, it's called "an unfortunate incident" by Australian historians. But at least they agree on the events. Likebox ( talk) 15:38, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
A quote from Likebox: “But Australian experts don't deny that about 3-4 thousand natives were killed by settlers, except Windschuttle. They ALL agree that disease had nothing to do with it, except Windschuttle. That's what makes Windschuttle crazy, and this is the part that needs to be "extirpated" from this article.”
Now what do the historians really say?
Henry Reynolds in Fate of a Free People reports that James Bonwick in The Last of the Tasmanians, 1870, p85, records another similar conversation.
Historian Geoffrey Blainey (Professor of Economic History, then Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, and Dean of Melbourne's Faculty of Arts, foundation Chancellor at the University of Ballarat.) says that by 1830 in Tasmania:
Then we have George Augustus Robinson, appointed Conciliator to the Tasmanian Aborigines, whose contemporary hand-written journals were found in Britain in the 1950's by historian NJB Plomley, transcribed and reproduced in Friendly Mission, Plomley, N. J. B., 1966, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart.
On Bruny Island, 1829/1830: After the arrival of whites on Bruny Island in 1829, 22 Aborigines are recorded as dying of respiratory disease over that winter. By January 1830, of over 40 Bruny Island Aborigines who were there when Robinson arrived, there were only 17 still alive, the others having died of disease. Robinson's diary, Plomley, NJB: Friendly Mission, p 77
At Recherche Bay, February 1830: Robinson's travelling party discovered the body of a woman who had been left to die by her tribe after becoming ill. As recorded by Robinson:
Robinson's diary, 2 February 1830, Friendly Mission, p113 (nb: 19th century spelling can be a little variable, hence Brune/Bruny)
GA Robinson, note with letter, MacLachlan to Colonial Secretary, 24 May 1831, Friendly Mission, pp461-2 (nb: in those days, catarrhal fever was a term used for influenza, although it is applied to other diseases today)
In North and West Tasmania, September 1832:
Robinson writing to Edward Curr, 22 Sept 1832, Friendly Mission, p 695.
What was the source of the `mortality'? Most likely, it was the earlier visit by Robinson's party. In his role as the Great Conciliator, Robinson, accompanied by a mixed group of white and Aboriginal servants/interpreters, travelled repeatedly throughout Tasmania and especially into remote areas, far from the settled regions, to extend a germ-laden hand of friendship to the Aborigines.
In January 1839, Robinson visited the Melbourne area of Victoria, caught the Spanish flu that was afflicting the colonists there and took it back to the Establishment on Flinders Island with him. 8 Aborigines at Wybalenna promptly died of it. Plomley, Weep in Silence, pp937-947; Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, p, 193; Journal of George Robinson jr., Robinson Papers, 28 March 1839, vol 50, ML A7071.
There are numerous other reports regarding disease and its devastating effects on the Tasmanian Aborigines. Because of the close proximity of white observers, there are records of how lethal influenza, in particular, was amongst the Aborigines at Flinders Island and Oyster Cove. Virtually every time a supply ship visited, more Aborigines would catch the latest strain of the flu, it would rapidly develop into pneumonia and they'd die within days.
Venereal disease had sterilised most of the women on Flinders Island and at Oyster Cove, which is why the birth rate was abysmal.
Until relatively recently, the fact that introduced disease killed a lot of Aborigines in colonial Tasmania was pretty well known but very little understood; i.e. just how badly people with no prior immunity were affected was not understood and still isn't by many people. The `denialism' regarding the devastating effect of disease on the Tasmanian Aboriginal population started in the mid-1970's, when Lyndall Ryan claimed in her PhD thesis which was reworked and published in 1981 as Aboriginal Tasmanians, p 175 (the sarcastic remarks in brackets after each claim are all mine, of course):
Back to Flood -
And before Likebox tries to pin a label like `right wing zealot' on her, here's how others describe her and her work:
Well, perhaps one reason that the extinction isn't universally accepted as genocide is because unintentionally introduced disease isn't widely accepted as being an instrument of genocide, although there are those like Barta who argue that it should be. Webley442 ( talk) 10:27, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
There have been a couple of pretty dumb counter-arguments made regarding disease, originating from Robert Manne and James Boyce.
