Abstract
The involvement of Quaker settlers and their personal experiences during the so-called “Black War” (1826–1832) can be exemplified by focussing on two members of the Tasmanian Quaker community: Francis Cotton and George Fordyce Story. From this case study, a complex picture emerges. Cotton, disowned yet still adhering to Quaker principles, compromised to guarantee the safety of his extended family. His workers carried weapons, and in case of an attack, he called upon on the military for support. Story, by contrast, as part of the colony’s military-administrative apparatus, participated actively in the “Black Line” and the “Freycinet Line.” Both men endorsed a policy of amelioration that reinforced the central premises of settler colonial expansion: the fiction of terra nullius and the notion the “vanishing races.”
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Notes
- 1.
Boyce 2008, pp. 261–62. One acre translated into roughly 4047 m2 (1 hectar = 10,000 m2).
- 2.
Clements 2013a, pp. 282–321, 343; Launceston Advertiser, 8 June 1829, p. 3.
- 3.
- 4.
Clements and Gregg 2017, pp. 227–28. Australian Aborigines drew on their experience of practicing an elaborate regime of firestick farming. See: Pyne 1991, pp. 85–150, 1997.
- 5.
Hobart Town Courier, 13 November 1830, p. 3.
- 6.
Shaw 1980, pp. 17–38, 22 (quote).
- 7.
“Schedule of Government and Garrison Orders, Notices, Proclamations and Letters Relative to the Natives, Enclosure No. 1 in Despatch Arthur to Murray, 15 April 1830,” in: Chapman and Jetson 2006, pp. 169–72, 169.
- 8.
Nicholas Brodie and Kristyn Harman have cast doubt on the widely established notion that Arthur commissioned the painting (and others) to inform the Aboriginal Tasmanians of his benevolent and just intentions. Instead, Harman and Brodie argue (Brodie and Harman 2017) the board and its siblings were commissioned by Lt.-Gov. Thomas Davey (1758–1823, in office 1813–1817) as originally assumed.
- 9.
“Government Notice, 29 November 1826,”; in: House of Commons, Sessional Papers No. 259, pp. 20–21, 20 (quote); “Proclamation by his Excellency Colonel George Arthur, Lieutenant-Governor of the Island of Van Diemen’s Land and its Dependencies, 1 November 1828,” in: ibid., pp. 11–12; “Government Order, No. 1, 25 February 1830,” in: ibid., p. 34.
- 10.
“Government Order, No. 11, 22 September 1830,” in Chapman and Jetson 2006, pp. 628–36, 628.
- 11.
- 12.
Ryan 2013, pp. 7–8.
- 13.
- 14.
“Copy of a Despatch from Lieut.-Governor Arthur to Viscount Goderich: Van Diemen’s Land, Government House, 10 January 1828,” in: House of Commons, Sessional Papers No. 259, pp. 3–4, 3 (quote).
- 15.
Arthur formulated the idea of establishing a reservation or station plus an educational facility for Aboriginal children as early as November 1824 (ibid., p. 3).
- 16.
Ryan 2012, pp. 225–26.
- 17.
- 18.
A practice that continues until today albeit under a different name. See: Pilger 2014.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
TUA, C 7/127.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Ibid. The incident is also listed in Plomley 1992, p. 79.
- 26.
Boyce 2008, p. 110.
- 27.
“Proclamation Lt.-Gov. George Arthur, 1 November 1828,” in: House of Commons, Sessional Papers No. 259, pp. 11–12. See also: Connor 2002, pp. 143–58, 148.
- 28.
- 29.
Clements 2013a, p. 136.
- 30.
Ibid., pp. 129–32, 137–40, 129 (quote).
- 31.
Fox 2012, pp. 352–66.
- 32.
TUA, C 7/127.
- 33.
TUA, DX 19/B 22.
- 34.
TUA, C 7/127.
- 35.
Plomley 1991, p. 50.
- 36.
TUA, C 7/51. He explicitly referred to the “ferocious aborigines” at Oyster Bay (TUA, RS 131/3).
- 37.
“Government Order No. 9, 9 September 1830,” in Chapman and Jetson 2006, pp. 617–20, 617.
