Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Black Line in Van Diemen's Land: success or failure?

2013; Routledge; Volume: 37; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14443058.2012.755744

1835-6419

Lyndall Ryan,

Australian Indigenous Culture and History

Abstract The Black Line in Tasmania in 1830 was the largest force ever assembled against Aborigines anywhere in Australia. Tasmanian historians have dismissed the Line as an aberration by Governor George Arthur and a complete fiasco by virtue of the fact that only two Tasmanian Aborigines were recorded captured and two others killed. This article contests this view by locating the Line within British imperial policy at the time, and it makes three important new findings. Far from being an aberration, the Line was a common strategy employed across the British Empire to forcibly remove indigenous peoples from their homelands. Further, there was not just one but three Lines in force over the fifteen-month period of the entire operation, and they played a decisive role in ending the Black War. The article concludes that in making George Arthur the scapegoat, historians have overlooked the Line's significance as an important instrument of British imperial power in the early nineteenth century. Keywords: TasmaniaAboriginesBlack Line Notes 1. I would like to thank Jill Bough, Robert Cox, Jeff Hopkins-Weise, Hopkins-WeiseHWendy Michaels, and Caroline Webb for their comments on earlier drafts. I also thank the editors of the journal for their queries and suggestions and Robert Anders for permission to reproduce the maps. Any errors of fact and interpretation are, of course, my own. 2. The Line was widely reported on in the press in London in 1831, and a formal account was published in British Parliamentary Papers in1831, House of Commons Paper no. 259, Van Diemen's Land, Copies of all Correspondence between Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the Subject of the Military Operations lately carried on against the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land, (Military Operations). 3. Henry Melville, The History of Van Diemen's Land From the Year 1824 to 1835, Inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur, ed. George Mackaness (Sydney: Horwtiz-Grahame, 1965), 90–107; J. E. Calder, Some Account of the War, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania (Hobart: Henn & Co., 1875; repr., Hobart: Cox Kay, 1972), Appendix i. 4. N. J. B. Plomley, ed., Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land (Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 1991), 99; A. G. L. Shaw, ed., The History of Tasmania by John West (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1971), 293, 300; James Bonwick, The Last of the Tasmanians or, The Black War of Van Diemen's Land (London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, 1870), 178–79; James Fenton, A History of Tasmania from its Discovery in 1642 to the Present Time (Hobart: J. Walch and Sons, 1884), 106. 5. Clive Turnbull, Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines (1948; repr., Melbourne: Cheshire-Lansdowne, 1965), 123. 6. Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania Volume I, Van Diemen's Land from the Earliest Times to 1855 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983), 220; Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore. A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia 1788–1868 (London: Pan Books, 1987), 420–21. 7. Mark Cocker, Rivers of Blood, Rivers of God: Europe's Conflict with Tribal Peoples (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998), 150. 8. Henry Reynolds, Fate of a Free People: A Radical Re-Examination of the Tasmanian Wars (Ringwood, VIC: Penguin Books, 1995), 16; Henry Reynolds, An Indelible Stain? The Question of Genocide in Australia's History (Ringwood, VIC: Viking, 2001), 76; Henry Reynolds, A History of Tasmania (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 62. 9. Keith Windschuttle, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847 (Sydney: Macleay Press, 2002), 168–69, 179. 10. James Boyce, Van Diemen's Land (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2008), 272–78. 11. John McMahon, “The British Army: Its Role in Counter-Insurgency in the Black War in Van Diemen's Land,” Tasmanian Historical Studies 5 (1995–96): 56–63; John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002), 84–101; John Connor, “British Frontier Warfare Logistics and the ‘Black Line’, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), 1830,” War in History 9.2 (2002): 143–58. 12. McMahon, “The British Army,” 90. 13. Connor, Australian Frontier Wars, 99–100. 14. Connor, Australian Frontier Wars, 94. 15. For the estimate of 6,000 Tasmanian Aborigines in the Settled Districts in 1803 and 250 by September 1830, see Lyndall Ryan, Tasmanian Aborigines: A History Since 1803 (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 2012), chap. 1 and 9. For the estimate of 1,200 Aborigines in the Settled Districts in 1826, see Hobart Town Gazette (HTG), February 4, 1826, Editorial, 2. 16. R. M. Hartwell, The Economic Development of Van Diemen's Land 1820–1850 (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1965), 99. 17. Hartwell, Economic Development, 108–30. 18. See Government Notice, (GN) 13 September 1826, in HTG, September 20, 1826. 19. See GN, 29 November 1826 and 29 November 1827, Garrison Order (GO), 29 November 1827, Proclamation 5 April11828, Brigade Major to Officers on Detachments, 21 April 1828, Brigade-Major to Captain Walpole, 30 September 1828, GO no. 2 24 September 1828, Proclamation of Martial Law, 1 November 1828, Circular to Magistrates, 1 November 1828, Brigade Major to Lt. Oliver, 1 November 1828, Brigade Major to Officers on Detachment, 3 November 1828, GN, 11 December 1828, and GO, 12 December 1828, in British Parliamentary Papers, Military Operations, 20–31. 