One argument is that almost all the accounts of imported disease are from 1829 on and become more common after the transportation of the Aborigines to Flinders Island and later to Oyster Cove. The implication is that something changed in 1829, which somehow made disease a problem that it hadn’t been before. (Manne does mention ‘a conversation recorded by James Bonwick’ about disease before 1829 but carefully avoids disclosing that the account is of an oral tradition of a major epidemic prior to colonisation, presumably caught from passing sailors or sealers, which greatly ‘thinned’ the Tasmanian Aboriginal population and ‘swept off’ ‘whole tribes’... It’s the information that the black armband historians and their supporters withhold that is often of more importance than what they do tell you.) This argument is associated with a suggestion that conditions on Flinders Island were so deplorable that they caused the disease problem. However, even Henry Reynolds admits that it was the ‘best equipped and most lavishly staffed Aboriginal institution in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century’. The food supplied and standards of accommodation built for the Aborigines were good for the day. Aborigines were free to roam the island, which abounded with bush tucker, and they were often absent from the main settlement for extended periods on hunting trips.
The other argument is basically that the Aboriginal women who went with the sealers did not succumb to disease so it couldn’t have been that serious, i.e. the Aborigines couldn't have been that susceptible to disease.
However...1829 wasn’t a ‘magic’ year in which Aborigines suddenly became more susceptible to disease than they had been before. If they were highly susceptible to dying from, say influenza, after 1829, then they were highly susceptible to dying from it before 1829. The only difference was the presence of literate white observers to record what was happening. G.A. Robinson began his travels around Tasmania in 1829 by moving to Bruny Island and so became one of the main recorders of Tasmanian Aboriginal life and death.
Historians pretty much universally agree that relations between settlers and Tasmanian Aborigines were peaceful in the first couple of decades after colonisation (with some exceptions, Risdon Cove on 3 May 1804 being one). During that time the Aborigines got into the habit of paying visits to the settlements and to outlying settlers’ homes, where they were given food and other presents like blankets and clothing. (There was also a certain amount of trading going on including the trading of the sexual services of Aboriginal women to white men.) But after such interactions, the Aborigines would leave peacefully with no harm done or so it seemed. Except that during those peaceful visits, they’d unknowingly risk acquiring some unwanted presents from the white settlers; germs, which they could then have taken back with them and spread around to any other Aborigines they came into contact with. Entire tribes could be ‘swept off’ by fatal diseases or large numbers infected with venereal diseases that destroyed their reproductive abilities with no white observers out in the bush to record it.
The Tasmanian Aborigines believed that the evil spirits (disease) inhabited particular places so it's likely that they would often move away from the place where a member of the band got sick. As an band with already infected members moved around, trying to escape the evil spirits, they’d increase their chances of coming into contact with other bands and spreading the infection further. Individual members of a dying band would be highly likely to seek refuge with another band and so carry the disease to them, too.
The black armband historians want it both ways. They want us to believe that white settlers violently murdered thousands of Tasmanian Aborigines out in the bush with less than 200 of those killings being documented in some way. But we aren’t supposed to realise that it’s more likely that large numbers of Tasmanian Aborigines died of, or were rendered infertile by disease out in the bush with no documentation of it.
Why didn’t the Aboriginal women who went with the sealers succumb to disease?
1. We don’t know how many of the Aboriginal women who went with the sealers did die of disease. It may be that the sealers simply went and got ‘replacements’ when women died. The Aboriginal women who survived and developed some level of immunity are likely to just be a percentage of the total taken.
2. A Canadian study (McGill University) indicates that the female sex hormone oestrogen gives women's immune systems an enhanced ability to fight off infection. Since women have a stronger natural resistance to disease than men do, you’d expect a greater survival rate amongst women.
3. A considerable percentage of Aborigines who’d fall into the category of ‘died of disease’, would actually have died of a lack of care. One known response of the Aborigines to disease was to believe it was caused by evil spirits and for them to abandon the sufferers to their fate. Rather than abandoning sick women, the sealers, having gone to a certain amount of trouble to acquire women and not having a superstitious fear of what were to them familiar diseases, are likely to have supplied them with whatever remedies and medicines they had, kept them warm and provided water and food. So the survival rate for women living with the sealers would naturally be higher, probably much higher, than that for Aboriginal women living in an Aboriginal band.
4. As a matter of self-protection, the sealers may have prevented men with a venereal disease from getting access to ‘their’ women.
5. Sexual exclusivity and jealousy also play a role in limiting the spread of venereal diseases. It appears that some, if not all, of the sealers’ women lived with one man only, i.e. they were not ‘shared’ between a group of men and so were less likely to get infected with a venereal disease. Webley442 ( talk) 04:16, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Well this may of happened or that may of happened and little green men may have whisked them off in a spaceship. All this is speculation. The only thing that matters as far as this article is concerned is what argument are historians actually making?
