Talk:Australian history wars

Similarities to debates elsewhere

There is a similarity to the debates here with debates in other colonised nations, especially white settler colonies, where dispossession of indigenous cultures occurred - for example, USA and Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and throughout South America. These debates in all cases bear similarity to Holocaust Denialism. As an Australian living in Germany, which is a country which has now faced up to its darker past, I am amazed at the healing such reconciliation can bring to the national soul. I long for Australia to admit that sometimes "Smoothing the pillow of a dying race" (the official policy down to the late 1940s in Western Australia, when it was replaced with "Assimilation" (racial disappearance by another name)) was often more actively pursued. I feel the article could be bettered by reference to other settler colonies that suffer the same kind of historical denialism. John D. Croft (talk) 10:06, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Undue weight

See Archive 4#Undue Weight

Windschuttle's work is riddled with errors. Manne's responses might not have been convincing, but people like James Boyce certainly are.121.91.211.122 (talk) 07:22, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Boyce? He’s an evidence-free zone. He went on for pages in his chapter of Whitewash claiming that there was supposedly evidence of violence against Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land that W ‘missed’ or ‘ignored’ but didn’t actually produce evidence of any significance to support his claims, just pages of rhetoric. Apparently we just had to accept his word that the evidence is ‘out there’….. somewhere. Same thing in his latest book, lots of rhetoric about what Boyce claims happened to the Tasmanian Aborigines but as even a sympathetic reviewer pointed out, he didn’t actually produce any real evidence to support his claims. As for W being ‘riddled with errors’, well that’s a nice broad claim. I’ve found that when you start looking at supposed errors by W, where there are specific details that can be checked, that is, it generally turns out to be either a distortion of something he’s written or simply a matter of opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.202.43.53 (talk) 08:44, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Some queries

however, most Australian experts are, in the words of Mark Levene, "considerably more circumspect",[38][39] because more recent detailed studies of the events surrounding the extinction by historians who specialise in Australian history have raised questions about some of the details and interpretations in the earlier histories.[40][41] In a chapter describing these developments, Ann Curthoys concludes "It is time for a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship if we are to understand better what did happen in Tasmania in the first half of the nineteenth century, how best to conceptualize it, and how to consider what that historical knowledge might mean for us now, morally and intellectually, in the present."

Both Reynolds and Curthoys are cited to give the impression they are 'more circumspect'. Actually Reynolds contrasts extirpationist practices, with official policy that was wary of extermination, as does Curthoys. She indeed does define the facts as fitting genocide. Curthoys disagrees with Reynolds, but the appearance is given, by selective quotation, that they concur.Nishidani (talk) 08:43, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Why so much prominence is given in the Outline to what politicians think is obscure. Howard and Keating are not historians, and whatever the political reflexes of the debates within academia which took and take place, these should be positioned further down the page, with the main exposition given to the academic literature. Nishidani (talk) 10:08, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be helpful for the article if you defined what constitutes 'genocide' in the definition preferred by Curthoys as opposed to what Reynolds considers it to be. The general public tends to think of genocide as intentional attempts at extermination by one group against another but in the world of 'genocide studies' (which has its share of crackpots) there are multiple definitions being used, some of which are incredibly broad, including arguments that unintended consequences of colonisation like the accidental introduction of disease to a non-resistant population or acts committed by criminals which were not supported by a government or the colonists in general, were genocidal acts. In my humble opinion, the term 'genocide' is being expanded to the point of becoming meaningless. I agree that there is too much prominence given to the politicians' opinions but this is Wikipedia, people stick things in because they personally believe that it is vitally important and getting it out can be a problem. Webley442 (talk) 13:30, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

You mean, so far I haven't been helpful?

It's not my job, at least in a venue like wikipedia, to define what constitutes anything. One looks at RS, and follows them. By clicking on the genocide article they can check the range of meanings and debates themselves. That's what links are for.

Wikipedia has WP:Undue, which is the rule violated here. Large blobs attributed to Mr Howard or Keating are boring, and irrelevant. Their personal or political utterances only merit mention because the arguments are used politically. But the essence of the arguments are academic, not political. It is the essence of the juvenile world that it is more attracted by spin than substance. It makes prelapsarians like myself hanker, for once, for ontologies.Nishidani (talk) 14:16, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Sadly, politicians' views DO matter. At times they impose very strong pressure in areas such as the design of school curricula. Even now Australia is still developing a new national school curriculum, and anyone who thinks the politicians are staying out of it has rocks in their head. They also choose administrators of national museums and the like, flavouring the form of displays the general public sees there. HiLo48 (talk) 20:41, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