20. The statistic of 114 settlers killed and four times that number wounded has been compiled from N. J. B. Plomley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash in Van Diemen's Land 1803–1831 (Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, 1992), 71–92. 21. For a discussion of Aboriginal casualties between 1828 and 1830, see Ryan, Tasmanian Aborigines, chap.9. 22. Arthur to Sir George Murray, 30 July 1829, in Peter Chapman, ed., Historical Records of Australia, Despatches and Papers Relating to the History of Tasmania: Resumed Series 3, vol. 8 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003), 454. 23. Sherwin to Arthur, 23 February 1830, Colonial Secretary's Office (CSO) file1/316, Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office (TAHO). 24. GO no. 9, 9 September 1830, in Peter Chapman, ed., Historical Records of Australia, Despatches and Papers Relating to the History of Tasmania: Resumed Series 3, vol. 9 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2006), 617–20. 25. The term “Black Line” was coined in 1835 by Melville, The History of Van Diemen's Land, 89. 26. Chapman, Historical Records of Australia, vol. 9, 931; see also Wolfgang Kruse, “Revolutionary France and the Meanings of Levee en Masse,” in War in an Age of Revolution 1775–1815, ed. Roger Chickering and Stig Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 299–312; and Robin Reilly, William Pitt the Younger (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1979), 283. Robin points out that the Jacobin Lazare Carnot coined the term levee en masse as “a new concept in total war that involved the mobilisation of the nation.” 27. Chapman, Historical Records of Australia, vol. 9, 931; see also Wolfgang Kruse, “Revolutionary France and the Meanings of Levee en Masse,” in War in an Age of Revolution 1775–1815, ed. Roger Chickering and Stig Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 299–312; and Robin Reilly, William Pitt the Younger (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1979), 283. Robin points out that the Jacobin Lazare Carnot coined the term levee en masse as “a new concept in total war that involved the mobilisation of the nation.” 28. Eric Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances: Agrarian Transformation and the Evictions, 1746–1886 (London: Croom Helm, ca. 1982), 212. 29. Mohamed Adhikari, The Anatomy of a South African Genocide. The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples (Cape Town: UCT Press, 2010), 63–64. 30. Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians ,131. 31. Christopher Bayly, Imperial Meridian the British Empire and the World 1780–1830 (London: Longman, 1989), 91–92. 32. Jorgen Jorgenson to Thomas Anstey, 8 June 1829, CSO file 1/320, TAHO. 33. Ann Curthoys, “Genocide in Tasmania: The History of an Idea,” in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 229. 34. Fenton, History of Tasmania, 106; Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 117. 35. Connor, Australian Frontier Wars, 98. 36. Connor, “British Frontier Warfare,” 152. 37. Fenton, History of Tasmania, 107–8; McMahon, “The British Army,” 60. 38. British Parliamentary Papers, Military Operations, 65–66. 39. McMahon, “The British Army,” 60. 40. Charles Esdaile, email to author, June 18, 2010. 41. Charles Darwin, Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle Between the Year 1826 and 1836, Describing their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America, and the Beagle's Circumnavigation of the Globe. Journal and Remarks 1832–1836 (London: Henry Colburn, 1839), 533. 42. See notes 14, 20, and 21 above. 43. Hobart Town Courier (HTC), November 13, 1830, Editorial, 2. See also CSO file 1/316, TAHO, 712, 714. 44. N. J. B. Plomley, ed., Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829–1834, 2nd ed. (Launceston and Hobart: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery and Quintus Publishing, 2008), 296, 470, note 3. 45. Connor, “British Frontier Warfare,” 151–52. 46. Connor, “British Frontier Warfare,” 150; for a list of settlers who participated in the Line, see Fenton, History of Tasmania, 108–9. 47. British Parliamentary Papers, Military Operations, 71. 48. Connor, “British Frontier Warfare,” 154. 49. HTC, Editorial, October 18, 1830, 2 and October 30, 1830, 2. 50. Colonial Times (CT), “Me Bisdee's Farm”, October 22, 1830, 2, October 29, 2; HTC, November 20, 1830, 2; CSO file 1/316 “The Depredations”, 663, 667, 674, 677. 51. Plomley, Jorgen Jorgenson, 107. 52. HTC, Editorial, October 30, 1830, 2; Connor, “British Frontier Warfare,” 154–55. 53. HTC, October 30, 1830. 54. HTC, October 30, 1830. 55. Walpole to Colonel Secretary, 27 October 1830, CSO file 1/332, TAHO. 56. For the incident at Break O'Day Plains, see HTC, November 13, 1830. 57. Plomley, Friendly Mission, 311. 58. Plomley, Friendly Mission, 523. 59. HTC, November 13 and 20, 1830. 60. Chapman, Historical Records of Australia, vol. 9, 659. 61. CT, Editorial, November 19, 1830, 2; see also Plomley, Friendly Mission, 527; and Calder, Native Tribes of Tasmania, 56. 62. CT, Editorials, November 12, 19, and December 3 1830; HTC, November 27, 1830, 2; CSO file 317, “The Depredations”, TAHO, 490; and Plomley, Friendly Mission, 555. 63. HTC, Editorial, March 26, 1831. 64. File CSO 1/316, TAHO, 920–37; , HTC, Editorials August 20, 1831, 2 and September 19, and October 1, 1831. 65. HTC, Editorial, November 26, 1831, 2. 66. CT, Editorials, December 10 and 24, 1830. 67. HTC, September 24, 1831, 2. 68. Emily Stoddart, The Freycinet Line, 1831: Tasmanian History and the Freycinet Peninsula (Coles Bay: Freycinet Experience Pty Ltd, 2003), 11–13; James Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians, 179. 69. Plomley, Friendly Mission, 507. 70. Plomley, Friendly Mission, 604. 71. Ryan, Tasmanian Aborigines, 140. 72. Arthur to Hay, 24 September 1831, Public Record Office (London), Microfilm Joint Copying Project, CO 280/35. 73. HTC, Editorial, January 14, 1832, 2. 74. Plomley, Jorgen Jorgenson, 108. 75. Melville, The History of Van Diemen's Land, 105, 133.