Left-Wing and the 'Other' History: The Australian History Wars

Whenever academic history and popular history intersect during a major shift in historiography we see intense debates about the study of the past. Often they become embroiled in a 'culture war' with Left-wing and Right-wing figures becoming associated with a certain viewpoint of history. For example, there were the volatile debates about 'truth' and 'accuracy' surrounding the testimonio of Guatemalan Maya activist Rigoberta Menchu; there were intense discussions in Poland on culpability in the Holocaust following the publication of Jan Gross's Neighbors in 2001, which detailed the Jedwabne pogrom; and, around the centenary of the start of the First World War there were debates in Britain over the war in British popular memory. One of the most famous examples of this clash is the History Wars in Australia. Especially prominent in the 1990s and 2000s academics and historians were split into two: those who argued that Australian identity is built on the backs of the genocide of Aboriginals, and those who argue this is an exaggeration. 

Background

In World History we looked at the settlement of Australia, which you can read here, and reading it you can see which side of the debate I take. The 'History Wars' have had a long precursor, and what is most important to remember is that these debates were largely between white academics. Although, indigenous voices are present - especially in the accounts of the Stolen Generation resulting in a 1997 report - it is white academics and politicians who are making these debates. I want to emphasise this as Aboriginal Australians have been emphasising this aspect of Australian history throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In academia the seeds of the History Wars were planted in 1968 when anthropologist William Stanner used the term the 'Great Australian Silence' during a publicised lecture. He argued that a 'cult of disremembering' characterised Australian historiography and national identity, where the history of the Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders becomes a footnote. Furthermore, the genocidal violence done against them, and the continued repression were forgotten, and a consequent result was that Australian history was 'incomplete'. Stanner's lecture was clearly inspired by two major changes rocking both Australia and the world: the New Left and subaltern rights. 

A portrayal of the Stolen Generation entitled The Taking of the Children on the 1999 Great Australian Clock, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, by artist Chris Cooke

The 1960s, especially around 1968, saw a resurgence in libertarian Left-wing thought which has become known as the New Left. This was an umbrella term for a wide range of activists and political theorists - this ranged from the hippy movement, anti-Vietnam War activism, post-modernism, a new wave of anarchist thought, and a new wave of Maoist thought. Linked to this was increased activism from subaltern peoples worldwide desiring greater rights - this included African-American activism, the rise of Second Wave Feminism, the gay rights movement, and the birth of the West Papuan independence movement. In Australia, there was also a movement by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to challenge racism and discrimination which they faced in society. Among the claims were for a return of stolen land, respect for indigenous rights, and justice for the 'Stolen Generation'. The Stolen Generation was actually a series of generations, technically beginning under British rule in the 1860s and ending in the 1970s, where indigenous peoples were forcibly taken from their families to be 'fostered'. This policy was not limited to Australia - America and Canada also had similar policies. The indigenous rights movement and Stanner influenced a new wave of historiography which aimed to tell Australia's history from below; it aimed to write indigenous communities back into history.

Beginning of the History Wars

In the 1980s and early-1990s the History Wars started to begin. By this time Australian Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders were pushing for the return of land, equal rights, and justice for the Stolen Generation, but now they were getting gains. As expected, any movement of a subaltern is met with a reactionary movement, and there were pushbacks against these developments. It took form in quite unusual ways as well - in Crocodile Dundee (1986) the titular character says that Aboriginals and whites are both 'fleas on the land' about the return of land. This created a false equivalency between the two parties. What really kicked off the History Wars was the government of prime minister Paul Keating (1991-1996). Keating wanted to move further away from Britain, such as wanting Australia to put less emphasis on ANZAC Day as an example. Part of this was Keating's intervention in history by supporting the new line of historiography and emphasising that Australia had to recognise the continued repression of indigenous communities. Among this, was the creation of an inquiry in 1995 about the Stolen Generation policy resulting in the Bringing Them Home report of 1997 which aimed to highlight the trauma and consequences of the policy based on oral testimony. Part of this was a genuine attempt by Keating to foster a sense of 'One Australia' by encouraging an embracing of multiculturalism. However, it was also a cynical political move. Keating's Labor party had a long history of involvement in the Stolen Generation, and the White Australia Policy - a virulently racist immigration policy. Unfortunately, Keating was using the trauma of indigenous peoples to distance Labour from its culpability in the past. However, his involvement is what sparked the History Wars.

The History Wars

In 1993 conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote an article which attacked both Keating and the new historiography. His coining of the names for the two 'sides' has since became the common terminology during the History Wars, so I will use the terms here. Blainey said that Australia was moving away from the 'Three Cheers View', which emphasised a positive rendition of Australian history, to an unwarranted 'Black Armband' history, which emphasised the legacies of racism and colonialism. This began a series of heated debates, which translated into popular mediums like TV and paper opinion pieces, between the 'Black Armband' and 'Three Cheers View' of Australian history. However, it fully became a 'war' when Keating's successor, John Howard, intervened. Howard was from the conservative Liberal Party, so he opposed the re-evaluation of Australian history by the new historiography. Howard fiercely criticised the 'Black Armband' and used the typical tropes of a Right-wing culture war stating that 'soft-left' political-correctness was 'infiltrating' universities. His Labor successor, Kevin Rudd, further criticised the 'Black Armband' history stating that:

Time to leave behind us the polarisation that began to infect our every discussion of our nation's past. To go beyond the so-called "black arm" view that refused to confront some hard truths about our past, as if our forebears were all men and women of absolute nobility, without spot or blemish. But time, too, to go beyond the view that we should only celebrate the reformers, the renegades and revolutionaries, thus neglecting or even deriding the great stories of our explorers, of our pioneers, and of our entrepreneurs. Any truthful reflection of our nation's past is that these are all part of the rich fabric of our remarkable story ...

