16 Facts About Black War

1.

Black War was a period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Tasmanians in Tasmania from the mid-1820s to 1832.

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2.

Black War has called for the erection of a public memorial to the fallen from both sides of the war.

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3.

Black War was prompted by the rapid spread of British settlers and agricultural livestock throughout areas of Tasmania that had been traditional Aboriginal hunting grounds.

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4.

Black War said Tasmania's northeast coast was the preferred location for such a reserve and suggested they remain there "until their habits shall become more civilised".

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5.

Black War pursued the proposal by issuing on 19 April 1828 a "Proclamation Separating the Aborigines from the White Inhabitants" that divided the island into two parts to regulate and restrict contact between blacks and whites.

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6.

The campaign, which became known as the Black War Line, was greeted enthusiastically by the colonist press.

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7.

Black War Line consisted of 2,200 men: about 550 soldiers—a little over half of the entire garrison in Van Diemen's Land—as well as 738 convict servants and 912 free settlers or civilians.

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8.

Historians have differed in their estimates of the total number of fatalities in the Black War and acknowledge that most killings of Aboriginal people went unreported.

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9.

About 100 Tasmanian Aboriginal people survived the conflict and Clements—who calculates that the Black War began with an indigenous population of about 1,000—has therefore concluded 900 died in that time.

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10.

Black War says Arthur was determined to defeat the Aboriginal people and take their land, but believes there is little evidence he had aims beyond that objective and wished to destroy the Tasmanian race.

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11.

Black War says that unlike genocidal determinations by Nazis against Jews in World War II, Hutus against Tutsis in Rwanda and Ottomans against Armenians in present-day Turkey, which were carried out for ideological reasons, Tasmanian settlers participated in violence largely out of revenge and self-preservation.

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12.

Black War says the British government endorsed the use of partitioning and "absolute force" against Tasmanians, approved Robinson's "Friendly Mission" and colluded in transforming that mission into a campaign of ethnic cleansing from 1832.

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13.

Black War stated his belief that it had been exaggerated and he challenged what is labelled the "Black armband view of history" of Tasmanian colonisation.

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14.

Black War argued they were more like "black bushrangers" who attacked settlers' huts for plunder and were led by "educated black terrorists" disaffected from white society.

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15.

Black War concluded that two colonists had been killed for every Aboriginal person and there was only one massacre of Aboriginal people.

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16.

Black War claimed that the Aboriginal Tasmanians, by prostituting the women tribe members to sealers and stock-keepers, by catching European diseases, and through intertribal warfare, were responsible for their own demise.

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