She mentioned that one was checked into the hospital with hatchet wounds to the head. I guess she was being racist – and the guy who reported it. And Inga and me.

But I’m with you – we’re both wasting our time and I don’t plan to do any more of it.

They’re interesting speculative questions too. Just not particularly germane to the issue you joined us on – unless that is, you think that white English males’ particular inclinations about sex and the natives made them all conspire to say that the aboriginal men constantly and viciously beat their women when they didn’t.

Understandably, there was an enormous sexual curiosity on the part of all parties towards each other at this time, but we only know about that of the genteel English male officers because theirs is the only written testimony of this fleeting moment in history. In fact, Tench, who was sensually besotted with Aboriginal women, said that the most puzzling thing to the English was Aboriginal sexual and social relations. This in itself, of course, is revealing.

Why was it so important to the English?

Care to speculate?

OK, let’s split the difference. Though I would maintain the split over the “g” word is pretty close to the most litmus-like in contemporary Australian historiography.

“An extraordinary achievement”.

I guess he’s complaining . . .

Straw only makes you constipated

Mate, with blog comments, monotonous regularity is a vice. I prefer to bottle ‘em up then let ‘em all out at once.
Like Pavlov’s Cat, I’d be interested to hear of anyone, luvvie or otherwise, who’s expressed antagonism towards Clendinnen.

The Luvvies are quite antagonistic towards IC.

Name one.

Actually IC is much closer to Howard than she is to The Luvvies. The Luvvies are quite antagonistic towards IC. I think she is among Australia’s top three historians; a delight to read.

“it tells us nothing about aboriginal society beyond pointed statements about women and main violence that smug white people of privilege in the 21st century really need to believe”.

So let me get this straight. Smug white people – the ones who’ve airbrushed most references to aboriginal violence out of standard tour guides and other official expository material really want to believe that aborigines beat their women and took to their heads with hatchets? And the motive for this conspiracy of reportage – by a range of mutually corroborating (white) sources in the eighteenth century in turn reported on by their 21st century patsy Clendinnen?

It’s spooky really. Perhaps it’s worthy of an edition of the X-files.

Apart from anything else her book is simply bad science. It’s speculative reportage-fiction…or something. As she herself admits in it, from necessity, it tells us nothing about Aboriginal society beyond these pointed statements about women and and male violence that smug white people of privilege in the 21st century really need to believe.

The other obvious point is that any observations of the Sydney-region Aborigines simply cannot be extrapolated to the rest of the Australian Aboriginal population, unless you want to postulate some sort of univeralist theory of behaviour based on species and geography. And if that is so, then why not toss in gender?

While the fact that Phillip was speared is not in dispute, that reading of the episode does change your understanding of what happened.”

I’m a great admirer of Inga Clendinnen but it’s worth pointing out that her analysis of Phillip’s spearing at Manly was originally offered by Watkin Tench – who witnessed it. In “A Complete Account of The Settlement At Port Jackson” he observes that aboriginals encountered by the colonists at Manly, the day after the governor’s spearing, identified the assailant as a man from a rival clan group in Broken Bay.

“On reaching Manly Cove, three Indians were observed standing on a rock, with whom they entered into conversation. The Indians informed them, that the man who had wounded the governor belonged to a tribe residing at Broken Bay, and they seemed highly to condemn what he had done. Our gentlemen asked them for a spear, which they immediately gave. The boats crew said that Baneelon and Colbee had just departed, after a friendly intercourse. Like the others, they had pretended highly to disapprove the conduct of the man who had thrown the spear, vowing to execute vengeance upon him.”

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/tench/watkin/settlement/complete.html

So…at least one of the First Fleeters understood that the incident at Manly might be more nuanced than it first appeared. In fact, given that Phillip directed that there be no reprisals, he too might have realised this.

It amazes me that there has been no major biographical study of Tench. His insights are extraordinary, he steps out of the sort of Austenesque landscape beloved of ABC “bonnet and bosoms” Sunday nights and he led an heroically
colourful life.

the reason I thought John Howard would hate it is just that it shows how history isnt one narrative

I think that’s exactly right. His problem, at least as I remember him expressing it more than once, seemed to be less with the actual content of any particular history than with what he saw as the evil pomo relativism versus the unifying master narrative, while never really understanding postmodernism at all. His issues were more historiographical than historical.

But the reason I thought John Howard would hate it is just that it shows how history isn’t one narrative – there isn’t a single truth about what happened. What you think about people’s motivations colours your views about what actually happened.

Clendinnen’s close analysis of the spearing of Phillip in Manly is a great example – she argues convincingly that from the aboriginal perspective, Phillip was a by-player – there was a power struggle going on in the aboriginal community, and Phillip being speared advanced one agenda.

While the fact that Phillip was speared is not in dispute, that reading of the episode does change your understanding of what happened.

The book makes the point that both sides fundamentally misunderstood each other – and it was hard to see how they could have got to a point of understanding, even with a lot of goodwill on both sides before the whole thing broke down into warfare and disposesssion.