Theresa Knott |
token threats 17:40, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Webley and Windschuttle are indistinguishable. They both believe that disease "took off" the natives, a pathetically ignorant version of history that was commonly repeated in textbooks of the irredemably racist Australia of the 1950s.
Genocide historians and Tasmanian historians both dismiss the "disease theory". They say that the hunting of the natives for sport and for space was what killed the natives. This killing began in the 1820s, and culminated in the 1829 black line, a human line of settlers that swept the island end to end, in order to exterminate all blacks. The black line was psychologically devastating to the survivors. Defeated, outnumbered and starving, they cast their lot with a white man who promised to protect them if they agreed to relocate. They were herded into a concentration camp on Flinders Island, and there they were left to die of disease and neglect, until the last surviving members, objects of ridicule and contempt, died in the 1870s, and their corpses were mutilated for medical experiments.
The records and newspapers of the time document hundreds of unpunished murders of Aboriginal Tasmanians, cheered on by polite society. The settlers wanted the natives gone, exterminated, because they felt that they were subhuman. The actual number killed during the rampage is most commonly estimated at 3-4 thousand people (out of 5 thousand total). This comes from eyewitness estimates, before/after population estimates and the widely acknowledged fact that disease played no role from 1820-1829. This history went essentally undisputed from the 1840s to the present day.
In the 1940s, Lemkin outlined the modern concept of "genocide", and identified the behavior of the Tasmanian settlers as an early example. The notion caught on in the 1960s, and the events on Tasmania were then classified as a genocide by most of the world. This made Australian conservatives angry. They deny that it was genocide, for one reason or another.
But Windschuttle boldly goes where no man has gone before. He theorizes that virulent colds and VD were responsible for the deaths! This new theory is so STUPID that it's hard to argue against. I ask new editors to please do a quick google search. Likebox ( talk) 04:18, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
FYI I've started rewriting (and moving around) some of the material in the article so far mainly in the Background and Black Armband debate sections but I propose to move on to other sections as I develop ideas on what to do there. Both these sections were, in my opinion, pretty unreadable, with excessive quotes and disjointed text. I've also added some material in the Black Armband Debate section to explain the change in the debate from how it originally started over whether there was an excessive focus on negative aspects of Australian history to a debate over whether, or to what extent, there had been fabrication of the history. I don't think anything I've put there so far would be controversial. (When I get to anything that is a controversial issue, I'll raise it in the talk page first.)
I believe that there is more needed in that section regarding the counter arguments to the 'fabrication' arguments and plan to put some more material on it in there, however, I'm trying to clarify the article. I don't believe that we should be trying to put all the evidence and arguments in the article, people need to read what's in the links and the books if they want to go into that much detail. Our job should be to summarise the relevant material in a reasonably readable form and get rid of what is irrelevant to the debate (eg all the material that had been there about previous uses of the term 'black armband' was very interesting but irrelevant to the debate over the 'black armband' view of history so it just served to bloat the article).
CONSTRUCTIVE input is always welcome, no-one 'owns' this article. Make suggestions on the talk page or do some rewriting of your own in the article but, obviously, if what you put in the article is unsourced, flat out wrong or biased, don't expect it to have a long life there. If you think what you want to put in the article may raise the hackles of other users, I'd recommend that you raise it in the talk page first and see how much support it gets. Webley442 ( talk) 23:37, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
This page is full of crackpot history written by Webley, supported by PBS. I do not intend to cite a SINGLE SOURCE for this statement, because it is too obvious to cite. I will unilaterally assert it, again and again, until somebody fixes the problem. The natives on Tasmania DID NOT die of disease as everyone knows--- they were murdered by settlers. There is no debate about this among sane historians. Please do not be intimidated by the administrator status of PBS, he has taken an unsupportable position. Do not be intimidated by Webley's hot air--- his historical research is biased. Neither should touch this page, since everything they write is garbage. Likebox ( talk) 14:16, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
The actions on Tasmania were the first modern genocide. It was the smallest in scale, only a few thousand victims, but the most successful--- everyone was killed and the culture destroyed forever. The patterns laid down here propagated and evolved: in the Boer War, then in the Armenian genocide, finally perfected by the Nazis. But all the main ideas were first cooked up in Tasmania.