Two key topics surrounded the History Wars: the question of genocide and Stolen Generation. Conservative historians argued that allegations of genocide were either exaggerated or entirely fabricated by more Left-wing historians. One of the key figures in this was Keith Windschuttle who wrote two books entitled The Fabrication of Aboriginal History - the first calling the genocide of Tasmanians an exaggeration or an outright fabrication, and the second that the Stolen Generation was a myth. His main opponent in the ring was Robert Manne who ended up accusing Windschuttle of genocide denial. Among the claims by Windschuttle, Blainey, and other academics arguments was the the sources used to 'prove' a genocide happened. However, key historians showed how flawed Windschuttle's book Fabrication was - Henry Reynolds highlighted how Tasmanian settlers regularly used terms like 'extermination' in their diaries, and Lyndal Ryan has corroborated this by showing how there are many sites where massacres took place. What is particularly insidious, 'Three Cheers View', mainly social commentater Andrew Bolt, went as far as to call Bringing Them Home was an outright lie! Robert Manne tore Bolt apart with a basic point - Bolt never actually used sources to back up his claim. 

Since the 2000s

In 2016 the History Wars continue

The History Wars have continued to periodically plague discussions of history. At the end of the first peak of the History Wars in 2003 Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark released The History Wars, a book which I used a lot in writing this post, to explain the debates. It is an understatement to say that the 'Three Cheers View' did not like it - Windschuttle accused it of making the 'Three Cheers' a 'caricature', while Greg Melleuish said the book comes from 'pro-communist polemics of the Cold War'. I would criticise Anton Froeyman's attempts to discuss the History Wars and German Historikerstreit, a series of debates on the Holocaust, who argued that the highly personal attacks by both sides in both debates meant that an 'objective' history could not be written. However, Froeyman does not acknowledge that this was not like other historical debates, such as whether the famous African Olaudah Equiano was actually born in Nigeria or the US, but about whether a genocide happened (in the case of the History Wars). This is especially a shame as his discussion on the History Wars is extremely insightful. An 'objective', meet-in-the-middle history cannot be written when one side was denying genocide. As Australia is facing a similar rise in xenophobia and Right-wing governments, the History Wars will still rage on. In settler societies the nation is always built upon the exploitation, and often the outright genocide, of the indigenous communities. Consequently, any history which wants to entirely portray the nation as spotless will result in the denial of genocide.

The sources I have used are as follows:

-Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark, The History Wars, (Melbourne: 2003)

-Lorenzo Veracini, 'A Prehistory of Australia's History Wars: The Evolution of Aboriginal History during the 1970s and 1980s', Australian Journal of Politics and History, 52:3, (2006), 439-454

-Neil Levi, '“No Sensible Comparison”? The Place of the Holocaust in Australia's History Wars', History and Memory, 19:1, (2007), 124-156

-Anton Froeyman, 'The ideal of objectivity and the public role of the historian: some lessons from the Historikerstreit and the History Wars', The Journal of Theory and Practice, 20:2, (2016), 217-234

-Bringing Them Home

Thank you for reading, for other Left-Wing and the 'Other' History posts we have a list here. For other blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

World History: Australia and New Zealand

Australian Gold Diggers

Throughout the nineteenth century, and last time when we looked at colonialism, new forms of states emerged, including the new settler colonies of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia. Coming after the older settler colonies in the Americas new settler colonies emerged in Oceania, and Kenya and Zimbabwe. Despite being colonised by Britain around the same time we will see the major differences which emerged in these colonies. This occurred through various reasons ranging from geography to the conditions of the pre-colonial regions. A hint at a possible World History 2 I aim to look at these pre-colonial societies, but that is another discussion for a long time in the future. Instead we'll go over a basic summary here.

Australia and Aotearoa before Europe

The landmass which we now call Australia has been inhabited by people for over 30,000 years, and possibly as far back as 65,000 years - we discussed this all the way back in my first year of university with our first World History post. The site of Lake Mungo, from around 40,000 years ago, exhibits burials and some of the oldest cremations indicating that prehistoric indigenous Australians had by then developed religious rituals. It is difficult to write a history of pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians in just this short section, as it is impossible to understand the complexity and diversity of life over such a large period of time, and over a geographic area. There are over 900 ethnic groups, and just before European colonisation they were organised in over 250 'nations', which were then divided into smaller and localised units, speaking over 250 languages. Unfortunately, through genocide only 50 of these languages remain. Through oral tradition, and outdated ethnographies, we can piece together life and culture just before European colonisation - Nancy Williams and Lesley Jolly have discussed how Arrernte men and women lived in 'separate but intersecting spheres' of activity.