- 38.
“Government Order No. 11, 22 September 1830,” in Chapman and Jetson 2006, pp. 628–36, 630. Only one case of open disobedience to Arthur’s order has been recorded, that of Thomas Gregson (1798–1874). He even refused to send convict servants. Plomley attributes Gregson’s refusal to his general political enmity towards Arthur rather than genuine humanitarian concerns (Clements 2013a, p. 197; Plomley 1991, p. 149 (note 4)).
- 39.
Fenton 1884, pp. 108–9.
- 40.
The response to Arthur’s call to arms was less enthusiastic than previously assumed by scholars. Among the approximately 2200 participants, only 440 were actual free volunteers. Most settlers decided to support the “Line” by dispatching their convict labourers, resulting in 800 assigned servants as participants. In addition to 560 soldiers, 400 ticket-of-leave men were conscripted. Approximately 100 of them chose to hire a substitute to take their place rather than participate themselves (Clements 2013b, p. 21).
- 41.
“Government Order No. 9, 9 September 1830,” in Chapman and Jetson 2006, p. 620.
- 42.
“Government Order No. 11, 22 September 1830,” in Chapman and Jetson 2006, p. 634. Waterloo Point is the first of the stations to provide rations for the men engaged in the “Line” listed here.
- 43.
- 44.
TAHO, CSO 1/1/316/7578/1009–13.
- 45.
TAHO, CSO 1/1/316/7578/1015–22, 1019.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
TAHO, CSO 1/1/316/7578/1015–22, 1020.
- 48.
Ibid. These descriptions of the provisions demonstrate that Story possessed detailed knowledge of larger “Black Line” operation in October 1830.
- 49.
See, e.g., the accusations made and the blame shifted in several letters to the editor (Colonial Times, 26 October 1831, p. 4; ibid., 23 November 1831, p. 3; ibid., 28 December 1831, p. 3; ibid., 1 January 1832, p. 3).
- 50.
Plomley 1991, p. 108.
- 51.
SL NSW, ML A 2188/a1771056-a1771061; SL NSW, ML A 2188/a1771063-a1771073; SL NSW, ML A 2188/a1771074-a1771079. Settler addresses were also published in local newspapers. The Great Swan Port petition is, as far as I have been able to reconstruct, not among them. The petitions from Richmond and New Norfolk can be found in the issues of the Hobart Town Courier, 1 January 1831, p. 2 and 15 January 1831, p. 4, respectively.
- 52.
SL NSW, ML A 2188/a1771080-a1771085 (transcript by Lynne Palmer, Peter Mayo, Donna Gallacher, and John Brooker available at: http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2007/D00007/a1771.html, last access 28 January 2017).
- 53.
TUA, C 7/58/1 (appointing the meeting for 19 January 1831), See also the minutes of this meeting, signed by Story at TUA, C 7/58/2).
- 54.
SL NSW, ML A 2188/a1771080. The transcript reads “against the which population.” The drafts, however, speak very clearly of attacks on the “white population,” which is why I do not follow the State Library’s transcript in this instance here.
- 55.
SL NSW, ML A 2188/a1771081.
- 56.
TUA, C 7/58/3.
- 57.
TUA, C 7/58/2 and 3.
- 58.
SL NSW, ML A 2188/a1771082.
- 59.
Plomley 2008, p. 57.
- 60.
“Called on Mr Amos but he did not come out nor did they inquire my business, but all the white men surrounded the people, gaping with astonishment,” (Plomley 2008, p. 112); “Meredith’s people” had recently killed an Aboriginal “shot through the head” (ibid., p. 111).
- 61.
Ibid., p. 112.
- 62.
- 63.
Weddle 2001, p. 4.
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Pilger, John. 2014. Another Stolen Generation. How Australia Still Wrecks Aboriginal Families. The Guardian, Published 21 March 2014. Last Access 20 January 2017. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/21/john-pilger-indigenous-australian-families.
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Bischoff, E. (2020). The Case of Francis Cotton and George F. Story: Quaker Settlers and the Tasmanian Frontier, 1829–1831. In: Benevolent Colonizers in Nineteenth-Century Australia. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32667-8_7
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