Incredible. all the modern ideas about the ingredients for a successful genocide are already there! So this is a test case. The deniers start by denying this little example, and if they succeed, they can move on. Likebox ( talk) 15:22, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
See also Talk:History wars/Archive 2#Did European colonisation of Australia resulted in genocide 2
I intend to edit the genocide section and add to the paragraph "Much of the debate on whether ..." to include mention of Moss's distinction between "Intentionalists" (intentional genocide like the Holocaust) and "structuralists" (structural genocide which "averts the issue of perpetrator agency and intention by highlighting anonymous 'genocidal processes' of cultural and physical destruction."), and Madley's term "frontier genocide".-- PBS ( talk) 11:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
I also intend to remove the paragraph "Reynolds also points out that Raphael Lemkin,..." as it now just repeats what is written in the paragraph that starts "After the introduction of the word genocide...". -- PBS ( talk) 11:42, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
Neither Webley nor PBS should edit They both misrepresent historical consensus without shame or remorse. I hope someone else will get involved to get rid of their influence. It is impossible to talk to them. Likebox ( talk) 18:40, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I have just protected this article for one week to allow for dispute resolution. The edit warring over its content appears to be escalating and is not productive. Please use this time to civilly discuss options to improve the article. As a disinterested observer, I'd suggest that the best way of handling the current dispute is to stick to a simple narrative of what the different views are rather than attempt to write thematic paragraphs which discuss multiple views. Nick-D ( talk) 05:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Still wrong Likebox, I've never edited Genocides in History either. A sentence by sentence discussion would be more productive than what's going on at present. There are a lot more problems with your preferred text than just the first sentence. Webley442 ( talk) 23:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Regarding a source or support for "based on previously published histories": After referring to art critic Robert Hughes' book The Fatal Shore and to economic historian, N.G. Butlin and their claims that what happened in Tasmania was genocide, Henry Reynolds wrote: “Few international genocide scholars would have faulted these condign judgments. Many of them have named Tasmania in their lists of legitimate case studies, although their usually slight grasp of island history might have counselled caution.” Chapter 5 by Henry Reynolds "Genocide in Tasmania?" in A. Dirk Moses, Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, p 128. I think it’s pretty clear that Reynolds is referring to the fact that most international genocide scholars base their claims regarding Tasmania on histories published by others as opposed to doing their own research in the Tasmanian Archives. Plus, of course, there is no mention in his biography of Lemkin ever visiting Tasmania. Webley442 ( talk) 10:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
In the ‘Was it Genocide?’ section of the chapter, Reynolds wrote: “One problem with much of the international literature concerning Tasmania is that most writers appear to be unaware that at the critical period in question, the colony was immersed in fierce guerrilla warfare. Lacking this essential information, the writers cannot understand the actions of the colonial government beyond assuming there was a brutal but generalized desire to get rid of the Aborigines. Linked to this failure to understand settler motivation is an entirely patronizing view of the Aborigines as helpless but pathetic victims of the colonists’ murderous impulses or the violence of psychologically disturbed or even psychotic convicts. The reality was quite different. For five years the Colony was seriously disrupted by Aboriginal aggression.” and “The settlers in the countryside lived in high anxiety for years on end.” p 146 Henry Reynolds "Genocide in Tasmania?"
“Whether Governor Arthur strayed over the unmarked border between warfare and genocide cannot be answered with any certainty. As always, it depends on what is meant by genocide. It was clear that he was determined to defeat the Aborigines and secure the permanent expropriation of their land, but there is little evidence to suggest that he wanted to reach beyond that objective and destroy the Tasmanian race in whole or in part.” p 147 Henry Reynolds "Genocide in Tasmania?" Webley442 ( talk) 10:53, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
- We have two sources that state what is the position of most Australian experts/historian: John Connor "Windschuttle's argument that genocide was not committed in Van Diemen's land should be directed towards popular historians and journalists who hold this idea rather than those in academia who generally do not." and Levene (which is used as a source in the article) "The debate about whether the term genocides is applicable to the broad Australian context... However it is notable that while comparative genocide scholars assume the specifically Tasmanian case to be on of unmitigated genocide, the majority of Australian experts are considerably more circumspect." both are already cited on this talk page, so I will not repeat the citations. The sentence [in the article that starts "After the introduction..."] states exactly what the two sources say and quotes a third source Anne Curthoys, who holds a similar opinion is also quoted later in the paragraph. ...