Meanwhile, it is easier to understand the pre-colonial history of Aotearoa/New Zealand. For one, Aotearoa is the Maori name for New Zealand, and in this post I will refer to the islands as 'Aotearoa' until European colonisation became 'complete' which is when that I'll switch to 'New Zealand'. Despite theories that alleged that before the Maori there were Egyptian, Indo-Aryans, Celtic, or Phoenician colonisation of Aotearoa, it was Polynesians (the ancestors of the Maori) who first settled on the islands. Aotearoa is one of the most isolated regions in the world, so it would make sense that the Polynesian linguistic group - who are one of the most geographically diverse peoples - were the ones to settle there. Unlike Australia, having tens of thousands of years of inhabitation, the first people to permanently settle on Aotearoa only arrived in the thirteenth century. As a result, Maori and Moriori religion, language, and culture contains similarities with other Polynesian groups. Due to the recent nature of their settlement, and the smaller geographic area, the indigenous peoples of Aotearoa have a more homogenous set of beliefs and cultures compared to Australian Aboriginals. Society was organised into various competing networks of alliances or rivalries called iwi, and this was further divided into a smaller, intimate unit called hapu. Of course, these models were often changing and various events could change the structure of the iwi and hapu. There was a further hierarchical system among these units with the rangatira (often seen as aristocrats) and tutua (commoners). Rangatira based their prestige on mana - power and influence which derived from your genealogy and your physical resources.

Contact and Invasion

A depiction of Captain Cook

It should be noted that Australian Aboriginals, Maori, and Moriori did not live in 'isolation' from the rest of the world - after initial settlement of Aotearoa there were other waves of settlement, and Aboriginals in the north traded for centuries with the Makassans in modern Indonesia. In fact, through this trade some Aboriginal groups had access to European goods before they even made 'contact' with Europeans! Oceania became known to Europe during the so-called 'Age of Discovery' - which you can read about here - but its existence had been theorised for centuries. Since the time of the ancient Greeks a Terra Australis Incognito (Unknown Land of the South) had been theorised, and in the 1540s 'Java La Grande' first appeared on French maps. While Portugal was likely the first European state to spot Australia, it was the Dutch who first landed in 1616 when Dirk Hartog arrived by accident. The Dutch would continue mapping the region, eventually calling it New Holland, and in 1642 Dutch East Indian Company governor-general Anthoine Van Diemen got Abel Tasman to map a route to the Spanish colonies in Latin America. During this time he mapped what is now Tasmania and eventually Aotearoa. These islands got their name from the explorations - Tasmania came from Tasman, but it was originally called Van Diemen's Land, and New Zealand is named after Zeeland in the Netherlands. No settlements were formed until the voyages of Captain James Cook in the late-1700s. Originally sent to help improve navigation, and using Venus as his guide to do so, his ship, the Endeavour, travelled across the Pacific - from Tahiti to Australia to Aotearoa to Hawai'i. Motivated by both capital accumulation and Enlightenment scientific inquiry Cook carefully documented and even met the inhabitants of the places he explored using Tahtian aid. His description of Aboriginals is loaded with the stereotypical 'Noble Savage' tropes, saying they were in 'a pure state of nature', but he does acknowledge that they had adapted to a land where European-style farming could not exist. This was in Botany Bay, an area which Cook would call initially Stingray Bay because of its stingrays. While some encounters were peaceful, others were not. At Botany Bay Aboriginals tried to scare them off, and Cook himself would later get into a fight with Hawaiians leading to his death on Valentine's Day in 1779.

A depiction of the First Fleet

Thanks to the cartographic mapping and diaries left by Cook and other explorers Britain started to have the Pacific in mind. Why Australia, then renamed New South Wales, was first chosen for colonisation is still up for debate. The first answer is obvious - penal colonies. Britain had been using the Americas as penal colonies, but the American Revolution had closed that off so they needed a new place for prisoners. However, only a third of the population of the 'First Fleet' which ended up founding Sydney were convicts. In 1952 Ken Dallas first challenged this idea and the debate continues to rage on. He, and later historians, argued that although Botany Bay was always intended as a penal colony, it was not the only, or possibly even primary, reason. The creation of Sydney could open a way to challenge the Spanish and French, as well as economic ventures. When the First Fleet was dropped off the ships made their way to Indonesia and China hoping to trade, and the Second Fleet were converted into whaling ships. Regardless, on 18 January 1788, now known as Australia Day or Invasion Day, the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay with naval officer Arthur Phillip as the first governor of the new colony. There was an issue for the new settlers. Despite being rich in life the climate was not good for European style farming, and the fact that people already lived there, so other colonies were made to supply goods to the newly emerging Sydney. Timber was especially needed, something plentiful in Aotearoa, so Phillips ordered it to be collected from Aotearoa. This would pave the way for the colonisation of Aotearoa. The first settlers, called Pakeha by the Maori, were actually seamen and convicts escaping despotic captains and poor conditions on ships becoming the 'Pakeha Maori'. It would be sealing, not timber, which would create the first Pakeha settlement in 1792. Constructing European-houses at Dusky Sound in 1792 they returned to Sydney with 4500 seal skins. 

Trade and Conflict along the Frontier

In both Australia and Aotearoa initial contacts between settlers and indigenous peoples can be considered a mixture of cooperation and conflict. As was the case with all the other European empires, the settlers were initially reliant on the local peoples - for trade and so they wouldn't attack them. In 1828, for example, one entrepreneur called John Rodolphus Kent married Tiria, the daughter of the first 'Maori King' and chief Te Wherowhero, to secure access to resources and labour. Not mentioned till now was the devastating impact disease had on both Maori and Aboriginal populations - smallpox especially wiped out many communities. Christian missions were opened in both colonies to convert the local peoples, and also to make sure the settlers did not sin too much. This had a devastating impact on indigenous culture as Christianity was forced onto them. From religion to identity was changed by colonial evangelising - the Maori had a third gender concept called wakawahine which missionaries tried to cast as sinful and to be cast out. Most famously, however, guns and potatoes were traded to the Maori which revolutionised their society. Potato, being such an easy to grow crop, became a staple in their diet, but muskets radicalised warfare. The Musket Wars waged from 1807 to 1837 in something which Michael King describes as a time of 'Guns and God'. As muskets gave iwi an advantage over their opponents this caused a boom in trade as Pakeha exploited the growing need for iwi to defend themselves. A genocide also occurred. The Moriori on Chatham Island had long abandoned violence; when Europeans had shot one the community blamed themselves showing this aversion to violence. Due to displacement caused by the Musket Wars the Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama invaded in 1835 and commit a genocide. Many Moriori were killed, the rest were enslaved, their language forbidden, and holy sites destroyed. From around 2,000 individuals in 1835 by the time they were freed only around 101 remained. 

