Monday, October 25, 2010

Tasmania

The colonialist venture of removing troublesome "primitive" natives from a desired territory was never more successfully accomplished than by the British in Tasmania. Finding an island south of Australia inhabited by a few thousand black Aborigine hunter gatherers, warlike but armed only with spears, was a mouth-watering opportunity seized by the civilized British.

Every part of the world was colonized, the English taking the major portions, so that the British Empire was a huge conglomeration of colonies, in which every race, American Indians, South African Blacks, Hong Kong Chinese, Australian Aborigines and New Zealand Maoris were systematically fought, conquered, imprisoned and decimated, both by the official White Government, by individual criminals and by disease. Of course, the English were not alone in this endevour, the French (North Africa), the Spanish (South America), the Portugese (Brazil and Africa), the Belgians (Congo) the Germans (SW Africa), all played their role in wiping out indigenous natives and their cultures. But, the case of Tasmania was perhaps the earliest and most complete.

I have been reading a novel of Tasmania entitled "English Passengers" by Matthew Kneale, given to me by my daughter, Miriam. Miriam is the head of the AACI (Association of Americans and Candians in Israel) in Beersheva, and her office is adjacent to the English library there, so she finds many interesting books (she is also doing a Masters degree in creative writing at Bar Ilan University). It links the Isle of Man, itself a strange part of Britain where the Celtic Manx language used to be spoken, with Tasmania, a rather obscure but very interesting story.

Tasmania was discovered by Abel Tasman a Dutch explorer in 1642, and he named it Van Dieman's Land after the then Governor of the Dutch East Indies. In 1769 it was shown to be an island by Captain Flinders. The first colony was founded by the British in 1803. At that time there were estimated to have been 5-10,000 Aborigines there, in five distinct tribal groups. The reason there were not more of them is that they lived a stone age existence, having not discovered metal, and the land is mountainous and has a very stormy climate. The British initially used Tasmania, as it became known, as a penal colony. Through war, depredations by prisoners and settlers and by disease, the population of Aborigines dwindled and by 1833 there were only ca 300 of them left, They were gathered together and relocated in a colony on Flinders Island, a remote island off the north east coast of Tasmania itself. There most of them died and the few survivors were again relocated to Oyster Bay, and the last known Aborigine died in 1876. It took 73 years for the British to wipe out the Tasmanian Aborigines. In other places, N. America, S. Africa, S. America and Australia itself, the indigenous peoples were more developed and/or more numerous than in Tasmania, so they and some of their culture survives.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home