Henry Farrell pointed me to this Financial Times report of an interview (over lunch) with Keith Windschuttle, which begins with Windschuttle saying he regrets his involvement in the dispute over Australia’s Aboriginal history, seeing as a distraction from his ambition to write a polemical defence of Western civilisation, aimed at the US market, and make heaps of money in the process.
â€?If you have a reasonably big hit in America you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars,â€? he says. “That’s my aim – to have a couple of big sellers and have a leisurely life.â€?
It is unclear how much of this is intended as tongue-in-cheek affectation, but it’s certainly consistent with notable elements of Windschuttle’s past career, which has been marked by repeated political and methodological somersaults.
Although a lot of attention has been focused on Windschuttle’s political jump from Marxist left to Christian right, I’ve always been more interested in his shift in methodological stance. Having made his name as a defender of objective truth against politicised history in both left-wing and right-wing varieties, Windschuttle has become a practitioner of an extreme form of politicised history, and now looks ready to abandon any remaining links to the world of fact.
Windschuttle first became prominent with his book Unemployment, published in the 1970s, which was mainly a critique of the way unemployed people and the unemployment issue were presented in the media. He did similar work on the media during the 1980s. The underlying methodological viewpoint was straightforward enough: here is the objective reality and here is the way the media distorts it.
With this background, his 1994 book The Killing of History seemed naturally to fit into the genre of left-wing critiques of postmodernism epitomised by the Sokal hoax. Although Windschuttle went over the top at the end (attacking Popper of all people for being insufficiently attached to objective reality) and gave some indications of his shift to the right, the book as a whole did not seem to represent a big break with his past views. Notably, Windschuttle praised Henry Reynolds for sticking to factual account of conflicts between Aborigines and European settlers in Australia, and avoiding any flirtation with notions of socially constructed reality and so forth.
Whatever its original intent, The Killing of History was taken up enthusiastically by some US rightwingers, notably those associated with the New Criterion, and Windschuttle responded in kind, espousing overtly rightist positions for the first time.
From the viewpoint of Windschuttle’s new admirers, however, objective reality is fine when it can be used a handy stick with which to beat left-wing postmodernists, but it takes second place to the rhetorical needs of the contemporary political struggle. As has become increasingly apparent under the Bush Administration, ‘facts’ are not of any significance in themselves, but only as they suit or fail to suit the interests of the Republican party at any given point.
This approach is exemplified by Windschuttle’s writing on Australian history, most notably The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Windschuttle’s approach, familiar from the right-wing blogosphere is that of a counsel for the defence of the European occupiers of Australia against any and all accusations of killing the Aboriginal inhabitants. All the usual mechanisms are deployed. Trivial errors on the part of opponents are blown up into causes celebre, witnesses of killings and massacres are slandered, and the victims are blamed for their own misfortune.
Despite its obvious biases though, Fabrication does not overtly depart from the idea of fact-based history. Windschuttle merely selects the facts that suit his case, ignores or seeks to discredit those that do not, and accuses his opponents of bias while denying his own.
In the end, though, even such limited obeisances to objectivity are inconsistent with the kind of mass-market success Windschuttle is seeking. The kind of large-scale claims about the moral and ethical perfection of European Christian civilisation that Windschuttle’s target market wants to read cannot be supported by primary research or footnote-checking, any more than the politically-driven denunciations of ‘dead white males’ that Windschuttle criticised in The Killing of History. Polemics of this kind rely on a sympathetic audience, willing to suspend disbelief as they are presented with claims that contradict well-established historical facts.
The basic problem for supporters of the polar positions in this debate is the obvious fact that, like all other civilisations, the European Christian civilisation is responsible for both great achievements and great crimes. It is possible to disagree about the relative balance of the two. But an approach like Windschuttle’s, in which the crimes are absolutely denied is no more credible than the kind of revisionist history in which all the achievements of European civilisation are alleged to have been stolen from Arabs and Africans.
John Quiggin 
Nice post John.
Keith has his work cut out for him. Hagiohistory is a crowded field over there, what with your Hansons and Lewises and Huntingtons.
Timing is everyhting, and Windschuttle’s timing is off.
By the time he writes and publishes his book, the Bush administration will be no longer. The next administration might be the Hilary Clinton administration, or the Guliani administration, or the Frist administration, but whatever it is, the zeitgeist is likely to be different, with facts no longer an optional extra. If the fallout from Katrina is enduring, the zeitgeist is likely to be very different.
And even if it isn’t, it’s a bit of a conceit of Windschuttle to think some blow in from Australia is going to beat all the hucksters on the pseudo-academic religious right who are peddling the same stuff. As Glenn says, it is a crowded field.