They do matter, though that's what they lack. The section should obviously be moved down page. Politicians' spins on academic controversies should not precede a comprehensive survey of the academic perspective. So, if no one objects, I think one should, for the moment, shift that section down below the actual history war section as it evolved among academics.Nishidani (talk) 21:21, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your proposal above. My earlier point was that there is little point saying one historian calls it genocide and another doesn't, if your text doesn't make it clear to the casual reader that they are applying different definitions of the word. Webley442 (talk) 23:54, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Fine. I think the clarification from Reynolds, Curthoys, Barta et al., on Lemkin as we have it now makes clear that 'genocide' is used variously, as deliberate, according to some, and not administratively intentional according to others. Nishidani (talk) 10:50, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Comment

I'm a bit puzzled how this article has become the base of the History of Australia article in Wikipedia, and that the THEORY that Aboriginal decline was due solely to epidemics has been presented therein as the whole truth. I am myself a historian and have poured over hundreds of hand-written accounts by settlers and Native Police Corps in which they quite graphically describe how and where they KILLED Aboriginal people. I find the whole idea that this was "fabricated" quite laughable. To give a very tiny example, read Frederic de Brebent Cooper's Wild Advertures in Australia and New South Wales, which he published in 1857. Copies are available in several libraries. In this work, Cooper GRAPHICALLY describes - in very fine detail - how he and his comrades shot, stabbed and choked a whole party of Aboriginals around Mundubberra (Qld). Cooper describes not one but several attacks he and his colleagues conducted. There are massacre sites at Durham Downs (Cooper basin) where you can still clearly see the bone fragments and bullet cartridges - I have photos from the Traditional Owners.

The reason so little of this is usually "confirmed" is that most people don't like to give graphic details about how they butchered others. Do you really think they'd go home and write a detailed account? Cooper is a bit of an exception because he was an Englishman 'passing through' who had nothing to lose by detailing what he had done - for him it was all part of his overseas adventures. We have seen even with the Balkan Wars that many of the aggressors flatly denied massacring anyone, and the evidence (once again) proved quite hard to find. Fortunately in that case, we could actually dig up the skeletons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.210.232.79 (talk) 03:21, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

None of the historians discussed in this article claim that the decline was SOLELY the result of disease. None question that there were killings, just how many. One of the issues of the History Wars was/is that many of the alleged killings/massacres were at best unsupported by any credible evidence and often clear fabrications, some created by ‘historians’ who cited false sources and some by tellers of tall tales (such as 19th century Englishmen who did a tour of the colonies and then wrote fanciful tales of battles with hostile natives).180.149.192.132 (talk) 08:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Another problem is the recognised systemic bias caused by the fact that Aboriginal people did not have a written language. There are, not surprisingly, hardly any written accounts by Aboriginal people of the time. We can and must clarify areas where we are not certain of the facts, but these stories will always be the various white man's versions of events. HiLo48 (talk) 08:03, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned references in History wars

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of History wars's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Fenner1":

• From History of smallpox: Fenner, F.; Henderson, D.A.; Arita, I.; Jezek, Z.; & Ladnyi, I.D. (1988). Smallpox and Its Eradication (History of International Public Health, No. 6) (PDF). Geneva: World Health Organization. ISBN 92-4-156110-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• From Smallpox: Fenner, Frank (1988). Smallpox and Its Eradication (History of International Public Health, No. 6) (PDF). Geneva: World Health Organization. ISBN 92-4-156110-6.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 07:05, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Name of article: "History wars"? maybe "History wars (Australia)?"

At present, the focus of the article is on the controversy about Australian history. But I think the name of the article implies a broader focus, because such debates occur in the histories of other parts of the world. Perhaps "History wars (Australia)" or something like that?

This is just a suggestion; I haven't studied the article, nor the Talk page, nor the sources in enough detail to be sure that my idea is a good one. But those of you who know more might evaluate the idea and consider the change.

I observe that "Australian genocide debate" has a redirect page to "History wars". I suppose the article's name is now "History wars" because there was some opinion that this name is more neutral than "Australian genocide debate". (I don't know enough to say; I am simply inferring.) But my point is that term "History wars", as it now stands, isn't quite right because of the focus on Australia. Oaklandguy (talk) 01:58, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

History wars causing interest in Australian history to plummet...

The last sentence in the lead says:

In the wake of the history wars, interest in the study of Australian history has plunged, and some schools and universities have sharply cut it back.

The quote implies that the history wars are responsible for the huge drop in interest in Australian history, and the cited basis was [1]

And yet the article quoted actually says:

"Marilyn Lake, president of the Australian Historical Association, agrees that kids are put off the subject by learning it at school. She is critical of the way history has been taught, particularly the increased focus on military history over the past 15 years. More money has been spent on educating children in military history than any other field of history in Australia, she says.