Meanwhile, similar actions were taking place in Australia. The initial years were hard due to the land - while it created allowed for a diversity of life it was not suited for European style farming. In a standard ironic twist in history Governor Phillips viewed the Aboriginals as being squatters on the land with no actual ties to it, but the land which proved to be most fertile happened to be the areas which had seen Aboriginal farming techniques being used. Instead, animal farming was more prosperous - within fifteen years the sheep population rose from 29 to 20,000. Experiments in selective breeding allowed sheep and cattle to become adapted to the Australian climate, and soon enough Australia became known for its lamb and beef. Landowners started emerging due to close connections with the governor, 'British democracy' did not exist in Australia for many decades to come. Close allies to governors allowed them to have large holdings, with over 80,000 acres, which opened the door for them to prosper through pastoralism. Not only did this push out smaller farmers it also created conflict with Aboriginal peoples. Not only around Sydney - other settlements started emerging across the eastern half of Australia including Newcastle, Adelaide, and Melbourne. The British government, not wanting to be drawn into costly colonial wars, called for the settlers to not disturb the Aboriginals, but this was easier said than done. For one, Aboriginal communities were not happy that their land was being taken from them - it is widely believed that John Batman's 1835 treaty with the Kulin, which founded Melbourne, was only a 'treaty' as the Kulin did not understand that they were permanently giving up their land. Different concepts of land ownership meant that they thought that they would be sharing the land. It was also not uncommon for settlers to initiate violence in order to move into Aboriginal land. In May 1804 panicking soldiers in Van Diemen's Land shot 40 people on a kangaroo hunt thinking they were a war party. This would be a standard throughout the 1800s.

Life and Culture in the 'Frontier'

An Australian bush hut used by settlers

A wide range of people came to Australia and Aotearoa for various reasons, ranging from convicts to farmers wanting a new life. The farms were ran by forced convict labour, and many of the newly emerging economies relied on convicts. A significant percentage of those on the whaling ships which arrived with the Second Fleet happened to be convicts. Economic pressures meant that many convicts were soon declared free, especially coming towards the 1850s, so they could fully partake in the new economies. As described by David Day, although the land of New South Wales was not fertile, 'the women certainly were'. Of the convicts which arrived with the First Fleet 188 were women, and as they were settler colonies there were no bars on women coming to the colonies. Australia and New Zealand gave women the vote a long time before they did in Europe, and this is a similar trend as seen in the US West. To 'tame' the land women were given a lot more agency compared to those in the metropole which allowed an easier fight for rights. However, there was an expectation to be a model of the virtuous housewife. As argued by Ann Stoler, there was colonial anxiety over white women and non-white men having sex and 'transgressing the colour line'. Transposing their own ideas of gender onto indigenous peoples white men argued that Aboriginal men exploited and made women their slaves. As argued by Mary Anne Jacobs and Anna Haebich, 'White men stole Aboriginal women's labour and sexuality much as they usurped their land and resources.' In rural areas white settlers fathered mixed-race children, whether they accepted their children was another matter. Syphilis became endemic thanks to Europeans introducing the disease. Cultural changes deeply impacted indigenous peoples, colonialism created a cultural genocide as missionary activity tried to enforce Christianity and European culture. Some were caught in the middle. Bennelong was captured by Arthur Philips, used as an interpreter, and even went to Britain. Due to him being indigenous meant that he was rejected by the settlers, while his adoption of European cultural practices made him a pariah among indigenous peoples.

Colonial Wars 

A depiction of the Flagstaff War

Land expropriation and clashes meant that wars broke out. In 1840 Pakeha hoped to avoid further conflict with the Maori, but this decision would prove contentious and problematic. The Treaty of Waitangi, written in both English and Maori, was forged between iwi and New South Wales Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson, Aotearoa was then still seen as being part of New South Wales. There were three articles: first, 'Chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand...cede to Her Majesty the Queen of England absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powers of Sovereignty...over their respective Territories'; second, guarantees that chiefs and tribes had access to land; and third, that all Maori would become British citizens. There were naturally issues - these words and concepts emerged through British thought which did not map onto Maori thought. For one, sovereignty was translated as kawanatanga which in Maori implied that they still had some form of governorship. Similarly, the translation over land had a wider meaning, this also included cultural resources, not just material. Furthermore, not all iwi accepted the Treaty, and it did not take long for Pakeha to directly ignore it themselves. A 1846 Native Land Purchase Act which tightened government hold over Maori land. From the 1840s to the 1870s was a period known as the 'Maori' or 'New Zealand Wars'. These were a series of wars between Pakeha and their allies, and iwi over the Treaty. One such one, the Flagstaff War, sparked when Maori in 1845 cut down a British flag seeing it as encroaching on their sovereignty. The Maori managed to fight so well, incidentally, because of the British selling them muskets decades earlier - the Musket Wars had changed Maori community structures to better resist attack. However, they could not resist entirely, and by the 1870s the Pakeha had broke the back of the Maori resistance.