�If you have a reasonably big hit in America you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars,� he says. “That’s my aim – to have a couple of big sellers and have a leisurely life.�
Well that’s it then. It’s official at last. The New History is exactly like the Old History, only more honest.
Historians now openly admit they’re just doing it for the money. I applaud Windshuttle for such honesty.
“History for sale”… What a great idea… It is to truth what populism is to democracy….
I’m all aglow… (Sorry to barge in like this. I’ll get out of your way now…)
Thank God Windshuttle finally nailed his colours to the mast!
Although if he is looking for a sympathitic audience ready to suspend disbelief then I would suggest he may be shopping in the right market.
Anyway one would assume one has a leisurely life if one is leisurley with ones research.
BTW – Dave Ricardo makes an excellent point – if the mood after Katrina is enduring then a different tenor may prevail (although Windshuttle may pick up that odd hundred-grand regardless).
I might have to reassess the price odds!
The next administration might be the Hilary Clinton administration, or the Guliani administration, or the Frist administration, but whatever it is, the zeitgeist is likely to be different, with facts no longer an optional extra.
This sounds naive. Administrations come and go, but there’s always an official narrative that nothing to do with facts. It may not be as insultingly absurd as it is now, but that’s even worse.
I hope Mr Ricardo is right, but it depends on the nature of the shock. A book about the glories of unfettered capitalism in 1929 would have rotted in the warehouses; a sympathetic account in English of fascism carried a dotted line to an English prison shortly thereafter.
Am I right in saying the right wing triumphalist view first made a lot of money for its writer with Francis Fukuyama’s ‘The End of History’ in 1992?
Just on the Clinton cusp. The viewpoint survived a lot of change.
The Great Crash rotting in the warehouse? Please tell me you are referring to another literay masterpeice! If their is any economist more informative to the layperson (other than PrQ),then please substitute Galbraith’s name here!
What “flip”? JQ, are you sure you aren’t on the Writers’ Committee of the Soviet Union?
It is clear that what Windschuttle is regretting isn’t his stance, but the fact that he walked into a minefield unwittingly. He is not adopting a different view, i.e. flipping, he is regretting the amount of flak he copped and making it clear that with hindsight he wouldn’t have started that particular hare.
None of this tells you whether he is right or wrong, whether he thinks or thought that he was right or wrong, or whether others have in fact triumphed over him or (if they have) whether it was through the force of reason or mere superior claque. It is clear that whatever happened we have at least as much heat and smoke as light, and that the whole story casts no credit on anyone involved – for or against Windschuttle.
It is clear that whatever happened we have at least as much heat and smoke as light, and that the whole story casts no credit on anyone involved – for or against Windschuttle.
Nonsense. Apart from springing some bung footnotes, as far as I have been able to tell, the Windschuttle interpretation of history was stillborn on the overhated pages of Quadrant and the Murdoch press. Still, it’s an ill wind, and James Boyce’s demolition of The Fabrication stands as one one the most accomplished essays in Australian historiography in recent times.
“Overheated”, although perhaps “overhated” mightn’t be inappropriate, given that it all amounted to … well, nothing more than the discovery of a few bung footnotes.
John, you make some good points in your lead post but this –
“Windschuttle’s approach, familiar from the right-wing blogosphere is that of a counsel for the defence of the European occupiers of Australia against any and all accusations of killing the Aboriginal inhabitants.”
– is overstating it. Windschuttle accepts that many Aboriginals were killed in Tasmania and lists the relevant incidents at the back of his book. He says he will include any further instances where he believes the evidence is sufficient to establish the case.
The odd thing about Fabrication is that it just won’t go away, despite its critics wishing that it would. I’m more sympathetic than most here to Windschuttle, and I can see his problem. He’s set this hare running that he’s going have to keep chasing for years, even though, by the sounds of it, he’s largely lost interest, having made his point already. He’s right in the sense that, post-September 11th, there are much bigger fish for conservatives to fry, and he wants to fry some. He wants to be part of a great defence of western culture, its aspirations and outcomes, against Islamist jihadism, and he’s held back by the need to keep extending, defending and re-defending his parochial heresies. Victim of his own success, I guess.
Be interesting to watch his onward trajectory. – assuming he can escape the black armband that now seems to tether him by the ankle.
Rob, it’s interesting that you say Windy’s book “won’t go away.” It has been my distinct impression that it has sunk (largely via Boyce) without a trace. On what basis do you think it lives where?
Wasn’t referring to Galbraith. Surely he didn’t write about the glories of unfettered capitalism? Am I going to find out on this august blog that Galbraith was as twisty as Windschuttle?