While you are looking for that source Likebox, what is your source for your claim that there are “hundreds if not thousands of scholars, like Madley, who did primary research on Tasmania and who wholeheartedly agree that it was a genocide”. The paper in Archive 2 that you linked to as Madley’s primary research contains no evidence of primary research that I can see; in that he cites only secondary sources (like Plomley). I can find no source elsewhere that indicates that Madley ever did primary research on Tasmanian colonial history.
Jesse Shipway, who lives in Tasmania, went to University there and who DID do his PhD on Tasmanian colonial history, does agree that it was a genocide but his argument is based on a much broader definition of genocide than the legal one; his incorporates unintentionally introduced disease as an agent of genocide.
“Jesse Shipway disputed the analysis of Dirk Moses by suggesting that the Tasmanian genocide “was a by-product of modernisation [the Bauman thesis]. The indigenes died of disease and interruptions in fertility functioning that resulted from incidental encounters with the European interlopers, but the keenness of the administrators to move the Aborigines out of areas suitable for pastoral expansion cannot be separated out from this larger diorama of mortality.”” John Cooper: Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention, Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0-230-51691-5, ISBN-10: -0-230-51691-2, p248 (Jesse Shipway: PhD thesis, Scars on the Archive, Vision of Place: Genocide and Modernity in Tasmania)
While I disagree with the notion that unintentionally introduced disease is genocide, at least Shipway, with access to the primary sources, knows about the role of disease and acknowledges it. Webley442 ( talk) 22:41, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
(deindent) The sentence that the "majority of Australian experts are more circumspect" is correct if the phrase "Australian experts" is interpreted as "experts within Australia". It is also correct if "more circumspect" means that they are not sure if the events qualify as a full scale genocide, or if it something close but not quite there. You are not correct if it is interpreted as "The majority of Australian experts agree with Windschuttle about the scale of the massacres". That phrase is just plain wrong. Likebox ( talk) 21:07, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
"A strong oral tradition indicates that a catastrophic epidemic occurred even before British settlement. Robert Clark, a teacher at Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment, reported that Aborigines told him they were originally `more numerous than the white people were aware of ' but `their numbers were very much thinned by a sudden attack of disease which was general among the entire population previous to the arrival of the English, entire tribes of natives having been swept off.' Before 1803, disease may have come from sailors or early sealers." Flood, Josephine, The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People, published by Allen & Unwin, 2006 pp 66-67, citing Bonwick, James: The Last of the Tasmanians, 1870, p85
Historian Geoffrey Blainey (Professor of Economic History, then Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, and Dean of Melbourne's Faculty of Arts, foundation Chancellor at the University of Ballarat.) says that by 1830 in Tasmania: “Disease had killed most of them but warfare and private violence had also been devastating.” Geoffrey Blainey, A Land Half Won, Macmillan, South Melbourne, Vic., 1980, p75
"The natives informed me that plenty of natives had been attacked with Raegerwropper or evil spirit, and had died. Thus the mortality with which the Brune natives had been attacked, appears to have been general among the tribes of aborigines." George Augustus Robinson's diary, 2 February 1830, Friendly Mission, , Plomley, N. J. B., 1966, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart. “The aborigines of this colony are universally susceptible to cold and that unless the utmost providence is taken in checking its progress at an early period it fixes itself on the lungs and gradually assumes the complaint spoken of i.e. the catarrhal fever.” GA Robinson, note with letter, MacLachlan to Colonial Secretary, 24 May 1831, Friendly Mission, pp461-2 (nb: in those days, catarrhal fever was a term used for influenza, although it is applied to other diseases today) Robinson writing to Edward Curr, 22 Sept 1832, Friendly Mission, p 695, in North and West Tasmania, September 1832: "The numbers of aborigines along the western coast have been considerably reduced since the time of my last visit. A mortality has raged amongst them which together with the severity of the season and other causes had rendered the paucity of their number very considerable."