She believes this was a deliberative initiative by the Howard government to ‘literally … change the subject’, moving away from the much-debated history wars and 19th-century massacres of indigenous people to the 20th-century wars fought by the Anzacs and their descendants.

...

But while Lake is concerned that the dominance of military history in our schools is putting students off the subject, Clark found in her research that the Anzac legend is the one area of Australian history kids warm to. The most hated topics were indigenous history, because of the repetitive the way it is taught, and Federation, which even one teacher confessed was ‘sort of mind-blowingly dull’.

Since I'm an outsider to the field perhaps I'm missing something, but on the face of it, the implication that those contesting the conventional view of Australian history are harming interest in the field does not seem to be present at the site. On the contrary, it appears to be the response of the establishment to challenges to its narrative that is harming interest in Australian history.

Shouldn't the sentence be rewritten to indicate this?

121.222.128.2 (talk) 06:49, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

the statement seems quite accurate. experts say 1) govt has recently emphasized military history and deemphasized indigenous history 2) Clark says that kids like military history. so it's hard to jump to 3) gov't moves have reduced interest in history. I think they are saying 4) that decline is because " The most hated topics were indigenous history...and Federation." Rjensen (talk) 07:27, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

The history wars are mentioned only once, and nowhere in the article is it blamed for a decreased interest in Australian history. - HappyWaldo (talk) 07:33, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree: Marilyn Lake is blaming the dominance of war history for this, not the history wars. As it's an obvious miss-quote, I've removed it Nick-D (talk) 07:37, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Issues with the arsenic telegram

There is no source cited. The telegram has shown up on various websites but I have not yet found a reliable source for it. The telegram is not mentioned in Prinsep’s biography - Henry Prinsep’s Empire: Framing a distant colony, by Malcolm Allbrook, 2014, ANU Press, ISBN: 9781925021608 which was developed from Allbrook’s PhD thesis. It does not appear to be listed in the index to the Chief Protector of Aborigines Files 1898 – 1908 in the WA State Records Office (http://www.sro.wa.gov.au/archive-collection/collection/aboriginal-records/index-chief-protector-aborigines-files-1898-1908). It also does not appear in the index to the Prinsep family papers held by the J S Battye Library of West Australian History (an arm of the State Library of Western Australia).

Without a reliable source, the issues are:

(1) Is this a genuine telegram, a malicious joke, a hoax or a fake?

(2) Even if it is a genuine telegram, there is no context, particularly without the source. Because senders of telegrams were charged by the word, it was standard practice to pare messages down to a bare minimum of words. Morse code doesn’t distinguish between capital and lower case letters. If you wanted a full stop or a comma, you had to pay extra to send the code for STOP or COMMA. To signify a new line in Morse, the telegrapher sent the code for “AA” but the receiving telegrapher usually didn’t write “AA” down, he/she simply started a new line. The apparent meaning of these words might well be very different to someone who is aware of all the correspondence and knows the full circumstances. There have been famous instances of badly worded telegrams which have been misread by people who didn’t understand what the sender really meant, such as the famous WW2 telegram from the Chief of Staff of the US Army Marshall to General McArthur. In response to McArthur’s request for reinforcements, Marshall sent "We are giving you everything we possibly can." McArthur thought that meant reinforcements were on the way and acted accordingly. Actually Marshall meant that they couldn’t send anything more than they already had and there were NO reinforcements on the way.

It may be that the current interpretation of those 8 words in 2 lines as “Send (a) cask (of) arsenic (to) exterminate aborigines(,) letter will follow.” is completely wrong. Let’s suppose, for example, that the telegram is genuine but that it came from an archive or collection of papers that also contained a prior letter from Prinsep to Morgan and/or the letter from Charles Morgan that was supposed to follow the telegram. Those letters might have made it perfectly clear that the 2 lines of the telegram, “send cask arsenic exterminate” and “aborigines letter will follow” are, in effect, 2 separate messages; that “send cask arsenic exterminate” refers to a request by Morgan to Prinsep, in his capacity as a friend, business partner, employer or landlord, to supply arsenic to exterminate termites, rats, wild dingoes or other pests. The second line of the telegram “aborigines letter will follow” may be refer to some information that Prinsep, as Chief Protector of Aborigines for the State had requested from Morgan regarding Aborigines in the Broome area or possibly about Aborigines in Morgan’s employment. 2001:8003:6241:8600:E814:93CA:CF93:D8DD (talk) 01:46, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

A further point in favour of the proposition that the telegram wasn't requesting, either seriously or as a sick joke, arsenic to poison Aborigines is that sending such a request by telegram meant that the content would be known to the sending and receiving telegraphers as well as to any telegraphers in however many repeating stations there were between Broome and Perth. If you were requesting poison to commit murder, possibly mass murder, with in a time when the penalty for murder was death by hanging, would you send it by a means that guaranteed that a considerable number of people (the telegraphers) would know and be able tell others what you were doing? Wouldn't you send such a request in a sealed letter only to be opened and seen by the recipient?