Occidental civilization – Christian values piggybacking on Caucasian bodies as they conquered the world – has its share of crimes for which it ought to be accountable. But the modern trend to black armbanding the Christian Church and European Empires is silly. Bringing univeral religion and rational commerce to the non-European world mostly did them a favour.
It strains credibility to treat European civilization as morally equivalent to all others, with no obvious net advantages. One may as well say that scientists have made mistakes so one cannot make an overall judgement on the superiority of science as a means of systematic inquiry.
The fact is that the West has been the best and brightest civilization on this planet. It is embarassing to have to point this out since bragging is uncouth, but it is nevertheless so.
Charles Murray, of disreputable AEI notoriety, has certainly beaten Windschuttle to the punch in the civilizational summation stakes. Murray’s methodology is fanaticly objectivist and factual, but his conclusions are still somewhat triumphalist – at least as far as the positive achievements of the West are concerned. Steve Sailer summarises the scoreboard:
I must say that I found Murray’s results hard to square with Chinese priority, if not preeminence, in so many technological innovatons. But then they had no Tessler or Edison.
And Murray, contra Windschuttle, is scathing in both theory and practive about the deformations of post-modernist intellectual impostors.
PS On the subject of Grumpy Old ex-Left wingers, like Windschuttle, I think the solution to this puzzle is fairly clear: as the Young Lefties aged their effortless ability to pick up nubile girls started to wane and they started to move into a higher tax bracket. So they became Old Righties: conservative in culture and regressive in economics.
The triumphalism of western civilisation is clearly more about timing rather than any inherent superiority.
Go back 500 years and the same type of people would be making the same arguments, except that they would be Chinese. A further 500 years and it would be proponents of Islamic culture. And so on and so on.
Each one of them would be able to plausibly make the claim that they were superior to any civilisation before it. But it that by itself is not a very strong argument supporting their inherent superiority as
1) It could equally be made by each of the leading civilisations that have existed before it.
2) Each new civilisation builds on the acheivments of predecessor civilisations.
It is simply impossible that Western Christian civilisation would be in the dominant position it has today without the benefits it gained from other advanced civilisations that preceded it.
If western civilisation had dominated most, or even a very large part of human history there would be a case to be made. But it seems pretty foolish to be making arguments about the superiority of Christian Civilisation when it seems likely that the dominination of Western Christianity will be over within 150 years and the most advanced cultures on the planet are likely to be Asian or Indian, assuming globalisation has not rendered such groupings meaningless.
I tend to agree with PM Lawrence.
on history I prefer Ron Brunton on the debatable points to Windschuttle.
The fact is that the West has been the best and brightest civilization on this planet. It is embarassing to have to point this out since bragging is uncouth, but it is nevertheless so
Even accepting that point (though still working it out provides valuable perspective) you have to ask how the likely audience for Windschuttle’s proposed book would process the information – it would be further confirmation of worldview that is very uncouth in its bragging, that refuses all other perspectives and embarks on deeply flawed ideas like the Project for a New American Century.
And lets not kid ourselves, they’re not talking about ‘western ideas’ as superior, they’re talking about a specific strand of the culture wars that they seem to be dominating in, at least in the US popular media.
DT you are correct. The Great Crash is more about the hubris and fall of unfettered capitalism than the glory of it, and wasn’t written in 1929, but rather the 50’s so the Lurch’s is a little odd.
�If you have a reasonably big hit in America you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars,� he says. “That’s my aim – to have a couple of big sellers and have a leisurely life.�
That could have just been a piss-take. It’s hard to know whether to take such a statement literally unless you could see the speaker.
Perhaps Windy found that his archival research for the mooted supplementary volumes of Disposession Denial stuff didn’t bear out his position.
He might have been convulsed with greed.
If I had the slightest possibility of making hundreds of thousands of pieces of lettuce from the US market, I would be bent double with avarice.
“On the subject of Grumpy Old ex-Left wingers, like Windschuttle, I think the solution to this puzzle is fairly clear: as the Young Lefties aged their effortless ability to pick up nubile girls started to wane and they started to move into a higher tax bracket. So they became Old Righties: conservative in culture and regressive in economics.”
Hooray – at last Jack Strocchi says something I can agree with! I said something similar a couple of weeks back, but don’t let me claim credit for Jack’s epiphany.
Meanwhile, I can’t agree with Dave Ricardo that the near certainty of change in the staffing of the palace on Pennsylvania Avenue will do much to limit the sales of Windshuttle’s mooted triumphalist tome. The US bourgeoisie has a limitless appetite for praise, no matter how mawkish and divorced from reality. The generation currently in the ascendency was weaned on a diet of Walt Disney cinematic hagiographies of genocidal imperialists like Davy Crockett and Buffalo Bill. They’ll lap it up. Maybe the royalty cheques will be fat enough to make our hero attractive to the nubile set again. There’s no justice in history, even the made-to-order variety.