“Jesse Shipway disputed the analysis of Dirk Moses by suggesting that the Tasmanian genocide “was a by-product of modernisation [the Bauman thesis]. The indigenes died of disease and interruptions in fertility functioning that resulted from incidental encounters with the European interlopers, but the keenness of the administrators to move the Aborigines out of areas suitable for pastoral expansion cannot be separated out from this larger diorama of mortality.”” John Cooper: Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention, Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2008 ISBN-13: 978-0-230-51691-5, ISBN-10: -0-230-51691-2, p248 (Jesse Shipway: ‘Modern by Analogy: Modernity. Shoah and the Tasmanian Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research 7:2 (2005): 218-19) Webley442 ( talk) 06:50, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
"Theory 2" is your invention, Likebox, the combination of factors argued by Windschuttle to have lead to the extinction were: 1. The pre-colonisation Aboriginal population of Tasmania was low to start with. 2000, 4000, 5000, whatever guess you use and they are all pretty much guesswork, it was low. 2. Life expectancy was low as it was for most hunter-gatherer societies. 3. Infant mortality was high. 4. There was ongoing internal violence: casual violence, feuds, killings over suspected sorcery, and raids on other tribes/bands for women or for other reasons. 5. Deaths through introduced diseases. Diseases could have been introduced not only through the British settlement but also through contact with passing ships including the French visits in 1792 and 1793. The Tasmanian Aborigines were the most isolated group of people on the face of the Earth at the time of British colonisation. Having been isolated since the land bridge to mainland Australia was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age, they had an exceptionally high susceptability to introduced disease. 6. Infertility through introduced venereal diseases. Untreated venereal diseases can lead to infertility. 7. The loss of a significant number of women of childbearing age from the full-blooded Aboriginal gene pool to white sealers and settlers. Some Aboriginal women were abducted, some (possibly including captives taken from other tribes or bands) were traded, i.e. sold by Aboriginal men, some may have been given as ‘gifts’ meant to incorporate the new arrivals into Aboriginal society through marriage and a not insignificant number voluntarily associated themselves with various white sealer and settler groups (easier life, better and more certain food supply). 8. Deaths through conflict between the Aborigines and the British. Webley442 ( talk) 07:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Likebox, you say: "The sources show just how fringe Windschuttle's history is. To use it as a basis for comments such as the settlers were guilty of only of "acts of omission", and that genocide scholars base their views on the Tasmanian genocide on "previously published histories" is a gross mischaracterization." It appears that you haven't read the text in the article carefully. The quote "the term 'genocide' only applies to cases of deliberate mass killings of Aborigines by European settlers, or ... might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by the reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers." doesn't come from Windschuttle. It comes from Debates on Genocide - Part One Debates on 'Genocide' in Australian History from the Australian Government Department of Education Science and Training website. Also the source I cited in support of the text "basing their analysis on previously published histories" was, again, not Windschuttle. It was Henry Reynolds. It appears that you are letting your opposition to Windschuttle get in the way of accuracy, again. Webley442 ( talk) 13:03, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
The evidence, as listed above, includes a record of a strong oral tradition amongst Tasmanian Aborigines of a widespread epidemic before British colonisation that is believed to have wiped out a considerable percentage of the Aboriginal population. There are also records of epidemics there after colonisation, which also are believed to have wiped out a significant part of the Aboriginal population. In other words, the epidemics started with the first contact between Aborigines and passing ships and continued through the period of colonisation as a result of contact between Aborigines and sealers, British convicts and settlers. These records fit in well with what is currently known about the effects of introduced disease on non-immune indigenous populations.
Many of the recorded incidences of epidemic disease amongst the Aborigines were recorded by GA Robinson. Rather than try to whitewash violent conflict by lying about disease, Robinson was only too eager to record reports of violent conflict too (so much so that some people played upon his gullibility by telling him tall tales of murderous attacks upon the Aborigines which he dutifully recorded as fact).
Actually the traditional view in Australia was that diseases played a large role in the demise of the Tasmanian Aborigines though violent conflict played a role too and it is still widely regarded as the most credible explanation for what happened.
How evidence regarding the issue of whether the Aborigines mostly died from disease rather than violence is irrelevant to the genocide debate escapes me.
Windschuttle's argument isn't that historians make mistakes, everyone knows that. It is that certain historians have extensively fabricated and falsified evidence to support their arguments. It is only those historians and their supporters who are arguing that it was "a few minor mistakes". If you strike through the fabricated and falsified material in the books and articles of these historians, there is little or nothing left to support those arguments.
As it happens, those same historians and their supporters have behaved similarly with regard to their criticisms of Windschuttle. Many of the alleged errors that they claim Windschuttle made are actually fabrications on their part. They claim that Windschuttle said X and prove that wrong, counting on the fact that only those willing to read his work thoroughly and pay attention know that Windschuttle never said X in the first place; they simply misrepresented his words. Another tactic used (in particular by Lyndall Ryan)has been to claim that further evidence that they produced afterwards proved Windschuttle was in error but if you look closely, it is all smoke and mirrors and the further evidence produced doesn't prove anything of the kind. You've got to pay attention to the details with this mob.
