Question 7

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of genocide, anti-Aboriginal racism, and war crimes.

Question 7 explores the history and legacy of British colonialism in Tasmania, an island off the south coast of Australia. In 1803, the British established colonial outposts in Tasmania, then called “Van Diemen’s Land.” They populated these colonial outposts with convicts from England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. As part of their punishment, the convicts were forced to work six days a week. Tasmania had some of the largest penal settlements in Australia with over 70,000 convicts transported there from 1804 to 1853 (“Tasmania’s Convict History.” Discover Tasmania). The convicts worked building roads and bridges, mining, and farming, particularly sheep.

As part of their colonization, the British perpetuated a genocide on the Tasmanian Aboriginal people living on the island—an attack known as the Black War. The reported numbers of Tasmanian Aboriginal people living there at the beginning of British colonization range widely from 3,000 to 15,000. The British colonists kidnapped, starved, massacred, and displaced Aboriginal people. By 1876, the British claimed the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were “extinct.” This led to the offensive misperception that Tasmanian Aboriginal people and culture had been wiped out.