The Vandemonian War

by Nick Brodie

Britain formally colonised Van Diemen’s Land in the early years of the nineteenth century. Small convict stations grew into towns. Pastoralists moved in to the aboriginal hunting grounds. There was conflict, there was violence. But, governments and gentlemen succeeded in burying the real story of the Vandemonian War for nearly two centuries.

The Vandemonian War had many sides and shades, but it was fundamentally a war between the British colony of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) and those Tribespeople who lived in political and social contradiction to that colony. In The Vandemonian War acclaimed history author Nick Brodie now exposes the largely untold story of how the British truly occupied Van Diemen’s Land deploying regimental soldiers and special forces, armed convicts and mercenaries. In the 1820s and 1830s the British deliberately pushed the Tribespeople out, driving them to the edge of existence. Far from localised fights between farmers and hunters of popular memory, this was a war of sweeping campaigns and brutal tactics, waged by military and paramilitary forces subject to a Lieutenant Governor who was also Colonel Commanding. The British won the Vandemonian War and then discretely and purposefully concealed it.

Historians failed to see through the myths and lies – until now. It is no exaggeration to say that the Tribespeople of Van Diemen’s Land were extirpated from the island. Whole societies were deliberately obliterated. The Vandemonian War was one of the darkest stains on a former empire which arrogantly claimed perpetual sunshine. This is the story of that fight, redrawn from neglected handwriting nearly two centuries old.

Genres: History, Australia, Nonfiction, War, Military History

422 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2017

Reviews

[zed · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the Afterword the authors final sentence makes interesting reading. “Unearthed after nearly two centuries of established history, the Vandemonian War allows us to see that a society can be led to do almost anything – and then come to believe it did not do it at all.” In my opinion this final comment is not aimed at British historians but at Australian. This book is about Britain’s treatment of Tasmanian aboriginals but the reality is in that the great big world of British history this event is but a mere sideshow. In Australian history it has loomed larger in academic circles.


This is only the second book I have read on this subject. The first being the The Fabrication Of Aboriginal History: Volume One: Van Diemen's Land by Keith Windshuttle. This book caused considerable debate and was part of something rather puerile in Australian academia called the History Wars. These history wars were held in the 90’s and early 2000’s (from memory) and consisted of Australians being asked to forget the bad things from the past and, to put it facetiously, be happy. “Ignore the black arm band view of history” was the mantra. I personally found this nonsense. History throughout the world and from the dawns of time is black armband even if we individually don’t like to read or hear that. History is history and no one can change their past. Learn from it I say. With that when I read Windshuttle book I recall I found it far too reliant on colonial newspaper sources at the times of the Vandemonian Wars. To me it was the equivalent of relying on Pravda to tell the story of the USSR.


A chronological history is presented with heavy research with quotes galore. In fact this leads to a very dry and dense read that the casual reader may not enjoy. The majority of the research is from surviving records in the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office at the state library and with that these are from the Colonial Secretaries Office, The Governor’s Office with the addition of convict and police records. We do not get an overview nor a populist history. Typical of a book as well researched as this the source material is very interesting and also the various individuals whom are involved. Jorgen Jorgenson for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B8...

Jorgenson played a prominent role in the wars and at one point is quoted as saying “….the delusion kept by the public prints, limiting the number of Aborigines of this island to about two or three hundred..” with the author saying that this was an “…indicator that the war as it appeared in the newspaper could be quite different from the one fought on the ground”
In fact it seems that the violence of the war had an effect on public opinion because the Aboriginal Committee in Hobart suggested that “resident settlers of similar humane feelings….to adhere to a system of self-defence and not wanton aggression”

As time went on comment as to the war became pointed in colonial circles. A correspondent to the Launceston Advertiser asked “Are the unhappy creatures the subjects of our king, in a state of rebellion? Or are they injured people, whom we have invaded and with whom we are at war?” At the same time the Hobart Tasmanian made the case for either “…..offensive prosecution of the war, even to extermination….” or defensive measures. Not long after this comment in 1831, roving parties reported areas of the island with no aboriginal tribes and later capture parties began to bring in groups that were “disproportionately male with no children”. The author called this a “collapse of demographic normality”. By this time the war was at an end; other than a few isolated incidents that came to the attention of the authorities and press. The Launceston Examiner wrote in 1844 ‘the black war will not be soon forgotten by those that shouldered the musket and kept watch during the campaign.’ With that I ask how could Keith Windshuttle have not noticed comment like this when researching his book? In fact Brodie’s book has quoted several colonial newspapers reference to the war. I am not sure how Windshuttle could have interpreted these comment in any other way.

For those interested these are some professional reviews of the book.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/b...

https://www.australianbookreview.com....

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2...


An interview with the author.

http://www.insidehistory.com.au/2017/...

[Warwick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Since Truganini died in 1876, it's long been received wisdom that there are no more Aboriginal Tasmanians left. While things are not quite so simple (mixed-race ancestry, once a shameful secret, has in recent generations often become a point of pride), nevertheless Tasmania is the one state where the founding genocide of modern Australia can be said to have been fully accomplished.

How was it done? Traditionally, the Black War (as it used to be known) was seen as a sad but inevitable result of vague skirmishes on a frontier of settlement. Nick Brodie's thesis is that, far from being an ‘unofficial frontier conflict’, the campaign against Aboriginal Tasmanians was ‘an orchestrated invasion prosecuted by an empire’.

I'm not sure his evidence really backs it up. We see a haphazard ‘field police’, an ad-hoc system of ‘roving parties’ scouring the bush, and a lot of baffled official communications. But there was never a major military presence. The fact that many settlers were ex-soldiers leads Brodie to identify a policy of ‘militarised settlement’; well, that's one way of looking at it, but it's clear from the reports in here that most roving parties had no idea what they were doing, they almost never found any Aborigines, let alone captured any, and even during the ‘Black Line’ – which was the closest thing to an organised military campaign – the Colonel Commanding found that none of his men had any working muskets, and some of the guns misfired so drastically that the sparks would start fires in the shrub several feet away.

As I was reading this, the fighting in Gaza was much in the news, and the similarities were striking. ‘The colonists knew that settlement caused the conditions for conflict,’ Brodie says, ‘but continued to settle anyway.’ As with Gaza, I wonder about the terminology. Brodie is at pains to classify this as a ‘war’ – but is it really a war when one side has an army and a navy and the other side doesn't even have running water? The disproportion in power makes it very hard to assess what's going on.

Brodie is quick to ascribe underhand motives to everyone involved, but I don't always buy it. The Lieutenant Governor, George Arthur, issued repeated orders that Aboriginal people be captured unhurt and not be killed, which Brodie sees as a cynical attempt to paint himself in a good light. I see no reason to disbelieve that he, like others, took a broadly humanitarian view. To me, the issue is systemic: that is, it was a situation which tended towards disaster despite the intentions of many of those involved. The problem is not that the authorities were bloodthirsty, but rather that they were paternalistic, naïve, and fundamentally not very interested in Aboriginal Tasmanians except as they impeded settlement.

That is not to say that some people didn't have views that shock us now. Alfred Stephen, the Solicitor General, gave a good impression of a Dalek when he spoke about the conflict between settlers and Aborigines, arguing to the government that

you are bound upon every principle of justice and humanity, to protect this particular class of individuals, and if you cannot do so without extermination, then I say boldly and broadly exterminate!

Brodie's writing rarely rises above the workmanlike, and remains a little bogged down in the details of new archival evidence Brodie has found. His use of citation is curious. For some reason he wants to quote all kinds of words, whether relevant to his argument or not – as in sentences like the following:

Although the Lieutenant Governor had ‘cheerfully’ responded to Batman's June ‘proposition’, it was still being organised by 14 August when Arthur had ‘just seen Mr Batman’.

We get it, he's read lots of source material. But his inability to put things into clean running prose makes reading him feel a bit like running a hurdle race.

Overall, I found this a lot less compelling than the subject deserves, even if his broad points are obviously correct. Hopefully later historians can take some of Brodie's evidence, and synthesise it into something more holistic on what he calls ‘the British Empire's best-kept secret’.

[Michael Lever · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Australian newspaper recently reviewed this work together with Dark Emu by Pascoe (2014) and Hidden in Plain Sight by Irish (2017). It depicted these as works challenging the way we think about white-black history. I would have added to these perhaps the earliest (and most awarded) work in this vein -Gammage 2011, The Greatest Estate. I have to agree with the Australian (rare though this might be), but have to add that the success of these three / four books is much a product of the times we are in, as it is due to their content.
I doubt the Australian would have reviewed in this manner 20 years ago.
Pascoe brings an impassioned voice to the recovery of primary historical texts long ignored. Irish skates between historical neutrality and sympathetic readings. Brodie's is by far the historians history of these three. He maintains readability while delving deeply and in detail to the potentially dull archives of early Tasmanian administrative correspondence. And it is with this sheer body of detail that Brodie bludgeons, over and over again, any notions that Tasmanian Aboriginal people were subjected to anything less than a concerted and brutal military campaign, on a scale I suspect that makes it the largest military campaign ever undertaken in Australia. More than a campaign. It was a war.
Propositions that Tasmanian Aboriginals were merely subject to settler skirmishes and attack, wilt back into their duplicity or ignorance under Brodie's assault of formally documented evidence.
All this detail does make the book a heavy read, and I suspect will limit it's popularity. However I feel much of its importance lies in that it represents a task someone had to do. Whether one reads it, in whole, partially or not at all, it is a important work to at least know of, and draw attention to in the face of "black armband" claims.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The secret history of Britain’s Tasmanian invasion.’

I read an article by Nick Brodie which led me indirectly to this book. I was curious. I grew up in Tasmania, and colonial history was rarely touched on during my education during the 1960s and early 1970s. The Tasmanian Aboriginals are all dead, we were told, the race is extinct. Questions about how and why were neither encouraged nor answered. I moved away from Tasmania in 1974 and have since learned more.

‘The Vandemonian War was the British Empire’s best kept secret. Invasion was called settlement. Ethnic cleansing was called conciliation. Genocide was naturalised as extinction. Even Van Diemen’s Land was renamed Tasmania.’

What had Nick Brodie discovered, and how does it change our understanding of history?

‘My discovery of the truth about the Vandemonian War started with a certain manuscript volume in the Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office in Hobart. It is labelled ‘No7/Records relating to the Aboriginals’, and has the archival designation CSO1/1/320 (7878). It comes from the records of the Colonial Secretary’s Office, and contains hundreds of pages of inbound correspondence only a tiny fraction of which has ever been previously examined, analysed or cited by historians. These letters detail military and paramilitary operations against Aboriginal people in the interior of Van Diemen’s Land in the 1820s and 1830s.’

Until I read this book, I had (mostly) believed that while individuals and small local groups had killed Aborigines, that the colonial government had tried (however ineffectually) to protect them. It is confronting to read that was not the case, that the military and paramilitary forces deliberately drove the Aboriginal peoples from the lands they had occupied for centuries. This was no accident.
I finished this book with very mixed feelings. It is never comfortable having to revisit what was taught as truth and is now exposed – via the colonial records of the time – as inaccurate and incomplete. Documented fact, not an issue of interpretation.

‘Unearthed after nearly two centuries of established history, the Vandemonian War allows us to see that a society can be led to do almost anything – and then come to believe it did not do it at all.’

Uncomfortable, but important reading.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Tim O'Neill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The fact it drew on source material that has not been analysed in detail before promised a great deal, but for much of the book there seemed to be long stretches of summary of this material, leavened by fairly sporadic analysis and interpretation. This would be fine if either the source material or the analysis was presenting something radically new, but the thesis of the book - that the Black War was a highly organised and militarised series of operations - isn't a new insight. Brodie's book gives a great deal of detail about the "roving parties" and other military and paramilitary operations, but I can't say it added greatly to the other recent overview of the conflict in Nicholas Clements *The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania* (2015). A worthy addition to the literature on the conflict despite this.

[K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trigger warnings: violence, death of Indigenous people, execution of Indigenous people, genocide, gun violence, graphic descriptions of violence, racism, racial slurs.

3.5 stars.

I wanted to love this, I really did. I spent two years of my life researching colonial Van Diemen's Land through to the cessation of transportation in 1853, and a hefty chunk of that included the Black War. So I was ready to be utterly hooked by this and fly through it.

Unfortunately, I mostly found this dry. It's a very important book, for sure. But it relies heavily on government documents to tell the story, and it often got bogged down in the details rather than in the big picture. I also can't say that I loved the way it ended with the end of the Black War. I mean, you've got an entire book focusing on the fact that George Arthur and the colonial government were literally waging war against the Tasmanian Aboriginal population.

And yet there's no mention of the atrocities that happened AFTER the war? No mention of the fact that they were exiled to Wybalenna on Flinders Island and basically left there to die. No mention of the fact that they petitioned Queen Victoria and were relocated to Oyster Cove. No mention of the horrifying conditions there and the way they were treated. And to me, at least, all of that is part and parcel with the Black War.

So while this is a very important book and I'm thrilled someone's done the research to confirm once and for all that yes, the Black War was a literal war, I also feel like this is missing big parts of the overall picture.

[Gary Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very insightful read about an over misunderstood or misrepresented period of Australian history. Credit to the authors for being able to access such an abundance of what appear to be otherwise forgotten records. I only wish there had been a summary at the end which made it clear the true extent of the war on the Aboriginal population. I feel the reader is left to make up their own mind on how close to extinction the Tasmanian Aboriginal population was by the end of the war?

[Lesley Truffle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr Nick Brodie writes about colonial-era Tasmania and the war that was waged against Australia’s indigenous in the 1820’s to 1830’s.

Brodie is a historian, archaeologist and acclaimed writer. In his Endnotes, Brodie meticulously documents his research into the ugly violence that occurred.

The British actively and deliberately set out to drive the aboriginals out of their homelands by utilizing all means available. Brutal tactics and cunning military campaigns were actioned and sanctioned by Lieutenant Governor Colonel George Arthur – and many other power brokers – who have often been depicted as humanitarian heroes.

The author’s engaging writing style makes it easier to digest the unpalatable truths that have long been denied by many historians. For Brodie works from primary documents/sources that were written at the time of the ‘Black Wars’ and he cross references the sources thoroughly.

The facts that Brodie cites were discovered in long lost hand-written reports, orders and correspondence. Previous historians rarely utilized these files, even though they contain important information about the military and paramilitary campaigns that were waged by the British colonials.

Having read Stan Grant’s deeply personal book, ‘Talking to My Country’ (2016), I found it both fascinating and shocking to discover who was actually behind the brutal wars that were fought against Tasmania’s indigenous.

Brodie makes history speak for itself and takes the reader on a trip into the past. It’s not an easy ride but it is an essential one. For Australia’s past is extremely violent and frontier conflict has repeatedly been denied by historians for nearly two centuries.

[Bronwen Whyatt]

It's hard to comprehend just how much war happened in the short years covered in this book. But a war it certainly was. Devastating to read.
I will cite references from it in writings about Australia Felix.