So far, just off the top of my head, the only errors in Fabrication that seem to stand up to scrutiny as genuine errors as opposed to differences in interpretation are 1. where he says a particular Tasmanian colonial painting is in a particular gallery in Tasmania and 2. where he states his belief that an especially bad post-war history textbook was only used in far north Queensland. Apparently that painting is on display in another gallery (although the painting is owned by the gallery he indicated) and that textbook was apparently made use of in NSW. Big deal! Webley442 ( talk) 03:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Likebox you wrote above that "The current article is written as if there were a consensus about widespread diseases, as if genocide by massacre and persecution was not the majority opinion." The part of the article that specifically mentions the Tasmanian Aboriginies' extinction does not mention desease. The article cites Mark Levene (and another source, John Connor has been cited on this talk page), that states that the majority of Australian experts do not consider the extenction to be a genocide. I have repeatedly ask you to supply a source that contradicts them in their assesment of the debate. To date you have not done so. So why do you repeatedly make statements on what the majority postion is without a source to back it up? -- PBS ( talk) 06:39, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Just to jump back to the source you keep recommending everyone read, Likebox. One of Lyndall Ryan’s papers, of course. What a reliable source for you to recommend! This is the historian who cited the diaries of Reverend Knopwood as the source for the claims in her book The Aboriginal Tasmanians that between 1804 and 1808 British colonists killed 100 Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land. When Windschuttle pointed out, not unreasonably, that the Knopwood diaries mention only four Aboriginal deaths in that period, Ryan claimed in an interview that her ‘real’ source was an 1810 report by the explorer John Oxley. Unfortunately for her, the journalist had done her homework and questioned her about the fact that the Oxley report doesn’t mention 100 Aboriginal deaths either. Ultimately when backed into a corner and asked by the journalist: “So, in a sense, it is fair enough for him to say that you did make up figures? Ryan answered: “Historians are always making up figures.” Great source, I'd dissect out and comment on all the misrepresentations and fallacies in the linked paper but it would run to pages and pages and it’s not worth my time. For anyone who reads it and can’t spot the misrepresentations and fallacies for themselves, a warning….if you are ever in Sydney and a local comes up to you and offers to sell you that big bridge over the Harbour cheap, don’t give him your money. Webley442 ( talk) 08:14, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Seeing as Webley has such an intimate familiarity with the events, it is possible that there is a COI. How does one verify that indeed the editing is COI free? Likebox ( talk) 04:49, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I’d call your comments above a bit hypocritical, Likebox, coming, as they do, from someone with a history of WP:3RR violations and other forms of edit warring on other articles (and of denying it). You seem to have become accustomed to getting your way by repeatedly reverting or replacing other people’s work and by denying that what you write is disputed or inaccurate until they give up, abandon the articles and let you edit them as you please.
You are well known for your tactics, Likebox, and I can understand why you have been so frustrated with regard to this article. Instead of giving up on an article that you have tried to ‘take over’ like others have in the past, the other editors working on this article, including PBS and myself, have stuck with it and called upon you to justify the changes that you want to make (which you have still failed to do satisfactorily) and have not let you dodge the issue with diversions and misrepresentations.
What you call neutral text, I call heavily biased as well as extremely simplistic, demonstrating your lack of detailed knowledge of this subject.
And what you call verbosity, I call being forced, over and over again, to provide other editors (whom you have repeatedly called upon to ‘suppress’ us by weight of numbers) with enough information about the subject that they might understand that your claims don’t withstand even the briefest scrutiny.
The history of relations between white settlers and Aborigines in Australia is a complex issue and Tasmanian colonial history has been particularly vexed with people trying to use and abuse it to suit their own agendas going all the way back to Henry Melville in the 1830’s. It isn’t possible for anyone to get an accurate idea of what happened and what the majority of Australian historians have said about the history based on what you can google. You have to do the hard work and read the long, dry history books by reputable authors, and you have to read a broad range of them, not just those whose opinions you agree with.
Lastly, there is no COI here. If it were to become necessary to establish that fact to an administrator, I can do so with no difficulty. Webley442 ( talk) 10:16, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
I suspect that you are alone and always outnumbered because others with an interest in this article simply don’t agree with you. Isn’t that telling you something?