Australia similarly saw a colonial war against Aboriginal peoples. Before we discuss this we need to quickly go over the 'History Wars'. From the 1960s historians started having a look again at colonial Australia, and began writing histories of colonial Australia and the genocidal wars. However, from the 1990s conservative historians, under the guise of objectivity, that 'leftists' were re-writing Australian history. In particular, the 'Black War' was singled out, largely as it has been seen as leading to the near-extinction of the Tasmanians. However, this debate was not about 'objectivity', but really about trying to make Australia's colonial history less drenched in blood. Evidence speaks otherwise. As argued by Lyndall Ryan, the Black War emerged as a way to solidify settler rule by massacring communities. The 'Black Line' was even formed as a way to systematically corner communities - Batman got into his position to form 'Batmania', later Melbourne, through his participation in the Black War. Estimations have put that for every settler killed, five Aboriginals were killed - due to a small population this seemingly drove them to extinction. The 'Frontier Wars' across Australia were not as genocidal as the Black War, but the mixture of violence and disease 'subdued the frontier'.

Mining and Migration

Bushrangers

The economies of Australia and New Zealand stagnated until the discovery of gold and minerals in the 1850s. Thus started the Australian and Otago Gold Rush. A big reason why the Maori Wars took place was due to the discovery of gold in Maori lands. Suddenly, Australia, in particular, went from a farming colony to an industrial one. Emigration to Australia rose from 20,000 a year to 90,000 a year in just a year! People came from Britain, Germany, the US, and China looking to make a fortune in the new gold mines, and the mine owners replaced the landowners as the wealthiest in society. The gold mines, naturally, were far from the cities, and with colonial power weaker there it allowed crime to proliferate. Missionaries decried the 'depravity' of the mining settlements where prostitution, alcoholism, and violence seemed to rule. In reality, each community formed their own structures and cooperated with each other, but with it being excluded from traditional power structures, and what it looked like, it was demonised. That does not mean that crime did not exist. Weak crime enforcement allowed the rise of the 'bushrangers'. Why mine when you can just steal the profits others made? While demonised at the time, in later years they became a point of pride for Australian national identity. Ned Kelly became the most famous for his raids and wearing of metal, knight-like armour earned him fame, and his execution in 1880 led him to become a folk hero like Billy the Kid. The bushrangers eventually vanished when the periphery of the nation became closer to the metropole. Cities expanded and to create a congruent nation railways and telegraphs made Australia more connected. This allowed both Australia and New Zealand to start developing their own identities.

The Rise of Democracy and National Identity

A depiction of the Eureka Rebellion

Australia and New Zealand have become famous for more progressive politics, for years Australia has been known as 'the Working Man's Nation'. This was largely thanks to the industrialisation and migration. Britain was still sending convicts well into the late-nineteenth century, including many political radicals. Similarly, European and American migrants brought new ideas like socialism and liberalism to the colonies very quickly. A spark for Australian democracy emerged in the gold mines with the 1854 Eureka Rebellion. Wanting a more democratic nation with workers' rights miners took control of the fields of Eureka, and, despite it being crushed, it proved to be a radical alternative for Australians. Mark Twain in 1890 described it as one of the most important events in the history of the colony, and left-wing activists even suggested using the Eureka flag flown by the rebels as an alternate flag of Australia. It is unsurprising that feminist and trade union movements quickly emerged in this context, and at times they were the same movement. In the early-1900s women engaged in unions in order to pressure the government into bringing equal pay for women. In 1884 Henrietta Dugdale formed the first suffrage society, and in 1897 the 'Grandmother of Australia' Catherine Helen Spence became the first woman to run for parliament. 

This surge in political activity allowed the two colonies to move towards becoming quasi-independent from Britain. How they would look as dominions was an alternate question. Originally, it was decided that they would form one big state, Australia's constitution still claims New Zealand showing this. Although New Zealand is as close to Sydney as Sydney is to Western Australia to divide by sea made them appear as two very separate states - while Western Australia reluctantly became part of the Federation of Australia, New Zealand solidly held fast. Instead New Zealand tried to build on different aspects to differentiate itself from Australia - ironically using its indigenous populace. The Treaty of Waitangi and Maori resistance to complete cultural domination gave New Zealand a false sense that it treats its native populace well. It is true that Australia had certainly treated its indigenous peoples badly - the looting of Aboriginal art and boom in anthropological accounts about them in the 1890s occurred as there was a belief that Aboriginals would soon go extinct. Furthermore, shortly after independence Australia began the 'Lost Generation' where Aboriginal children were taken from their families and placed into schools to 'civilise' them, a destructive policy which lasted well into the 1900s and solidified a cultural genocide. This gave New Zealand an easy difference to exaggerate - becoming part of the Australian Federation would infringe the rights of Maori. A cartoon from 1900 in the New Zealand Graphic shows a personified New Zealand, hand-in-hand with a Maori, rejecting the Australian ogre with its arms in chains, a likely reference to the convict past which could 'stain' New Zealand. However, both states positioned themselves as being 'white'. With the exception of the IWW, which emerged from anarco-syndicalist politics, trade unions were horrifically racist, and shortly after independence Australia passed the 'White Australia Policy' barring emigration from Asia and Melanesia. 