In addition, if you read the biography of Prinsep and the other information that is available about him, it is clear that he would not have been involved in such a murder plot, would not have sent arsenic for poisoning Aborigines and would have sent the police after anyone who he thought was so inclined.2001:8003:6241:8600:E814:93CA:CF93:D8DD (talk) 02:09, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

In the late 1800s, Chas Morgan was a leaseholder of Princep Park, a station located near Bunbury owned by Henry Princep so it is likely they were on friendly terms. The WA electoral rolls have Chas Morgan living in Dampier Peninsula in 1914. The area, since the 1880s, was a collection of cattle stations run in their entirety by Aboriginals that extended to Broome in the south to Derby in the north, all administered by Henry Princep until he was replaced in 1908. The telegram was sent from Broome because it was the nearest telegraph station. The local Indigenous community in the Dampier Peninsula was largely mixed Filipino/Aboriginal and Roman Catholic. A German Pallottine mission arrived in 1890 and leased 100,000 acres adjoining the Aboriginal stations and reserve and was a major influence in the area. The new Protector of Aborigines, Charles Gale, visited the area in 1910 and commented on the Indigenous communities, noting that the "method of education" of Indigenous children was on a level with the state school system. By this time the local ration stations had been put under mission control because of concerns that the white overseers were mistreating the Aboriginals. The mission received 1 shilling per year from the WA government for each aboriginal living in the Dampier Peninsula making it unlikely that they would have ignored if any had been 'exterminated'. Especially as the mission kept records of every birth and death in the various Indigenous communities under it's area of control and was under constant pressure to show a profit. As the User above mentioned, and given the conditions at the time, it is quite likely that the telegram covered two different subjects. Wayne (talk) 08:49, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

the telegram first appears in 2003 on a genealogy website and is not cited by any of the History Wars participants. There is no one who claims to own the paper copy of the telegram --no historical society or archives has seen it. No one has verified it. That's what fakes look like. I erased it--lots of kids will get fooled otherwise. Rjensen (talk) 02:12, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Agreed - it should not be in the article, without a reliable source, there is no way of checking if it is genuine or whether there were other documents with it that clarify what those 8 words in 2 lines were about. 2001:8003:6217:3F00:48AE:5D39:6AD7:6103 (talk) 04:52, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Update required

The lead says the issue is ongoing, yet the outline section stops with 2013 (and was written as if Christopher Pyne's Liberal Party is still in opposition). So if it is ongoing, it needs updated. On the other hand, the last paragraph of the lead is written in a tense which suggests it is not ongoing. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 07:38, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Including HRA in the "See also" section

I recently included Historical Records of Australia in the “See also” section. The HRA comprises tens of thousands of pages of primary source documents, for the period beginning in 1788. Thus, anyone interested in studying the period relevant for the History wars would be interested in the HRA; that is particularly so given that some historians have accused other historians of misrepresenting the historical records. Additionally, according to MOS:SEEALSO, “The links in the "See also" section might be only indirectly related to the topic of the article because one purpose of "See also" links is to enable readers to explore tangentially related topics”.

Including HRA in the “See also” section is surely worthwhile. Despite that, my edit was reverted. This discussion is therefore opened to talk about the revert, pursuant to WP:BRD.
FlagrantUsername (talk) 21:21, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

no the HRA is 99.99% about other topics and unless they are at the MA/PhD level in historiography our readers will waste their time sorting through thousands of pages of very old details on arrivals of ships, convict records, promotions, petitions, rations, embarkation, and appointments. The History Wars get going mostly in the 1990s and the key items our readers will want to see are not government documents and are not included in any of the volumes. Rjensen (talk) 21:30, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Rjensen. In the discussion of this topic at User talk:Nick-D#History wars I raised concerns that including this as a see also link would not be helpful for readers for pretty much the reasons Rjensen notes, and noted there's a risk that readers could conclude that the HRA is a locus of the History Wars or similar. I suggested to FlagrantUsername that they add a sentence or so to the body of the article which explains the relevance of the HRA to this topic. Nick-D (talk) 21:32, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

content moved from page

In her book ’The Aboriginal Tasmanians’ Lyndall Ryan claims that British colonists killed 100 Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land between 1804 and 1808. On Channel Nine's program Sunday, Ryan confessed she didn't have any evidence for the figure. I had pointed out that the source her book quoted, the diary of the colony's chaplain Robert Knopwood, only recorded four Aboriginal deaths. Ryan, however, claimed that footnote was a mistake and her real source was a report by the explorer John Oxley in 1810. But if you look up Oxley's report, there is no mention in it anywhere of 100 Aborigines being killed. Pressed on the issue by journalist Helen Dalley, Ryan said: ’I think by the way Oxley wrote that he seemed to think there had been a great loss of life from the Aborigines.' Helen Dalley then asked: ’So, in a sense, it is fair enough for [Keith Windschuttle] to say that you did make up figures? You're telling me you made an estimated guess.' Ryan replied: ’Historians are always making up figures.’ cut/paste source