As for it being just two on our side, no doubt a lot of people don’t have the patience to keep on dealing with your tactics and that this is what you have counted on with regard to other articles. You just keep it up till everyone else ‘goes away’ and lets you win by default. Wearing everyone else down to the point where they give up trying to contribute and you can edit as you like is not a way to achieve a balanced article. Here it seems that everyone else is content to let PBS and myself deal with you. I know that a work colleague and good friend of mine, who recently ‘outed’ himself to me as being The Schoolteacher, gave up on these pages because you make him too angry and that’s not good for his health. (Get well soon!)
Your text gets edited out not because of the sources but because of the unsupported interpretations that you include with them. Once again, it’s fine to say “Tatz argues X, Madley says Y”. (Though there are better sources and if you lived in Australia and had easy access to an Australian University library, you’d know that; just as you would have reason to know that there is a lot more diversity of opinion regarding conflict between settlers and Aborigines and the impact of introduced disease amongst historians than you claim.) That Tatz, Madley and Mear are representative of the majority opinion held by historians is your unsupported contention.
Try putting up for consideration some text that accurately reflects what Tatz, Madley and Mear say without construing it as the TRUTH as believed by everyone in the world and the opinions of those on the other side as lies and the work of ‘kooks’ and ‘nutcases’.
Personally I prefer the work of experts in Australian history, to that of ill-informed international genocide ‘experts’. Of the 3 sources you name, Tatz, Madley and Mear, only Mear was born and educated in Australia (and even so it strikes me as somewhat 'ambitious' for a historian to be disputing the opinion regarding smallpox given by a medical expert, Frank Fenner, a virologist who is a recognized authority on smallpox). Tatz was born and educated in South Africa. Madley was born and educated in the US.
This is an article about the public debate known as the History Wars, not a forum for you to try to disprove Windschuttle’s arguments. Once again, if you lived in Australia and had access to an Australian University library, you’d know it’s not just him arguing that the level of violent conflict (particularly in colonial Tasmania) was not as great as it has been claimed by some historians and that the impact of introduced disease has been grossly underestimated.
Since you seem unaware of much of the historical literature by reputable Australian historians with expertise on this subject, you aren’t in a position to say what is undue weight. Webley442 ( talk) 02:05, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
As the introduction to an article on a debate between opposing positions, the opening paragraphs need to be neutral. An introduction which effectively 'decides' the outcome of the debate is unsuitable. Wikipedia doesn't rule on who wins debates, it reports what secondary sources say about the debates. Properly sourced text regarding claims made about the aims and motivations of participants in the debate belong further into the body of the article. Webley442 ( talk) 22:33, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
The History wars in Australia are a debate over the history of British colonisation of Australia, and its impact on Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders. It resembles internal historical debates about past oppression in other countries. [1]
Mainstream history has described Australian colonization as marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession, violent conflict and genocide. This version of history, nearly unanimously supported by academics, is still largely denied by the Australian authorities.
Conservatives within Australia maintain, along with their government, that the history of European settlement was humane, peaceful, with specific instances of mistreatment of Indigenous Australians being aberrations. They claim that that the standard story of dispossession and genocide is harmful for Australian national identity, and is based on bad Historiography tainted by leftist ideological biases.
How does that look to you? Likebox ( talk) 03:39, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
Likebox, claims of it being an Australian Government conspiracy might have had some kind of 'relevance' under the previous conservative government. They don't really work too well since the election in which the conservatives were kicked out and a left of centre government elected. Webley442 ( talk) 13:27, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
New reference, the content of which, probably could be mentioned somewhere in the article: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/27/2669177.htm Donama ( talk) 23:37, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
"Many historians have described Australian colonization as ..." are weasel words unless there is a source that can be cited the old wording is better ( Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words). So I am reverting the older wording until such time as there is a proposal of how to avoid weasel words such as "Xyz has stated that many historians..." or some other formulation. -- PBS ( talk) 13:48, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
"Mainstream history has described Australian colonization as marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession, violent conflict and genocide." Like box do you have a source for the statement of what is "mainstream history" and its description of Australian colinisation? -- PBS ( talk) 20:38, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
<--The purpose of the talk page is to discuss changes to the article. Likebox, you are in part justifying you edits to the article, by making sweeping statements on the talk page. But unless you can present sources to justify such statements, all you are doing is using this talk page as a forum for presenting you own opinions. If you have no sources, then please do not edit the article and please do not use this talk page as a forum for you own opinions ( WP:V, WP:POV, WP:TALK). -- PBS ( talk) 19:10, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
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