Conclusion

New Zealand and Australian troops at Gallipoli

As we have seen New Zealand and Australia had very similar but also very different histories. Through the legacies of settler colonialism and working-class agitation the modern states which we now know emerged. However, upon independence in 1901 (Australia) and 1907 (New Zealand) there were still debates about what they would look like; merging the two colonies was still not an unlikely scenario. Although a radical movement wanted to bring about a republic there was still an urge to remain part of the British Empire - both states immediately jumped into the First World War. As we will soon see it was this war which firmly set out their own national identity. The baptism of fire at Gallipoli would firmly set out their own identities. These shifts we have discussed today would shape the two countries up until now, and likely will continue to do so.

The sources I have used are as follows:

-Michael King, The Penguin History of New Zealand, (London: 2003)

-David Day, Claiming a Continent: A New History of Australia, (Sydney: 1997)

-Denis McLean, The Prickly Pair: Making Nationalism in Australia and New Zealand, (Dunedin: 2003)

-Kay Saunders and Raymond Evans, (eds.), Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation, (Sydney: 1992)

-Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, (London: 1975)

-Vincent O'Malley, Bruce Stirling, and Wally Penetito, (eds.), The Treaty of Waitangi Companion: Maori and Pakeha from Tasman to Today, (Auckland: 2010)

-Lyndall Ryan, 'Massacre in the Black War in Tasmania 1823-34: A Case Study of the Meander River Region, June 1827', Journal of Genocide Research, 10:4, (2008), 479-499

Thank you for reading, and next time we will be looking at the First World War. For other World History posts please see our list. For other blog posts please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

Paleo Profiles: Muttaburrasaurus

A Muttaburrasaurus from Queensland Museum

Australia is not well known for its dinosaurs. When one thinks of palaeontology and Australia we normally think of the megafauna which went extinct within the last ten thousand years. However, Australia has a plethora of dinosaurs from largely the Cretaceous period which shows the variety of dinosaurs which once roamed the world. We'll look at one of them today: Muttaburrasaurus. The Muttaburrasaurus was a herbivorous dinosaur which would have remained very obscure if not for the famous BBC documentary from 1999 Walking with Dinosaurs. 

Discovery and Fossils

Naturally Muttaburra is proud of its famous local

Muttaburrasaurus was discovered in 1963 just outside the town of Muttaburra in Queensland by a grazier (sheep/cattle farmer) called Doug Langdon. It is rare that a dinosaur skeleton has most of the bones through various reasons regarding preservation so it was a surprise that one would be found by accident in Australia. Due to this word spread fast that a dinosaur had been discovered so locals wanting a souvenir went out to take pieces of the fossil. As a result it took until 1981, and a general amnesty for those who took the bones, for the dinosaur to be formally described. This dinosaur was well preserved with it having a nearly complete skull, vertebrae, parts of the pelvis, and parts of the limbs. This doesn't sound well preserved but it is extremely rare to find this amount of bones belonging to one dinosaur - the weather, scavengers and soil can prevent fossilisation never mind leaving it for millions of years. Taking almost twenty years to be described in 1981 Alan Bartholomai and Ralph Molnar would name this dinosaur Muttaburrasaurus langdoni - Muttaburrasaurus with it coming from Muttaburra and langdoni after its discoverer. Since then several other skeletons, or parts of it, have been discovered making it one of the best known dinosaurs from Australia. Most happen to be teeth from Queensland and northern New South Wales and in 1987 a possible second skull, called the 'Dunluce Skull', was found by a fourteen-year old in Queensland. However, to this day the skull offers confusion about what it means as it resembles the first skull, but it also has some differences. The Dunluce Skull is slightly older than the Muttaburra one possibly indicating that as the dinosaur got older the crest on the skull changed; another theory suggests that one could be male and the other female; and a final theory, suggested by Molnar, that it could be a different species of Muttaburrasaurus. Muttaburrasaurus is the genus, not the species. If it turns out that the two skulls are from different species then it would be similar to a difference between a wild horse and a zebra.

Biology

A Muttuburrasaurus in Queensland Museum

What type of dinosaur was Muttaburrasaurus? First off Muttaburrasaurus was in the group Ornithopoda which was an incredibly diverse group of herbivorous dinosaurs which included the Camptosaurids and the very famous duck-billed dinosaurs, or Hadrosaurs like Parasaurolophus. Originally Muttaburrasaurus was assigned into a family called Iguanadontidae which was named after the second dinosaur to ever be described, Iguanodon. As a result Muttaburrasaurus was often recreated to resemble Iguanodon including giving it a thumb spike similar to Iguanodon - these spikes have never been found so they were eventually taken out of reconstructions. However, it was debated and a 2010 paper determined that Muttaburrasaurus was in fact part of a family closely related to iguanodontids called Rhabdodontids. Ornithopods shared several key biological similarities with many being both bipedal and quadrupedal. The forelimb of the Muttaburrasaurus has hands perfect for supporting weight indicating that it would spend large amounts of times on all fours, and the structure of the pelvis adds to this. Similar to Iguanodon it had a long tail held stiff by strong tendons to act as a counterbalance essential for bipedalism. However, this was noted when it was believed that Muttaburrasaurus was an iguanodontid; Iguanodon was capable of bipedalism and quadrupedalism. The Rhabdodontids were more quadrupedal than bipedal, with some incapable of bipedalism, so Muttaburrasaurus was likely more bipedal than quadrupedal. We also have a question of was it warm-blooded and did it have feathers? The debate about both is skill going on. In 2014 a paper by John Grady and other palaeontologists suggested that non-avian dinosaurs were mesothermic - neither warm or cold-blooded. The debate still rages on, however, and at times gears more towards mesothermy while at other times endothermy. Protofeathers have been discovered on primitive Ornithiscians, (the order containing Ornithopods and other groups including stegosaurids and ceratopsians like Triceratops), called Tianyulang and Kulindadromeus. These were not feathers as you see on a modern bird but more like filaments and fuzz. As a result, more and more palaeontologists are believing that all dinosaurs could have some level of filaments mixed with scales. If you find this hard to believe remember that elephants, rhinos and whales all have hair. We can imagine that Muttaburrasaurus may also have had some form of filaments on its body.