The notability of this may be verified with citations. The 'tone' is not a presentation of facts, it is currently uncited opinion and argument to advance one side of the topic. cygnis insignis 10:25, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Agreed - obviously unsuitable content. Nick-D (talk) 11:05, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

What is unfactual about it? I can reference Ryan's book if you like. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rationalistworld (talk • contribs) 11:10, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

It is the laziness that alarms me, says the user who didn't check for a cut/paste first. I was reminded of another episode, poking around that site: "I'm almost embarrassed for you, Windschuttle. Just look at you above, a pea in a pod alongside those other culture warriors." Diary of a hoax: how Keith Windschuttle was tricked cygnis insignis 11:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Covering the 2014 Ockham’s Razor chickenpox/smallpox debate

On 12 June 2019 an editor known as 193.119.58.119 inserted his/her only known contribution to Wikipedia, a brusque conclusion to the Smallpox Section:

The chickenpox theory was finally disproven based on the views of Professor Frank Fenner and a military surgeon Mair[citation needed] dispatched specifically to report on smallpox outbreaks in NSW in 1830.

In context, this sentence implies that 1. Subsequent to Carmody and Hunter’s February 2014 paper, a further scholarly paper appeared with decisive new evidence. 2. This caused at least the majority of those who had favoured the chickenpox theory to concede defeat.

I can find no evidence that either assertion is true. It is unfortunate that a “Citation required” notice has been ignored for six months. Much trouble would have been saved if the contributor had been less coy about his or her sources. Yet, granted the references to Mair and Fenner, it seems the missing citation would be to Chris Warren’s 2014 Ockham’s Razor talk of 13 April 2014 (already mentioned in the article’s current footnote 95).

I have therefore replaced this 12-June-2019 sentence with summary of the 2014 Ockham’s Razor program, which does help clarify the state of the chickenpox theory and provides a fuller statement of Warren’s contentions. I have also, earlier in the article, expanded the account of Warren’s relevant 2007 argument that smallpox virus could have survived from 1787 to April 1789 if properly curated. Marcasella (talk) 23:57, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

I think that the smallpox debate clearly has a “Culture Wars” dimension, but it is also in part a valid scholarly and medical debate among experts perplexed by the limited and ambiguous evidence. Those who believe the 1789 epidemic was what Christopher Warren calls “real smallpox” and, further, that it may have been deliberately introduced, and also those, like Carmody and Ford, who believe it was what we now call chickenpox are both making valid and valuable points. As yet, neither side has won the scholarly/medical debate.

This is clear enough in the latter part of the current smallpox section; but the section’s opening paragraph is out of kilter when it states: “The lack of immunity among Aboriginal Australians to this introduced disease [i.e. smallpox] saw it inflict a devastating toll on the Aboriginal population.” (Subsequent sentences make it clear that the devastating toll in question is primarily that of the 1789-90 epidemic, with perhaps a side-reference to the 1830 epidemic.) Since there is not in fact agreement among the better-informed secondary sources that the disease was “real smallpox”, this preliminary statement of the section’s subject matter clearly needs some refinement. I have supplied “The lack of immunity among Aboriginal Australians to introduced diseases saw smallpox (or some related disease) inflict a devastating toll on the Aboriginal population.” Marcasella (talk) 01:43, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Split proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to move the lengthy section within The History Wars titled "Controversy over Smallpox in Australia" to a free-standing page titled Smallpox Epidemics among Aborigines in Australia from 1789 to the 1860s: Uncertainties and Debates. In its place there will remain here a briefer section more specifically relevant to the History Wars. Marcasella (talk) 03:21, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

---

<Start of discussion> . . .

"It has been suggested that this article be split into a new article titled Introduction of smallpox to Australia. (Discuss) (May 2021)"

A SPLIT PROPOSAL 25 October 2021 Marcasella (talk) 14:22, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

re the notice placed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars#Controversy_over_smallpox_in_Australia "It has been suggested that this article be split into a new article titled Introduction of smallpox to Australia. (Discuss) (May 2021)"

The present article here has three problems. Firstly, it is one of three separate Wikipedia pages that consider the problem—or as Frank Fenner, and Henry Reynolds have preferred to say, the mystery—of Australia’s crucial 1789 epidemic. Secondly, it is far the most comprehensive of these, and is the one towards which the other two sites—at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_smallpox#Australia and at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Biological_warfare (the paragraphs re Australia)—should refer the reader for fuller discussion.

