Australia’s History

EQ6:EQ6:Conflict & ChangeConflict & Change

6. How did European exploration and colonization impact Australia? (SS6H9a-b)(include the use of prisoners as colonists; diseases and weapons

on the indigenous people)

AUSTRALIA

HISTORY:HISTORY:CONFLICT & CHANGECONFLICT & CHANGE

SS6H9 The student will explain the impact European exploration and colonization had on Australia.

a. (SEE NEXT SLIDE)b. (SEE NEXT SLIDE)

AUSTRALIA

CONFLICT & CHANGECONFLICT & CHANGEa. Explain the reasons for

British colonization of Australia; include the use of prisoners as colonists.

b. Explain the impact of European colonization of Australia in terms of diseases and weapons on the indigenous peoples of Australia.

EQ6 Vocabulary

Penal Colony = colony of prisoners

Indigenous = native =

aborigines

ExplorationExplorationTimelineTimeline

1606-17991606-1799

Where did the explorers

come from?

HollandThe first records of

European mariners sailing into 'Australian' waters

occurs around 1606, and includes their observations of the land known as Terra

Australis Incognita (unknown southern land).

• 1606 The Dutch vessel Duyfken sails into the Gulf of Carpentaria and makes the first European landfall in Australia on the Cape York Peninsula.

• 1616–1622 Dutch traders encounter and explore the west coast of Australia.

HollandThe first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken

captained by Dutchman, Willem Janszoon.

• 1623–1636 Dutch ships explore the north coast of Australia.

HollandAn estimated 54

European ships from a range of nations made contact.

Many of these were merchant ships from the

Dutch East Indies Company. They explored north, west

and south coasts of Australia which was then known as

New Holland.

Britain•1770, English explorer James Cook charts the east coast of Australia east coast and claims it for Britain.

•An act of possession, he justified by the seventeenth-century legal concept of terra nullius

("no man's land" or "empty land")•broadly defined as an absence of

"civilization."•Names area 'New South Wales'.

Why did they come here?

Much of the European exploration of the Pacific

was inspired by two obsessions, the search for the fastest routes to the spice-rich islands as well

as the theory that somewhere in the South

Pacific lay a vast undiscovered southern continent, possibly also rich in gold, spices, and

other trade goods.

Who & what did they bring

with them?

• 1786 The British choose Botany Bay south of present-day Sydney as a penal colony.

A penal colonyFrom 1788 to 1823, the Colony of New South Wales was officially a penal colony comprised mainly of convicts, marines and the wives of the marines.

The dispossession of Aboriginal peoples begins as European settlers spread inland and along the coast.

• 1788 The first British colony is established in New South Wales, led by Captain Arthur Phillip. (11 “cargo” ships)The colonists consist of about 780 convicts (sentenced to "transportation")

About 250 officers to guard them.

TITLE: The convict ship 'Success' at seaDESCRIPTION: The old convict sailing ship

'Success' DATE: 1912

A government jail gang, Sydney, N S Wales, 1830

Convict Experience

'We have to work from 14-18 hours a day, sometimes up to our knees in cold water, 'til we are ready to sink with fatigue... The inhuman driver struck one, John Smith, with a heavy thong.'

Convicts building a road over the Blue Mountains,

NSW, 1833

Female Convicts Twenty per cent of these first convicts were women. The majority of women convicts, and many free women seeking employment, were sent to the 'female factories' as unassigned women. The female factories were originally profit-making textile factories.

What happened after they arrived?

• 1789 Smallpox begins to destroy the Aboriginal population•The decrease in the number of Aboriginal peoples begins to decrease as European settlers spread inland and along the coast.

• 1790 Pemulwuy, the first of the Aboriginal resistance fighters, spears Governor Phillip's gamekeeper and Phillip orders the first disciplinary mission.

•Pemulwuy leads the Aboriginal resistance in the Sydney area in a guerilla fight lasting several years.

Guerilla

•1790 & 1791 2 more ‘Cargo’ ships arrive.

•1793 – First free settlers arrive

•1799 The Black War begins, a six-year battle waged by Aborigines against white settlement in the Hawkesbury and Parramatta areas of New South Wales.

•1802 Pemulwuy (Aboriginal resistance fighter) is captured and executed, but his son Tedbury continues his resistance.

•1810 - Convicts were used:•As a source of labor •To advance and develop the British colony.

•to develop the public facilities of the colonies - roads, causeways, bridges, courthouses and hospitals.

•To work for free settlers and small land holders.

How did Australia change?

White settlers sometimes poisoned and hunted Aboriginal people and abused and exploited Aboriginal women and children.

““Protection” Acts &Protection” Acts &Child-Removal PolicyChild-Removal Policy

It was only after the 1880s, once most Aboriginal opposition had been crushed in eastern Australia, that Australian colonies began passing oppressive legislation to control Aboriginal people in the name of protection.

Between 1886 and 1911 the colonies (and, after 1901, the states) introduced laws that restricted the movement of Aboriginal people to government reserves and controlled most aspects of their lives, including where they could work and whom they could marry.

These reserves were, for the most part, small, circumscribed areas where residents could not lead independent self-sufficient lives.

Reserve residents lived in makeshift housing and worked on cattle and sheep stations, or, if there was no work, lived on government rations.

Between 1788 and 1930 the Aboriginal population fell from as many as 500,000 to less than 100,000.

The primary causes of the catastrophic decline in Aboriginal population, however, were probably European-introduced diseases such as smallpox and measles, malnutrition, and alcoholism and its associated violence.

White officials oversaw the reserves, sometimes living in a nearby town rather than directly on the reserve. In the remote central and northern parts of the continent, reserves were more institutionalized, with schools, health clinics, and a general work regime overseen by missionaries.

In the early 20th century the colonial governments began instituting policies of removing many Aboriginal children, especially those of mixed race and lighter skin color, from their families without parental consent.

From 1910 to 1970 at least 100,000 indigenous children, especially those of mixed descent, were forcibly removed from their parents and communities.

By 1911 all of the states officially allowed the removal of indigenous children without parental consent.

This practice was also regarded as a method of population control on the reserves.

Child-removal policies grew out of the desire of white Australians to merge Aboriginal people into European culture, thereby extinguishing indigenous traditions and preventing the growth of the Aboriginal population.

These children were placed in state institutions or adopted by white families, where they were raised as Christians and educated as white Australians were. Only “full-blooded” Aboriginal children were permitted to remain on the reserves.

These children were completely cut off from their own culture and assimilated into white society.

The practice officially ended in the late 1960s, but the effects would be felt for generations to come.

Those children who were removed in this way later became known as the Stolen Generations.

The exact number of this Stolen Generation remains unknown due to poor record keeping.

In 1997 according to the commission’s report, Bringing Them Home, at least 100,000 indigenous children had been forcibly removed from their families and communities from 1910 to 1970.

Immigration to Australia

Between 1945 and 1973 Australia saw a variety of new immigrants which included a majority from the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Aborigines in the outback

Struggle to Survive

Apology to Aborigines

Wednesday, 13 February 2008