History wars facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

The history wars is a term used in Australia for a big public debate. It's all about how people see the history of European settlement in Australia. This includes how modern Australian society grew and how it affected Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The term "history wars" became popular in the late 1990s and the debate is still going on today.

This debate mainly asks:

Was European settlement after 1788 a small conflict? Did it mostly lack "invasion" or "warfare"? Was it mostly kind, with harm to Indigenous people happening by accident (like diseases)?
Or was it an invasion with violent battles and fighting? Did it involve many clashes between Aboriginal people and new settlers? Was it a "genocide of Indigenous Australians" that still affects them today?

The history wars also touch on bigger ideas about national identity. It also looks at how historians research and write history. This includes how reliable old written records are compared to the oral tradition (stories passed down by Indigenous Australians). It also considers if historians have political biases. One big question is whether Australia's identity has been British or multicultural throughout history and now.

Understanding the History Wars
- The "Great Australian Silence"
- Politics and the History Wars
Key Debates in the History Wars
Media and Key Books
- Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History
- Macintyre's The History Wars
See also

Understanding the History Wars

The "history wars" are a big disagreement about how Australia should see itself as a nation. This debate was largely shaped by two Prime Ministers:

Paul Keating (1991–1996) from the Labor Party. He believed that how Australia treated Indigenous people was key to its identity. He brought new attention to Indigenous issues.
John Howard (1996–2007) from the Liberal Party. He wanted to bring back a more traditional view of Australia. He focused on the nation's achievements and its British cultural roots.

This debate happened a lot in the news, in books, and at talks. People on the political left said Australia's identity was tied to how it treated Indigenous people. They wanted to fix past wrongs. People on the political right said the left had made the harms seem worse. They argued that stories of abuse were hurting Australia's identity. They also said that people today shouldn't feel guilty for things that happened long ago. A big part of this public debate was about the "Bringing Them Home" report. This report was about the Stolen Generations and was ordered by Keating but released after Howard became Prime Minister.

The "Great Australian Silence"

In 1968, an Australian anthropologist named Bill Stanner talked about the "Great Australian Silence." He said that Australian history books were not complete. He felt that history had been shown in a very positive way, but that Indigenous Australians were almost completely ignored. He saw this as a deliberate choice to leave out "several hundred thousand Aboriginal people who lived and died between 1788 and 1938." After this, a new way of writing Australian history began. It paid much more attention to the hard experiences of Indigenous Australians during the British settlement of Australia.

In the 1970s and 1980s, historians like Manning Clark and Henry Reynolds wrote books to correct this. They felt that earlier history had ignored or wrongly shown Indigenous Australian history. In 1993, historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that Australian history had gone from being too positive (the "Three Cheers View") to being too negative (the "black armband" view). Australian commentators and politicians have kept debating this idea.

Politics and the History Wars

The way Aboriginal history was seen became part of a wider political debate. This was sometimes called the "culture wars." This happened when the Coalition government was in power from 1996 to 2007. Prime Minister John Howard openly supported the views of some writers. This debate also spread to how history was shown at the National Museum of Australia and in high school history classes. It also appeared in major newspapers like The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Two Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Keating and John Howard, were key players in these "wars."

Paul Keating wanted to move the Labor Party away from its past support for the Monarchy and the White Australia policy. He said that conservative parties had stopped national progress and were too loyal to Britain. Keating strongly supported a formal apology to Indigenous people for past wrongs. He shared his ideas in his Redfern Park Speech.
John Howard believed that Keating showed Australia's past in too negative a light. After the 1997 Bringing Them Home report, Howard passed a Parliamentary Motion of Reconciliation in 1999. It called the treatment of Aboriginal people the "most blemished chapter" in Australian history. But he did not make a formal apology. Howard felt an apology would mean "intergenerational guilt." He thought "practical" actions were better for helping Indigenous people today.

Keating wanted to remove symbols linked to British origins, like respect for ANZAC Day, the Australian Flag, and the Monarchy in Australia. Howard supported these institutions.

After the Howard government lost the election in 2007, the Rudd Labor government took over. Kevin Rudd made an official apology to the Stolen Generation with support from both major parties. Like Keating, Rudd supported an Australian Republic. But unlike Keating, Rudd supported the Australian flag and honored ANZAC Day.

After the apology, some people, like Professor Richard Nile, thought the "culture and history wars" were over. Others, like Janet Albrechtsen, disagreed.