The Muttaburrasaurus with its unique crest

Muttaburrasaurus was a medium sized herbivore reaching around 7 metres, or just under 23 foot, in length and being about 2 metres, or six and a half feet, tall. The most interesting thing about Muttaburrasaurus is its skull. Rising from the front of the snout is a large, hollow nasal crest. One theory has it that it was a large cavity for smell; something useful to smell out potential predators. However, the more recognised theory, and the one shown in Walking with Dinosaurs, that this crest acted as a resonating chamber allowing it to make various unique calls that can be heard over a wide area. The calls could indicate an approaching predator, to a greeting, to possible mating calls. Furthermore, the crest potentially could have been brightly coloured if used for communication - individuals could have different colouring or it could help attract a potential mate. As tissue very rarely preserves it is difficult to know. The two skulls we have have slightly differently shaped crests indicating that it could be differently aged animals, sexes, or species. Finally, we have the teeth. Cretaceous ornithopods normally had teeth adapted to grinding plant matter, and the later hadrosaurs evolved the ability to chew, but Muttaburrasaurus had different teeth. The teeth of Muttaburrasaurus were adapted to sheering and the dinosaur was unlikely able to chew. Molnar originally hypothesised that Muttaburrasaurus was partially omnivorous relying heavily on scavenging. In the 1990s Molnar would re-evaluate the scavenging hypothesis instead noticing the similarities to the ceratopsians, like Triceratops. Ceratopsians had teeth adapted to sheering tough vegetation, mainly cycads, so Muttaburrasaurus could be an example of convergent evolution - like ceratopsians it needed to sheer through hard foliage so evolved teeth and jaws to do exactly that.

When and Where

Cretaceous Australia

As mentioned earlier Muttaburrasaurus was from the Cretaceous; all the Australian dinosaurs that we know of come from either the Jurassic or Cretaceous. The Cretaceous was the last period in which non-avian dinosaurs existed in lasting from 145 million years ago to 66 million years ago. Muttaburrasaurus existed in the Albian and early Cenomanian of the Cretaceous which was near the start of the period with it existing from 112 until 99 million years ago. The Australia which Muttuburrasaurus existed in was very different to the Australia of today. Australia was drifting apart from the continent of Gondwana and up to 50% of today's Australia was covered in shallow seas. This potentially could explain why the Muttaburrasaur fossils we have are well preserved. Plant fossils indicate that Australia was covered in ferns and conifers, all hard foliage indicating Muttaburrasaurus's sheering teeth. Part of southern Australia was attached to Antarctica and was slowly splitting off forming a large rift valley and was in the polar regions. Was Muttaburrasaurus a polar dinosaur? The answer is possibly no. Southeast Australia was in the polar regions and Muttaburrasaurus so far has only been found in the north. Furthermore, Muttaburrusaurus has been found in formations near formations, geographically and in age, where sauropods (long-necked dinosaurs) are found. This is important as sauropods favoured warmer climates. Therefore, we can imagine that at least some parts of the year Muttaburrasaurus lived in a warm climate. Due to the Australia's proximity to Antarctica and an inland sea the climate would not be too warm - Muttaburrasaurus lived in a climate not too dissimilar to Central Europe or New Zealand today, warm in the summer and cold in the winter. Quite possibly to keep warm in the colder periods Muttaburrasaurus had thicker filaments on their bodies. By the Late Cretaceous the inland sea started to vanish and temperatures changed which likely led to its extinction.

Neighbours

Walking with Dinosaurs had Muttaburrasaurus and Leaellynasaura co-existing 

With a habitat that was not too warm or too cool the Muttaburrasaurus had several notable neighbours. The ferns and conifers of Cretaceous Australia had the newly evolved flowering plants growing alongside them allowing for a wide range of dinosaurs to feed off of them. Muttaburrasaurus fossils have not explicitly been found next to other dinosaurs but based on where they have been found and the time they lived we can make guesses. Among them include the ankylosaurid Kunbarrasaurus and various sauropods including Wintonotitan. Pterosaurs flying between the various seas and looking over the rivers would have been a common sight. We know of a few carnivorous dinosaurs from Australia, such as the Australovenator which existed four million years after Muttaburrasaurus went extinct, so we can imagine that some form of carnivore hunted Muttaburrasaurus. Walking with Dinosaurs portrayed them as being migratory existing in the polar regions during the summer and moving north during the winter; this is not too far-fetched but we will have to wait to see if more are unearthed. If future ones are found exclusively in the north we'll know that they didn't migrate and only existed in warmer climates. Only time will tell.

