Speculating about genocide: The Queensland frontier 1859–1897

2024/02/06 by Mark Finnane, Jonathan Richards · 1 voice · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Australian History and Society #Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies #Historical Economic and Social Studies

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/aehr.12278

Abstract

Abstract In the colonisation of Queensland, Australia it is commonly accepted that large numbers of Indigenous people were killed in the second half of the nineteenth century. Calculations of violent mortality have recently been revised radically upwards. We suggest that the methodology deployed in these new studies is unreliable, reflecting errors in counting and calculation, as well as underestimating the selection bias of the samples. We caution against projecting aggregate violent mortality where the underlying data are so imperfect and emphasise the value of more detailed local and regional studies to inform better understanding of colonisation's impact on First Peoples.

Cited by

• Indigenous populations of the Pacific and American West

Discussions

• Speculating about genocide on the Queensland frontier, Finnane & Richard revisit violence against the First Peoples & encourage more local studies of the impact of colonisation. Open access doi.org/10 [bsky, 10 points, 0 comments]

Related

• Large size of the Australian Indigenous population prior to its massive decline following European invasion
• Discourses of Genocide in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century America and Australia
• Indigenous populations of the Pacific and American West
• Economics and the dreamtime revisited: Creating a truly Australian economic history?
• The Impacts of English Colonial Terrorism and Genocide on Indigenous/Black Australians