Key Debates in the History Wars

Black Armband vs. White Blindfold

The "black armband" debate is about whether Australian history is told in a too negative or too positive way.

The black armband view of history was a phrase used by historian Geoffrey Blainey in 1993. He said it described views that Australian history since 1788 was mostly "a disgrace." These views focused on how minority groups, especially Aboriginal people, were treated.
He compared this to the Three Cheers view. This view believed that "nearly everything that came after [the convict era] was pretty good." Blainey argued that both views were wrong. He said the "Black Armband view" might be a swing from being too proud to being too negative.

The phrase "black armband" was then used by some to criticize historians who wrote very critical Australian history. They said these historians were "wearing a black armband" of "mourning or shame." These new views were criticized for focusing only on imperialism, exploitation, bad treatment, and cultural genocide. They were accused of ignoring the good parts of Australia's history.

John Howard said in 1996 that the "balance sheet of Australian history" was being wrongly shown. He said the "black armband" view believed history was just "a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism." Howard believed that Australia's history was mostly "heroic achievement." He said: "we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud than of which we should be ashamed." He agreed that "Injustices were done in Australia" but said the focus should be on fixing problems today.

In 2009, Kevin Rudd also called for moving away from a "black-arm view." He said it was time to stop the extreme views. He wanted to acknowledge both the "hard truths" and the "great stories of our explorers, of our pioneers."

The idea of the white blindfold view of history came into the debate as a way to criticize the "black armband" idea. It suggested that some people ignored the negative parts of history.

In his 1999 book Why Weren't We Told?, Henry Reynolds talked about Stanner's "Great Australian Silence." He said there was a "mental block" that stopped Australians from facing the past. Reynolds argued that the silence about Australia's history of frontier violence in the 20th century was very different from the 19th century. In the 19th century, violence was openly discussed.

The debate changed in 1999 with a book called Massacre Myth by journalist Rod Moran. He looked at the 1926 Forrest River massacre and said it was a myth. This inspired Keith Windschuttle to examine more historical records. Windschuttle argued that much of Australian Aboriginal history, especially from the late 1970s, used weak evidence. He said there were cases of non-existent documents being cited, misquoting, and misleading quotes.

Windschuttle published The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume 1, Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847 in 2002. He focused on Tasmanian colonial history. Blainey said that the many times source documents didn't support claims, and that these differences always made conflicts seem more violent, showed bias.

So, the debate shifted. It was no longer just about whether history was too negative. It was now about whether Aboriginal history was based on weak evidence or even made up. It questioned if this had made the violence against Aboriginal people seem worse. Historians like Lyndall Ryan and Henry Reynolds and their accounts of massacres were challenged. Windschuttle named historians he accused of misrepresenting history. This caused a lot of controversy, with both support and criticism for his work.

The Genocide Debate

The argument for using the term "Australian genocide" comes from different sources. People say that the list of massacres of Indigenous Australians by white settlers, mostly in the 19th century, proves some form of genocide.

Others point to the huge drop in the Tasmanian Aboriginal population in the 19th century. They also mention the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their parents for generations in the 20th century. These are seen as evidence of genocide. There are documents showing that many white Australians in the late 1800s and early 1900s wanted the Aboriginal "race" to disappear. This was especially true in Queensland, which had the most Indigenous people and the most violent frontier.

In 1866, Sir Robert Herbert, the first Premier of Queensland, wrote that no better system could be found than the one used to deal with "dangerous savages." He thought this problem would only end with the "gradual disappearance of the unimprovable race." This "system" was the "Native Police" who "dispersed" Indigenous groups seen as a threat. Recent studies suggest that more than 45,000 Aboriginal people may have been killed in encounters with the Native Police.

The phrase "useless race" was common in Queensland. In 1877, a newspaper editorial said that the desire for progress was stronger than any sadness about "the extinction of a savage and useless race."

After the word "genocide" was created by Raphael Lemkin in the 1940s, many scholars, like Robert Hughes and Jared Diamond, saw the extinction of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people as a clear example of genocide. Australian historian of genocide, Ben Kiernan, also sees the evidence from the first century of Australian colonization as an example of genocide.

Much of the debate today among Australian historians is about whether what happened to Indigenous people, especially the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, can be called genocide. Some argue that the term "genocide" should only apply to planned mass killings. Others say it can also apply when many Aboriginal people died due to careless actions or neglect by settlers. Historians like Tony Barta argue that for the victims, it doesn't matter if they died from a planned attack or from diseases like smallpox brought by settlers. If a group is destroyed, it's genocide.

