ROBERT FOSTER AND AMANDA NETTELBECK - Wakefield Press

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSSome sections of this work have previously been published in differentversions: ‘The Rule of Law on the Australian Frontier’, Legal History, vol13, no 2 (2009); ‘Colonial Judiciaries, Aboriginal Protection and SouthAustralia’s Policy of Punishing with “Exemplary Severity” ’, AustralianHistorical Studies, vol 41, no 3 (2010); ‘Commemorating the Past: Foundationin Regional Memory’, History Australia, vol 7, no 3 (2010); ‘The AustralianFrontier in the Museum’, Journal of Social History (Summer 2011). We wouldlike to thank the editors of those journals and the anonymous readers whoprovided us with valuable feedback.In this book we revisit some of the events we first addressed in FatalCollisions: the South Australian Frontier and the Violence and Memory; it hasbeen necessary to do so because these events form an integral part of themore comprehensive analysis of the trajectory of the South Australian frontierwhich is undertaken here.The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the AustralianResearch Council in supporting this project through an ARC LinkageGrant, and our industry partners, the South Australian Museum and theState Records of South Australia. We would especially like to thank SkyeKrichauff and Jude van Konklenberg for their patient and methodicalresearch, and Bain Attwood for his astute comments and corrections. Manythanks also to Michael Bollen and the staff at <strong>Wakefield</strong> <strong>Press</strong> for theircontinued support.
IntroductionIn 1835 Britain’s House of Commons established a Select Committee toinquire into the conditions of Aboriginal people in British settlements.Chaired by the evangelical politician Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, famed forhis role in the abolitionist movement, the Select Committee was symptomaticof a building reformist politics over the past decade as Britain soughtto reconcile the economic strength of its empire with an increasing senseof humanitarian duty towards Aboriginal peoples across its colonies. 1 TheCommittee’s report of 1837 was forthright in its condemnation of past Britishpolicy toward ‘the uncivilized nations of the earth’. This had been a policythat had not only sacrificed many thousands of lives, it stated, but continuedto have disastrous consequences for Aboriginal peoples:Too often, their territory has been usurped; their property seized; theirnumbers diminished; their character debased; the spread of civilizationimpeded. European vices and diseases have been introduced amongst them,and they have been familiarized with the use of our most potent instrumentsfor the subtle if violent destruction of human life, viz. brandy andgunpowder. 2The Select Committee’s report spoke strongly of rights. Aboriginalpeoples had a ‘plain and sacred right’ to their soil, and Europeans had notonly intruded upon that soil, but had then punished the original inhabitantsfor presuming to ‘live in their own country’. 3 But although it issued a compellingreminder of the wilful neglect of Aboriginal rights across Britain’scolonies, the Select Committee’s report refrained from acknowledging thesovereignty of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, whose political and socialsystems it regarded as being too ‘destitute’ to warrant that status. Instead, itargued, these peoples must be secured ‘the due observance of Justice’ throughthe extension of ‘civilisation’ and ‘Christianity’. 4 The 1837 report illuminateda paradox at the heart of colonial endeavour in Australia from this timeonwards, for although its language of humanitarian liberalism challenged a1
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ROBERT FOSTER AND AMANDA NETTELBECK - Wakefield Press

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