The History wars are an ongoing public debate in Australia over the interpretation of the history of the European colonisation of Australia, and its impact on Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
The debate centres around whether Australia's history of settlement since 1788 was:
a) humane, with the country being peacefully settled, with specific instances of mistreatment of Indigenous Australians being aberrations;
b) marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession, violent conflict and cultural genocide; or
c) somewhere in between?
The History Wars also relates to broader themes concerning national identity, as well as methodological questions concerning the value and reliability of written records (of the authorities and settlers) and the oral tradition (of the Indigenous Australians), along with the ideological biases of those who interpret them.
Similar debates have also occurred in the USA (see culture wars) and Canada.
In 1968 Professor W. E. H. "Bill" Stanner, an Australian anthropologist, coined the term the "Great Australian Silence" in a Boyer Lecture entitled "After the Dreaming"[1], in which he argued that the writing of Australian history was incomplete. He asserted that Australian national history as documented up to that point had largely been presented in a positive light, but that Indigenous Australians had been virtually ignored. He saw this as a structural and deliberate process to omit "… several hundred thousand Aborigines who lived and died between 1788 and 1938…(who were but) … negative facts of history and … were in no way consequential for the modern period".[2]
A new strand of Australian historiography subsequently emerged which gave much greater attention to the negative experiences wrought on Indigenous Australians by the European settlement of Australia. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of progressive historians such as Henry Reynolds began to publish books and articles which they saw as a corrective to the narrow, selective historiography which had hitherto misrepresented or simply ignored Indigenous Australian history.
During these years, a small circle of people grouped around the conservative literary and political journal Quadrant resisted these arguments. Chief among these critics was Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey, who in his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture coined the phrase "Black armband view of history". This phrase began to be used pejoratively by some right-wing and conservative Australian social scientists, politicians, commentators and intellectuals about historians whom they viewed as having presented an overly critical portrayal of Australian history, and as being preoccupied with mourning, grieving or shame.
These critics gained greater prominence after the election of the conservative federal Coalition government in 1996, with Prime Minister of Australia John Howard publicly championing their views. Conservative scholars, intellectuals, journalists and politicians have publicly challenged historians and others who interpret Australian settlement as being characterised by extensive violent conflict between the white settlers and Indigenous Australians.
Though originally waged primarily in the academic environment, an increasingly large proportion of the History Wars has been played out in the Australian print media, with regular opinion pieces being published in major broadsheets such as The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Recently, arguments surrounding the History Wars have become intertwined with the debates about the content of high school history cirricula.
In 2002 historian and journalist, Keith Windschuttle, in his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, disputed whether the colonial settlers of Australia committed widespread genocide against Indigenous Australians, especially focusing on the Black War in Tasmania, and denied the claims by historians such as Henry Reynolds and Professor Lyndall Ryan that there was a campaign of guerrilla warfare against British settlement. Particular historians and histories that are challenged include Henry Reynolds and the histories of massacres, particularly in Tasmania but also elsewhere in Australia. Windschuttle's claims are based upon the argument that the 'orthodox' view of Australian history were founded on hearsay or the misleading use of evidence by historians.
Windschuttle's claims and research have been disputed by other historians, in Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, an anthology edited and introduced by Robert Manne, professor of politics at La Trobe University.
This anthology has itself been the subject of examination by author, John Dawson, in Washout: On the academic response to The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, which minutely dissects "Whitewash" and argues that "Whitewash" leaves Windschuttle's claims and research unrefuted.
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Main article: Stolen Generation |
Despite the lengthy and detailed findings set out in the 1997 Bringing Them Home report into the Stolen Generation, which documented the removal of Aboriginal children from their families by Australian government agencies and church missions, the nature and extent of the removals have been disputed within Australia, with some commentators questioning the findings contained in the report and asserting that the Stolen Generation has been exaggerated. Not only has the number of children removed from their parents been questioned, but also the intent and effects of the government policy.
Some conservative critics, such as Andrew Bolt, have publicly questioned the very existence of the Stolen Generation. Bolt considers that it is a "preposterous and obscene" myth and that there was actually no policy in any state or territory at any time for the systematic removal of "half-caste" Aboriginal children. Robert Manne has responded that Bolt's failure to address the wealth of documentary evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generations amounts to a clear case of historical denialism.[3]
In 2003 Australian historian Stuart Macintyre published The History Wars, written with Anna Clark.[4] This was a study of the background of, and arguments surrounding, recent developments in Australian historiography. The book was launched by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who took the opportunity to criticise conservative views of Australian history, and those who hold them (such as the current Prime Minister John Howard), saying that they suffered from "a failure of imagination", and said that The History Wars "rolls out the canvas of this debate.".[5] Macintyre's critics, such as Greg Melluish (History Lecturer at the University of Wollongong), responded to the book by declaring that Macintyre was a partisan history warrior himself, and that "its primary arguments are derived from the pro-Communist polemics of the Cold War.".[6] Keith Windschuttle said that Macintyre attempted to "caricature the history debate."[7] In a foreword to the book, former Chief Justice of Australia Sir Anthony Mason said that the book was "a fascinating study of the recent endeavours to rewrite or reinterpret the history of European settlement in Australia."[8]
In 2003 the Howard Government commissioned a review of the National Museum of Australia. The investigating panel found that many of the historical narratives contained within the Museum exhibits were incoherent, confusing and unbalanced. While the report concluded that there was no systemic bias, it recommended that there be more recognition in the exhibits of European achievements..[9]
The report drew the ire of some historians in Australia, who claimed that it was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Government to politicise the museum and move it more towards a position which Geoff Blainey called "the three cheers" version of Australian history (all the good things), rather than rather than so-called "black armband" view.[10]