Thirdly, it is in the wrong place! All that is required here in the “History Wars” area is an account of those sections of the controversy that constitute a moralized or politicized debate about the culpability of the colonists. (In fact, the present article reveals that much of the debate to date has been nearer to a respectful scholarly exchange between epidemiologists and historians puzzled or troubled by what Frank Fenner called “the scanty data available”. }}

In 2021 a SPLIT notice appeared on this article, suggesting that most of its contents be hived off into a separate article on the 1789 outbreak. In response I volunteered (mea culpa, this was back in May) to make this split “soon”. An excuse for the delay is that I began by imagining that the split should involve not just removing the main article from here but combining it into one of the other two less-comprehensive articles. But it became clear that the job of “marrying” the materials would prove daunting. I now believe a simpler solution will be much better, viz.: Remove the present article almost unchanged to a potentially free-standing article, titled perhaps The 1789 and 1830 smallpox epidemics in Australia: consequences, controversies and uncertainties. All that needs to remain here is a brief statement of the importance of these early epidemics and their tragic effects upon the Aborigines, the possibility that they were the same disease, and also any evidence that debate about them has been or may be about to become part of a politicised debate with the History Wars.

One last idea: Rather than make the removed article free-standing from the beginning, perhaps it could be initially placed within the “History of Australia” area, e.g. as a new section probably just after the existing section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Australia#Disease

However if any senior editor strongly feels that the new article should be free-standing at once, perhaps they could supply me with a suitable URL and site to place it.

---

EARLIER COMMENTS IN MAY 2021 BY Marcasella (talk) 14:22, 27 October 2021 (UTC) re the notice placed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars#Controversy_over_smallpox_in_Australia "It has been suggested that this article be split into a new article titled Introduction of smallpox to Australia. (Discuss) (May 2021)"

I think that this is a good idea. Though there may be elements of the culture wars or history wars in the debate between Warren etc and the epidemiological experts like Carmody, there is a genuine mystery to be resolved here, and both sides are making valid and illuminating points. It does not much help the debate, and it may unfairly denigrate the contributions from various experts to present them as caught up in the history wars. The existing article gives a full and valuable account of the history of this debate, and should not be much changed if it is made a free-standing article elsewhere. The present coverage on the History Wars page could then be reduced to a brief statement of the issues and a pointer to the main article.

The free-standing article would probably require a brief general introduction, after which I suggest the present article's valuable chronological account could be inserted largely unchanged.

Points that should probably be made in such a brief general introduction might include:

• The European settlement of southern Australia, as of Latin America and several other regions, was facilitated by epidemics that produced a huge mortality among the original inhabitants, who unlike most Europeans and Asians had little or no immunity to various epidemic diseases that were common in Europe and Asia.
• In some cases in the Americas these diseases may have been deliberately spread, including even smallpox (an often fatal disease to which Europeans were not immune) in at least one verified case in North America. However there is no clear proof that this happened in Australia.
• A major epidemic in the South East of Australia broke out in 1789 some fifteen months after the first European settlement at Sydney, and depopulated the surrounding regions. It also travelled rapidly through adjacent Aboriginal tribes, often arriving ahead of the first European explorers. This depopulation made it much easier for Europeans to take land, and meant that the process of "settlement" was easier and less violent than it might otherwise have been. It presumably made it easier for later settlers to believe that the land had been peacefully ceded to them; and it probably contributed to a common belief among early European settlers that there was no point in trying to preserve Aboriginal society or culture because they observed that the Aborigines in their region were steadily dying out and seemingly would soon be gone.
• This fatal disease was commonly identified by European observers as "smallpox", the only highly fatal disease they knew that produced such pox-like scarring. Most historians until the 1980s repeated such statements and took it for granted that the disease was smallpox.

However, many epidemiologists today are unconvinced that it was smallpox, because:

1. No Europeans are recorded as catching or dying of the 1789 outbreak. The only non-Aborigine known to have died was a seaman recorded as being of non-European (North-American "Indian") ancestry. A few Europeans did die of the 1830 outbreak, but two senior surgeons insisted it was chickenpox, not smallpox.

2. There is a record by David Collins that European children in Sydney in 1789 (those old enough to roam unsupervised) spent much time in close contact with Aborigines during the outbreak, and did not catch the disease. outbreak.