Henry Reynolds notes that European colonists often used words like "extermination" when talking about Aboriginal people. He believes genocide "can take many forms, not all of them violent." Janine Roberts argues that genocide was Australian policy, even if it was by not acting.

However, political scientist Kenneth Minogue and historians like Keith Windschuttle disagree. They believe no genocide took place. Minogue argues that using the term "genocide" is an extreme way for modern Australian society to feel guilty about past wrongs. He thinks Australians are stretching the meaning of genocide to fit this debate.

In 2008, David Day wrote that Lemkin believed genocide included more than just mass killings. It also included driving people off their land, putting them in reserves, taking Indigenous children, and trying to make them lose their culture and language.

The Stolen Generations Debate

The 1997 Bringing Them Home report detailed how Aboriginal children were removed from their families by Australian government agencies and church missions. However, the details of these removals have been debated in Australia. Some people question the report's findings and say the Stolen Generation has been exaggerated.

Sir Ronald Wilson, a Commissioner on the Inquiry, said that none of the more than 500 witnesses were cross-examined. This led to criticism from the Coalition Government and anthropologist Ron Brunton. They argued that the Commission did not properly check the claims in the report. They also said it didn't separate children removed with consent from those removed without it. Critics questioned not only the number of children removed but also the reasons and effects of the government policy.

Some critics, like Andrew Bolt, even questioned if the Stolen Generation existed at all. Bolt called it a "preposterous and obscene" myth. He said there was no policy for systematically removing "half-caste" Aboriginal children. Robert Manne replied that Bolt ignored the evidence and that this was a clear case of historical denialism. The debate between Bolt and Manne shows the strong disagreements in this area. They focused on individual examples rather than wider evidence like laws or testimonies from those who carried out the policies.

The report also found cases where officials lied. For example, caring parents were wrongly described as unable to provide for their children. Or parents were told their children had died when they hadn't.

In 2008, the new Australian Government, led by Kevin Rudd, issued a formal apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples. This apology was similar to those made by state governments ten years earlier. It passed with strong support in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Media and Key Books

Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History

Historian Keith Windschuttle has challenged the way history is written about the Stolen Generations and the violence of European settlement. He argues that left-wing scholars have made these events seem worse for their own political reasons.

Windschuttle's 2002 book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847, focuses on the Black War in Tasmania. He claims there is reliable evidence for only 118 Tasmanian Aboriginal people being directly killed by the British. He says the Tasmanian Aboriginal population was mostly destroyed by new diseases. He also argues that the main conflict was from Aboriginal people raiding settlers for goods, not from warfare over land. He criticizes historians like Henry Reynolds and Professor Lyndall Ryan for claiming there was a guerrilla war. Windschuttle says the common view of Australian history is based on rumors or misleading use of evidence.

Windschuttle claims that Reynolds misused documents by quoting them out of context. He says Reynolds only quoted parts that suggested "extermination" and ignored other responses that showed sympathy for Aboriginal people.

However, Windschuttle's claims have been disputed by other historians. In Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, edited by Robert Manne, many academics argue that Windschuttle's ideas are "unpersuasive." Other scholars like Stephen Muecke and Marcia Langton also raised concerns about his work.

S.G. Foster, writing in Quadrant, examined some of Windschuttle's evidence. Foster argued that Windschuttle did not prove his case that the "Great Australian Silence" was a myth. Foster noted that Windschuttle is very strict with others' facts, but he also made mistakes himself.

Windschuttle announced more volumes of his book, but as of 2021, only Volume 3 (on the Stolen Generations) has appeared. He claimed the film Rabbit-Proof Fence misrepresented the child removal story, but the filmmakers rejected these claims.

Macintyre's The History Wars

In 2003, Australian historians Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark published The History Wars. This book looked at the background and arguments of the debate. They concluded that the History Wars had harmed the idea of objective Australian history.

At the book's launch, former Prime Minister Paul Keating criticized conservative views of Australian history. He said they suffered from "a failure of imagination." Critics of Macintyre, like Greg Melluish, said Macintyre himself was a biased participant in the history wars. Keith Windschuttle said Macintyre tried to make the history debate seem like a joke. However, former Chief Justice of Australia Sir Anthony Mason called the book "a fascinating study" of efforts to rewrite Australian history.