Juxtaposition
Jun. 20th, 2010 10:52 pmOdd timing.
Yesterday while waiting for the bus, I went into the local bookshop and read blurbs on the back of books, including Keith Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. The description of it reads in part:
The author finds the British colonization of the Australia was the least violent of all Europe's encounters with the New World. It did not meet any organized resistance. Conflict was sporadic rather than systematic. The notion of "frontier warfare" is fictional. To describe the process as "genocide" is to use hyperbole that is unsupported by the historical evidence.
Today I listened to someone talk about resistance and vendettas, and night-time killing raids (with an estimated 200 white deaths from a population of about 30,000 (which on a per capita is apparently more than losses in WW I & WII) and many more among the black population).
Yesterday while waiting for the bus, I went into the local bookshop and read blurbs on the back of books, including Keith Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. The description of it reads in part:
The author finds the British colonization of the Australia was the least violent of all Europe's encounters with the New World. It did not meet any organized resistance. Conflict was sporadic rather than systematic. The notion of "frontier warfare" is fictional. To describe the process as "genocide" is to use hyperbole that is unsupported by the historical evidence.
Today I listened to someone talk about resistance and vendettas, and night-time killing raids (with an estimated 200 white deaths from a population of about 30,000 (which on a per capita is apparently more than losses in WW I & WII) and many more among the black population).