3. Surgeons at this time were unaware of or only just becoming aware of the distinction between chickenpox and smallpox. Even in the later C19th they could distinguish smallpox primarily by its generally more severe symptoms among European patients, who had considerable resistance to chickenpox. However this distinction would have been more difficult to make with Aboriginal patients, to whom both diseases were severe and often fatal.

4. The rapid spread of this disease through Aboriginal regions strongly suggests to epidemiologists like Professor Jack Carmody that it was the more infectious chickenpox, not smallpox.

5. There is no problem in explaining the presence of chickenpox in the Sydney settlement. Most Europeans carried the disease in a latent form, and were liable to develop its infectious sores and pustules if severely stressed or ill-fed. At the time, such milder recurrences in later life of this childhood disease were called "shingles", and considered a separate disease. We now know that shingles is in fact chickenpox, and is infectious.

6. It is harder to explain how smallpox might have arrived. It is known that the surgeons of the first fleet carried smallpox inoculation kits. these were glass bottles containing dried smallpox scabs, which could be pressed into cuts. This was a primitive form of vaccination (not to be confused with the later use of cowpox materials by Jenner) and seems to have provided some protection. (It may be that in most cases the scabs still contained some active virus, perhaps enough to produce a low-level infection.) There is controversy as to whether these scabs would still have contained viable virus after passing through the tropics and through two Australian summers. It seems some well-meaning settlers offered such treatment to Aborigines--presumably after the epidemic had begun. Of course, if the scabs did contain viable virus, it might well have been the more infectious (and for Aborigines often deadly) chickenpox.

Despite these difficulties in believing that the early epidemic was smallpox, or that the British would have deliberately introduced such a deadly disease into their new colony, the independent scholar Chris Warren argues that the timing of this epidemic was suspiciously convenient, at a time when the large Aboriginal populations near Sydney were becoming dangerously hostile to the settlement. He argues that rogue elements in the colony might have decided to release smallpox, using the bottled scabs, quite likely without the permission of Governor Phillip. The resulting debate, though largely a respectful exchange between experts in differing disciplines, may have elements of the "History Wars" --Supply cross reference.

If the 1789-1790 outbreak was not smallpox, it is unclear when (if ever) a true smallpox outbreak occurred in Australia. There was a second outbreak in 1830, and there is some evidence that it was the same disease, since one surgeon (Mair) claimed that some survivors of the 1790 outbreak were immune to the second. The colony's surgeons, by now aware of the distinction, disagreed as to whether the 1830 outbreak was chickenpox or smallpox. Subsequently (check date) the setting up of the North Head Quarantine Station near Sydney made it much more difficult for infectious diseases to reach Australia, and later occurrences of smallpox have not spread far. [Some fact checking desirable here--the present article in "History War" takes little interest in later brushes with smallpox.]

I cannot for at least a week undertake the large task of producing and fine-tuning such a free-standing article on the Introduction of Smallpox.

Meanwhile I offer these thoughts on it, and the above text, to anyone who finds it useful. Marcasella (talk) 02:05, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

• Supported I agree a new article should be created, as per WP:SIZESPLIT. That section is huge. Meticulo (talk) 10:01, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

• Supported Section is very large, and, due weight, deserves its own article. Aoziwe (talk) 13:42, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

<End of discussion>

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Contesting close

Marcasella, why does the closure state that the consensus was to create an article named "Smallpox Epidemics among Aborigines in Australia from 1789 to the 1860s: Uncertainties and Debates"? That name had never been proposed, so there cannot possibly be consensus on it. There was only consensus for creating an article named "Introduction of smallpox to Australia". Further, the name you decided on is not in compliance with the WP:ARTICLETITLE policy in just about every way, whereas the name that had actual consensus is entirely in compliance. Pinging Meticulo and Aoziwe as participants in the relevant discussion. Unless a new consensus to support the name you proposed is established, the article you created at Smallpox Epidemics among Aborigines in Australia from 1789 to the 1860s: Uncertainties and Debates should be moved to Introduction of smallpox to Australia per consensus. --Xurizuri (talk) 00:39, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Reply Marcasella (talk) 02:10, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Xurizuri, you are quite right that the current title Smallpox Epidemics among Aborigines in Australia from 1789 to the 1860s: Uncertainties and Debates is cumbersome. I regard it as a working title only, and one that should be modified and shortened once the article has been re-adjusted, with section titles etc added as per the current clean-up notice. We will then have a clearer notion of what the article can and should cover, and what might be its most appropriate title.