Thank you for reading. The sources I have used are as follows:

-'Muttaburrasaurus', Prehistoric-Wildlife.com, (Accessed 30/08/2018)

-'Australia in the Cretaceous', Western Australian Museum, (Accessed 30/08/2018)

-A. Bartholomai and R.E. Molnar, 'Muttaburrasaurus: a new Iguanodontid (Ornithischia: Ornithopod) dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Queensland', Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, (1981), 20:2, 319-349

-Andrew T. McDonald , James I. Kirkland, Donald D. DeBlieux, Scott K. Madsen, Jennifer Cavin, Andrew R. C. Milner, and Lukas Panzarin, 'New Basal Iguanodonts from the Cedar Mountain Formation of Utah and the Evolution of Thumb-Spiked Dinosaurs', PLoS ONE, (2010), 20:2

-Andrew T. McDonald, 'Phylogeny of Basal Iguanodonts (Dinosauria: Ornithischia): An Update', PLoS ONE, (2012), 7:5

-John M. Grady, Brian J. Enquist, Eva Dettweiler-Robinson, Natalie A. Wright, and Felisa A. Smith, 'Evidence for Mesothermy in Dinosaurs', Science, (2014), 344:6189, 1268-1272

-Walking with Dinosaurs, (1999), BBC, 1 November

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History in Focus: The Emu War

Australian reporting of the War

The 1930s saw a series of bloody wars which ravaged the globe. Spain splintered between republican and nationalist forces, Mussolini led a destructive invasion of Ethiopia, Japan invaded China twice bringing misery and destruction in its wake, and of course the Second World War broke out in September 1939. However, these conflicts pale in comparison to one war...and judging by the fact that you've read the title of this blog post you know I'm making a joke about the Emu War. This famous war broke out in 1932 where the Australian army went to war against emus...and lost. 

Background to the War

Following the Second World War the Australian government had encouraged war veterans and recent British migrants to take up farming in the expanses of Western Australia, and following the Great Depression they were encouraged to take up farming wheat. The Depression had virtually destroyed the international wheat market greatly affecting Canada, the United States, and Australia so this was an attempt to rebuild the Australian farming economy. However, they faced a problem. The farms set up were fairly small so they were not overly financially viable, especially if something could negatively affect crop growth. Then an army arrive. The caws of 20,000 migrating emus wanting to reclaim their land long taken from them by the human hordes descended onto Western Australia. In particular, the cleared land and abundant water supply made Western Australia perfect for the emus; no emu in living memory had experienced such fine land. A blitzkrieg campaign started: the emus would descend on the crops which allowed their rabbit underlings to follow afterwards. Farmers were outraged and bounties on emu heads were set up. Eventually, the Minister of Defence, Sir George Pearce, took up the call of help issued from the beleaguered farmers. He chose to send the army in to fight the emus...

The War

An emu private. Believed to be Private Gruff McCaw

In October 1932 the army under Major G.P.W Meredith of the 7th Heavy Battery of the Royal Australian Artillery arrived at Campion with four soldiers, two Lewis guns, and a cinematographer from Fox Movietown for propaganda purposes. Like many major military skirmishes - the Spanish Armada's invasion of England, Waterloo - the weather affected the battle. Bad weather had caused the emus to scatter into guerrilla cells meaning the army had to wait until 2 November to begin battle. After the 'Phony War' of October the army descended on a platoon of 50 emus; however, with nothing to cage in the emus the machine gun fire scattered the platoon leading to no fatalities. The next day they hoped to ambush the emus at a dam and they came into contact with a battalion of 1,000 emus. The machine guns jammed and only twelve emus died that day. In a deplorable act of aggression Meredith went to attack a pacifistic community of emus which were referred to contemptuously as 'tame'. 

Their contempt for more more peaceful emus brought their downfall. The emus became organized and most avoided the attacks from the Australian army. One recruit said (imagine the black-and-white imagery with accompanying music of PBS' The Civil War):

The emus have proved that they are not so stupid as they are usually considered to be. Each mob has its leader, always an enormous black-plumed bird standing fully six-feet high, who keeps watch while his fellows busy themselves with the wheat. At the first suspicious sign, he gives the signal, and dozens of heads stretch up out of the crop. A few birds will take fright, starting a headlong stampede for the scrub, the leader always remaining until his followers have reached safety.

Emu POWs, c.8 November 1932

Desperate, Meredith attached a gun to the back of a truck to do drive-by-shootings in a similar way to how George S. Patton fought Pancho Villa's supporters. However, the truck was slow and not used to the rough terrain of the Australian Outback so they couldn't shoot straight. At the same time Australia's propaganda machine was backfiring. The Perth Mirror reported that people were complaining about the cruelty towards the emus in newsreels before movies, the Australian RSPCA sent threatening to Sydney, and the British even condemned the 'extermination of the rare emu'. Like what happened in the Vietnam War the public started sympathizing with the emu guerrillas. Soon Meredith pulled out of Western Australia commenting: If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world... They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop. We do not know the exact figure of the emus killed but Meredith believed that it was around 50 birds.

Aftermath and Legacy

After the First Emu War several other punitive expeditions were done against the emus until the Australian government chose to arm the farmers, of whom virtually all were veterans. The veterans committed harsh reprisal against the emus bringing back the bounty system and personally leading expeditions against the birds. It is believed that 57,034 birds were slaughtered by 1934. However, the emus got the last caw. Emu attrition and the Depression caused Campion to became a ghost town. Today the Emu War is a distant but bitter memory of the Australian military with only people making jokes about it on the internet directly affecting them. However, it is likely that the emus have not forgotten. They learnt that the weapons of the humans are flawed. It is only a matter of time before they ally themselves with the magpies and drop bears to drive the humans from Australia...

The future for Australia?

The sources I have used are as follows:

-B.Crew, 'The Great Emu War: How some large, flightless birds, unwittingly foiled the Australian army,' Scientific American Blogs, 2014

-Murray Johnson, '"Feathered foes": Soldier settlers and Western Australia's "Emu War" of 1932,' Journal of Australian Studies, 88, (2006), 147-157

-TROVE National Library of Australia Digitised Newspapers - Western Australia

Thank you for reading. For future updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby