Keith Windschuttle facts for kids

Keith Windschuttle (1942 – 8 April 2025) was an Australian historian. He was known for his writings on Australian history and media. He also served on the board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and was the editor of Quadrant, a well-known magazine.

His important books include Unemployment (1979), which looked at why people lose jobs in Australia. He also wrote The Media (1984), which explored how news and entertainment work. In The Killing of History (1994), he discussed how history should be studied.

Later, he wrote books like The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847 (2002). In this book, he suggested that some historians had not been accurate about the level of violence in Australia's past. He also wrote The White Australia Policy (2004), which looked at a past immigration policy. His book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume Three: The Stolen Generations 1881–2008 (2009) discussed the "stolen generations" of Aboriginal children.

About Keith Windschuttle

Keith Windschuttle was born in 1942. He went to Canterbury Boys' High School. He studied history at the University of Sydney and politics at Macquarie University.

He worked as a journalist for newspapers and magazines in Sydney. Later, he taught Australian history and journalism at universities like the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the New South Wales Institute of Technology (now the University of Technology, Sydney). In 1993, he left UNSW to start his own publishing company, Macleay Press.

From 2006 to 2011, he was a member of the board for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The ABC is Australia's public TV and radio broadcaster. He also became the editor of Quadrant magazine in 2007. Keith Windschuttle passed away in Sydney on April 8, 2025.

Changing Views on History

Keith Windschuttle's political ideas changed over time. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was part of the New Left, a group with more progressive views. Later, he moved towards more conservative ideas.

In his book The Killing of History, he supported traditional ways of studying history. He believed historians should focus on facts and evidence. He argued that some historians, no matter their political views, might twist history to fit their own ideas.

Debates on Aboriginal History

In his books, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Windschuttle criticized some historians. He claimed they had not been accurate when writing about Aboriginal history. He believed that some historians were changing the historical record to support certain political goals, like land rights for Aboriginal people.

Windschuttle thought that a historian's main job is to find the truth based on evidence. He believed that personal political beliefs should not affect how historians look at old documents or eyewitness accounts. He was cautious about using oral history (stories passed down by word of mouth) unless it could be checked with written records.

His work led to a big debate in Australia called the "history wars." He questioned the idea that European settlers committed widespread killings against Indigenous Australians. He also disagreed with the idea that there was a large-scale guerrilla warfare against British settlement.

The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One

This book, published in 2002, was the first in a series by Windschuttle. It looked at the early interactions between white settlers and Aboriginal people in Tasmania (then called Van Diemen's Land). He challenged the common idea that there was a lot of violence during this time, especially during what was known as the "Black War" against the Aboriginal people of Tasmania.

Windschuttle argued that some historians had exaggerated the number of Aboriginal deaths. He reviewed many historical records and claimed that some sources were misunderstood or even made up. He suggested that attacks by Aboriginal people on settlers were often about getting goods like food or blankets, rather than being part of a war against British rule.

He also believed that diseases brought by Europeans were the main reason for the decline of the Tasmanian Aboriginal population. He argued that the British colonial policy was generally fair and humane. Windschuttle estimated that about 120 Tasmanian Aboriginal people were killed by settlers, which was much lower than other historians' figures. He also noted that 187 white settlers were reported killed by Aboriginal people during the "Black War."

Views on Land and Culture

Windschuttle argued that Aboriginal people in Tasmania did not have the same idea of "land ownership" as Europeans. He said they did not act as if they owned land with strict boundaries. He noted that Aboriginal groups often traveled across large parts of the island, not staying in one specific area.

He pointed out that there was little violence in Tasmania for the first twenty years after the British arrived. He suggested that if Aboriginal people felt the land was exclusively theirs, they would have fought back much sooner. He compared this to Polynesian tribes in New Zealand, Tahiti, and Tonga, who fought the British right away. He concluded that Tasmanian Aboriginal people had a different culture regarding land.

However, other historians disagree. They argue that Windschuttle's interpretation of historical records about land concepts is incorrect. They say that Aboriginal people did have strong connections to their territories. They also suggest that the arrival of colonizers forced Aboriginal people to move and sometimes fight each other.

The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume Three

Published in 2009, this book argued that the story of the Stolen Generations is not accurate. The "Stolen Generations" refers to Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families and culture. Many believe this was done to make them lose their Aboriginal identity.

Windschuttle claimed that his research showed Aboriginal children were not removed to end their Aboriginality. He argued that the idea of "stolen generations" only became popular in 1981, after a historian named Peter Read wrote about it.

He stated that only a small number of children (around 8,250 between 1880 and 1971) were removed. He argued that most of these children were orphans, abandoned, or neglected. He said they were removed for child welfare reasons, similar to why white children were removed in difficult situations. He also claimed that some Aboriginal parents voluntarily placed their children in institutions for education.

Windschuttle also argued that parents were not deliberately stopped from seeing their children. He said that in New South Wales, the government even helped parents visit their children in homes. He claimed that many children eventually returned to their families or Aboriginal communities.

He also stated that programs like apprenticeships for Aboriginal children were similar to those for white children. These programs aimed to help them learn skills and become independent.

Future Books

Keith Windschuttle had planned to publish two more books in his "Fabrication of Aboriginal History" series. These were Volume Two, about the Colonial Frontier from 1788 onwards, and Volume Four, about the History Wars. However, at the time of his death in April 2025, these books had not yet been published.

Quadrant Hoax

In 2009, Keith Windschuttle was tricked into publishing a fake article in Quadrant magazine. Someone pretending to be a "biotechnologist Dr Sharon Gould" submitted an article. The article claimed that a science organization, CSIRO, planned to create food crops with human genes.

The person behind the hoax later said it was meant to show that Windschuttle might publish inaccurate articles if they fit his ideas. Windschuttle argued that the hoax article contained many real facts and issues, making it harder to spot as a fake.

Major Books

• Unemployment: a Social and Political Analysis of the Economic Crisis in Australia, Penguin, (1979)
• Fixing the News, Cassell, (1981)
• The Media: a New Analysis of the Press, Television, Radio and Advertising in Australia, Penguin, (1984, 3rd edn. 1988)
• Working in the Arts, University of Queensland Press, (1986)
• Local Employment Initiatives: Integrating Social Labour Market and Economic Objectives for Innovative Job Creation, Australian Government Publishing Service, (1987)
• Writing, Researching Communicating, McGraw-Hill, (1988, 3rd edn. 1999)
• The Killing of History: How a Discipline is being Murdered by Literary Critics and Social Theorists, Macleay Press, Sydney (1994); Macleay Press, Michigan (1996); Free Press, New York (1997); Encounter Books, San Francisco (2000) online edition
• The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847, Macleay Press, (2002)
• The White Australia Policy, Macleay Press, (2004)
• The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume Three: The Stolen Generations 1881–2008, Macleay Press, (2009)
• The Breakup of Australia: The Real Agenda Behind Aboriginal Recognition, Quadrant Books, (2016)

See also

• American Indian Wars
• Aboriginal Tasmanians and the Black War
• Australian frontier wars
• History wars
• Indian removal (United States)
• Stolen Generations (Australia)