As the pre-SPLIT discussion mentions, the major problem to solve is that we have a discussion currently split between several pages, each of which gets hold (as in the old fable) of one limb of the elephant. (By a kind of historical accident, the discussion within the History Wars became by far the most comprehensive, thereby greatly overloading its section, and making it a candidate for a split to a free-standing article.) I argue that our prime aim now should be to reshape it slightly into a major free-standing coverage of at least the three main epidemics that selectively and deeply impacted Aborigines, while distinguishing these (briefly but appropriately) from the half dozen other smallpox outbreaks in Australia in the C19th, which killed almost exclusively European colonists.

The idea that this main article should be inserted into the section on Introduction of smallpox to Australia within the History of smallpox page has already been considered. The problem is that that section is already close to the maximum length that is compatible with its role within the much larger story of the History of smallpox. There might be a better case for inserting the main article into the History of Australia page inside the section on “Disease” (granted how much the huge mortality among Aborigines facilitated the colonisation of Australia and affected their past and present situations). But, again, there would be the problem of overloading a single section with what will inevitably be a long account of a complex and partly unresolved debate. Hence, I believe the case for a free-standing main article is much stronger. See also the preceding discussions on this issue on the Talks page at the new site.

Can I ask you to be patient and hold back on criticisms of the title until the new article has been adjusted and settled down into its role as a free-standing article?

• Pinged, so I came. Provided the "title" is for a working draft, I see no problem. "Published" title, must be optimal, eg, simply Smallpox in Australia (which, btw, is a current redirect), and, btw, content there should be merged too with the new article, it being the relevant, new, "main" article. Aoziwe (talk) 10:37, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Reply

Thanks, Aoziwe. Re the merging, Can do.

Also, I agree it is now time to change the present clumsy title to "Smallpox in Australia", but I have no experience at changing the title of an existing page (and adjusting re-directs). Would you be able to do this for me? Marcasella (talk) 21:38, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I am not sure of the cleanest way to do it, not having been active on-wiki for a while. At some point I think an existing, or move generated, redirect page will need to be deleted, so you may care to contact an admin, for example Graeme Bartlett.

See Help:How to move a page.

To edit a redirect you simply edit the "redirect article" with the new target. To access the "redirect article" click on the redirect note under the page title at the top of the page the redirect redirected to. You (also) need to:

• sectionalise the new article.
• reduce the section in the History wars article to a few kew points, and add in a main article link.
• reduce the Australia section in the History of smallpox article to a few key points, and add in a main article link.
• state in the edit summaries of both articles where the removed content has moved to.
• explicitly acknowledge attribution of the source of the content of new article from the two articles you have copied content from in the new article's talk page.

Regards. Aoziwe (talk) 10:56, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

thanks to the notification from Aoziwe, I have moved that page to Smallpox in Australia, where editing can continue. The earlier redirect is deleted. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:03, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

thanks. Aoziwe (talk) 09:51, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks, Graeme. Marcasella (talk) 13:47, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

@Aoziwe: @Graeme Bartlett: Re the Smallpox page's current state, and a comment on its Talks page:

Thanks to both for your help. I've done what I can to improve the article, and have explained its current state at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Smallpox_in_Australia#Removal_of_the_%E2%80%9CMultiple_Issues%E2%80%9D_notice?

The article itself is now at Smallpox_in_Australia

I would appreciate any input.

Thanks, Aoziwe, for the To-Do list re related articles. Will see to it.

Marcasella (talk) 21:47, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Swapping of material with Smallpox in Australia

(See discussion of the SPLIT proposal above) The section on Smallpox has now been pared back to what is clearly relevant to the history wars; and discussion of the wider historical story and its uncertainties has been moved to a new article at Smallpox in Australia.

As mentioned above in Talks, our coverage of smallpox in colonial Australia had by 2021 become awkwardly divided between a number of pages. By chance the discussion here, within the History Wars, had become by far the most comprehensive, thereby greatly overloading its section, and making it a candidate for a split. The solution has been to create a new historically-comprehensive article Smallpox in Australia, which covers the established history plus the various puzzles, competing theories and disagreements among historians and epidemiologists. Hence much of the previous content of this section in the History Wars is now more appropriately placed there, where it has also been clarified and made much more accessible by dividing it into sections, as requested by Aoziwe (see above) on 11 November 2021. I am now attempting Aoziwe‘s other main request: to reduce the Smallpox section here in the History Wars article to a (relatively) few key points, and add in a main article link. This will greatly reduce the length of this previously overlong section.

Conversely, I have removed from Smallpox in Australia most of its final section on “History Wars as an influence on the debate”, replacing these paragraphs with a “Further Information” link back to this section here in the History Wars. The removed paragraphs have now been moved to here. The result should be a shorter and more tightly relevant section on smallpox here within the History Wars, while all the large bulk of historical information that was previously overloading this section in the History Wars is now preserved and sectionalized at Smallpox in Australia. Marcasella (talk) 12:47, 16 January 2022 (UTC)