I’ve been relying on historian blogger Christopher Sheil to keep us all informed about any new shots in The History Wars. But he’s let me down, possibly too busy perfecting his own unique brand of black is the new white sophistry.
Instead I stumbled on the fact that a new “History Wars” skirmish has broken out by reading Christopher “Pudgy” Pearson’s column In the Weekend Oz. Pearson’s article deals with an earlier article in The Bulletin by Tasmanian historian Michael Connor, which renews the attack on Professor Henry Reynolds, whose “black armband” view of indigenous history has made him a favourite target of the reactionary right. Connor accuses Reynolds of confusing and exaggerating the influence of the international law doctrine of “terra nullius” (almost to the point of fabrication).
Pearson also asserts that another historian, Bain Attwood, has recently published a similar critique of Henry Reynolds’ account of the historical role of the “terra nullius” doctrine (unfortunately not apparently available online), and that Attwood has also debunked Reynolds’ claims about the benevolence of the nineteenth century British Colonial Office:
Attwood ultimately concludes that Reynolds’ juridical history is “simplistic” and says of its black-and-white oppositional account of humane Colonial Office v racist settlers that “most academic historians have rejected this argument”.
Now I don’t have enough background knowledge about these claims to take a position on them (or the time to acquire it), but I notice that there are several historians who occasionally visit the Troppo comment boxes (e.g. “Currency Lad”), and I’d be most interested in their observations.
One specific area of Michael Connor’s article where I do feel somewhat qualified to comment is his observations about the High Court’s alleged misunderstanding of the nature and origin of the “terra nullius” doctrine in its seminal 1992 Mabo decision. Connor claims:
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