Genocide in Tasmania: British Colonization and Destruction of Aboriginal People

Running Head: Genocide 0
Aboriginal Australian History
5/16/2019

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The colonization of Tasmania genocide
The British colonization of Tasmania took place between 1803 and 1830, which were fought
among Aboriginal people and British colonists. It is indicated that the British enacted
genocidal practices and policies in the manner of the intended destruction of the people and
their culture. It is stated that Raphael Lemkin expressed the idea of “genocide” after the
Second World War to incorporate with the island’s violent colonial past. This was held after
the subsequent failure and implementation of conciliatory procedures, which were the vital
cause of the destruction of the several Tasmanian Aboriginal individuals. It is stated that the
professor Tom Lawson has made utilization of the term “genocide” in the respect of
Tasmania’s colonial battle in the early 1830s. A series of offensives is been directed against
Aboriginal individuals, paramilitaries, and Imperial soldiers were commonly engaged
(Docker, 2015)
Some parties were assigned Aboriginal auxiliaries and eventually involved the biggest
ground offensive in Australian colonial history Soldiers and military officers were provided
civil powers. The former soldiers were motivated to settle in Van Diemen’s Land and to
assist in quelling Aboriginal resistance. It is stated that settlers were issued with thousands of
round of ammunition & hundreds of guns and convicts who struggled against Aboriginal
individuals were rewarded. Civilian as well and military parties scoured the island for
Aboriginal people by taking killing others. The caches of weapons and Aboriginal campsites
were destroyed (Johnston, 2016)
It is quite evident that the ancient Aboriginal society was categorically disrupted by the
British expansion and invaders involving free and military colonists intent on developing an
agricultural economy and transported convicts. They developed the ways in which rapid
Aboriginal population has been portrayed by dispossession, extermination, genocide, and
most importantly extinction. Disputation has concentrated on Tasmania and it is regarded as
the only Australian instance of an entire race in the aspect of British colonization. Isolation
stimulated Europeans to seek the Tasmanian as a separate race from Australian Aborigines.
The Australians estimates vary from 350,000 to one million and depict to have colonization
over much of the extent (Lee and Richardson, 2017)
The invaders assumed that one race existed in Australia and one in Tasmania. It is quite
evident from Anthropologists, which stated that Aborigines did not define themselves in

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respect of race or colonial boundaries. The perceived differences among the influences of
colonization in Tasmania as several people did disappear mainly in temperate regions where
British occupation was concentrated (Dalley, 2018). Despite these catastrophic levels of de-
population, it is stated that historians of Australia have avoided the concept of genocide.
Those who have discussed the Australian genocide involve Dirk Moses and Tony Barta in
1987. The most prominent historian of Tasmania demonstrates the widespread destruction i.e.
Henry Reynolds argued that genocide did not occur in Tasmania. In recent years, it is noted
that Australian historians involve Ann Curthoys and Ben Kiernan have asserted that genocide
did not emerge in Tasmania. In addition, there are several disputed genocides in continent
Australia and four disputed genocides in Tasmania. Raphael Lemkin has stated that genocide
of hunter-gather and their subsequent extermination. The techniques of the destruction of
Aboriginal life is Tasmania recognized by Lemkin involves abduction of children & women,
the influence of imported disease, the killing of men, and exile form households (Dwyer and
Ryan, 2016)
It is stated that the Lemkin delineation of an international pattern of European colonization
and its genocidal influence on the colonized underpins, which presents Indigenous studies. It
is been depicted that the word genocide made emphasis on the intense dispute in public
discourse in Australia (Kapellas and Jamieson, 2016). The word prominence, not in the
aspect of colonial invasion in all Australian states involving children and women. Both
federal as well as state government due to the reason that the high extent of population
increase among Aborigines that poses a threat to the White Australian Policy orchestrated the
removals. The expectation of placement and removal with white families would result in
widespread inter-racial marriage and need to maintain the assumed purity of the white
Australian race (Grewcock, 2018).
The utilization of the term genocide depicts dispossession loss of land, mass killing, exile to
offshore islands, abduction of women, and disintegration of the Aboriginal community. It is
stated that by the mid-1830s every Tasmania involving Aboriginal habitants lived on small
islands and others at the Aboriginal Establishment. The government has provided effective
care to the Aboriginal people were removed from their ancient homelands in the colony by
unfair means. As regarded from the legacies of dispossession and death, the colony left a
legacy of intentional forgetting (Docker, 2017). It is seen that even today people of Australia
quibble over nation’s colonial conflicts, which are termed as wars. Regardless of any
differences, conflicts prosecuted in the colonies of Australia share strong similarities with the