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A shocking new history? The question of historiography, invasion and genocide in Nick Brodie’s The Vandemonian War
Citation
Taylor, R, A shocking new history? The question of historiography, invasion and genocide in Nick Brodie's The Vandemonian War, Journal of Genocide Research, 20, (3) pp. 451-456. ISSN 1462-3528 (2018) [Review Single Work]
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DOI: doi:10.1080/14623528.2018.1486306
Abstract
Nick Brodie promises that "everyone" who reads The Vandemonian War "will be shocked" (2). It
certainly filled me with surprise and intrigue from the moment I first picked it up. There was the
subtitle: "The Secret History of Britain’s Tasmanian Invasion." Secret? I wondered. But historians
have retold the story of Tasmania’s colonial settlement since the mid nineteenth century! The
blurb offered an explanation that left me no less enquiring: "Governments and others succeeded
in burying the real story of the Vandemonian War for nearly two centuries. And historians
failed to see through the myths and lies – until now." All historians have failed? How? The
preface left me asking more questions: the "truth" of the Vandemonian War – that it was an
"orchestrated invasion" and a deliberate genocide – was "discovered" by Brodie reading the
records created by the Tasmanian Colonial Secretary’s Office (CSO) in the 1820s and 1830s,
only a "tiny fraction" of which have been examined, analysed, or cited by previous historians.
An endnote attached to this statement lists those scholars; it is the only place they are named in
the book (2, 384). How valid was this claim? The question sent me to my bookshelf. I began
scanning the endnotes and bibliographies of books on the list, including those by the most
respected scholars of Tasmanian settlement history: James Boyce, Henry Reynolds, Lyndall
Ryan. I found they all contained many references to the CSO volumes and detailed explorations
of the ideas of invasion and genocide.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Review Single Work |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | genocide, Tasmania, Aboriginal, historiography, Van Demonian War |
| Research Division: | Indigenous Studies |
| Research Group: | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, language and history |
| Research Field: | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history |
| Objective Division: | Culture and Society |
| Objective Group: | Understanding past societies |
| Objective Field: | Understanding Europe's past |
| UTAS Author: | Taylor, R (Dr Rebe Taylor) |
| ID Code: | 126359 |
| Year Published: | 2018 |
| Deposited By: | College Office - CALE |
| Deposited On: | 2018-06-06 |
| Last Modified: | 2018-07-30 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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