2 - ‘Another New World Inviting Our Occupation’

Summary

Could colonisation and Aboriginal protection ever be reconciled? The 1830s saw the rapid and often violent seizure of Aboriginal lands, and early attempts at containing Aboriginal people on missions and government stations like Flinders Island. However, this was also an era when British policy making was strongly influenced by humanitarian and Evangelical advocacy, which raised grave concerns about the impacts of dispossession and called for a paternalistic "civilising" approach instead. This was at the same time as British administrators and Australian colonists were debating the approaches to colonialism that would be right for the Australian territories, where convict transportation and the fast spread of pastoralism clashed with Wakefieldian principles of concentrated settlements of free colonists. Both models, however, depended upon the seizure of Aboriginal land, with devastating consequences for the original owners.