The errors that Windschuttle exposes are not “trivial”, nor are they simply drawing attention to a “few bung footnotes”. His historical method is quite straightforward, at least in a Thuycididean sense, namely what can we say about the past from the objective evidence that we have available?
This approach has little support on the Left, of course. For the Left, history is, as Bolingbroke defined it, “politics looking backwards”.
For example, the idea that the settlement of Australia by the British was an essentially benign and progressive mission, a sort of Anglo-Saxon Aenid, where even the worst of that society could build a fine civilisation from not very much at all, needs to be overturned.
After all, how can a revolution be made when the people are so pleased with themselves? Dark deeds must be uncovered, foul murders exposed, thefts, deceptions and genocide. The pioneers must be discredited, their true natures revealed. Only by destroying the smug complacency of the established history can the shining path to a better future be found.
So the Left produces history that is more suited to its purposes.
The trouble is that the sources and voices that they need to fashion the alternative story are not there. So they make them up, they surmise, they interpret. This is story telling, it is not history
Windschuttle blows the whistle on all this. He exposes the falsehoods, the “fabrications” that history as agitprop produces. His targets flail about, but they can’t lay a glove on him.
One of the great benefits of being an ex-lefty is that, as it was said of Doug (or was it Dinsdale?) Pirahna, “you know all the tricks”.
Heh! I suggest you read Boyce’s benchmark piece, and start again.
I thought that unsustainable speculation and a mighty crash was what the glory of unfettered capitalism was all about.
Craig
to take up your Monty Python metaphor, the problem is that Windschuttle, like Dinsdale, has been nailing historians’ heads to the floor, and also like Dinsdale, has been caught on film, so to speak, doing it.
Has anyone actually read The Fabrication of ABoriginal History? Just trying to do a straw poll. Yes or No. (I bought a remaindered copy, but still to read it)
Number of people who have read Windschuttle:
*silence*
Come on, surely at least someone must have read him:
*silence*
Number of book awards won by Windschuttle:
*silence*
Number of poeple who want to read Windschuttle:
*silence*
Achievements of Windschuttle:
*silence*
Impact of Windschuttle:
*silence*
Number of people who’ve heard of Windschuttle:
*silence*
LOL
If nobody’s read Windshuttle and he’s had no impact why are you guys wasting the time?
Boyce’s demolition demolished: http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/archive_details_list.php?article_id=777
In the big picture, I’m on the Almighty’s side. Yet I concede that Windschuttle has had a transient populist polemical appeal. Yet the cold truth is that he has scored a zero in turning scholarship, bar turning more attention to footnotes. Whatever anyone says, I think Windschuttle deserves some praise for his proof-reading.
I’ve read Fabrication. I thought it was a provocative book that made many very good and telling points, but itelf exhibited some methodological and evidentiary flaws that raised doubts about the nature of the whole of Windschuttle’s enterprise – as a contribution to ‘objective’ history. As an addition to rhetoric, it succeeded beyond all expectations. For all that it was a brave and salutary effort, and a work, I think, of great courage. . What we need now is another scholar to produce a truly objective history of Aboriginal Tasmania. If KW has done no more than prompt such an endeavour, we will still be in his debt.
Agree with J F Beck. KW was completely unfazed by Boyce and the others who contributed to Whitewash. His riposte in Quadrant was entitled ‘Whitewash confirms fabrication of Aboriginal history’. That’s how put-down he felt about it. Much of Boyce’s essay is fair criticisim – not in itself refutation, but reasonable rebuttal – but he spoils it with emotive references to ‘our beautiful van Diemonian earth’. Smacks of desperation.
There’s a valid and viable refutation of Windschuttle still out there in the ether somewhere but no-one has written it yet.
With respect Rob, Boyce has cleared the field, whatever Quadrant imagines. Still, beyond the irresonsible and reprehensible populism against vulnerable folks, I agree that intellectual challenges in general are good things. No perfect history will ever be written. Accepting this is a condition of the maturity-leave-pass to enter the discipline in the first place. Yet only an idiot would discount the want of trying for its inherent fallibility.
Pretty much in agreement, Chris. We will just have to see how it shakes out. Reynolds was caught out in a particularly egregious error – misquoting Governor Arthur to the point of reversing what he actually said . Ryan was found to have used false footnotes. Her defences so far have been pretty poor. They are going to have to live with that. None of this actually makes Windschuttle’s overall thesis correct, but it has pretty seriously de-fanged his opponents. The next generation’s history of Aboriginal Tasmania will be a very interesting one, and Windschuttle will have enriched it, for his contribution, good or ill, cannot be ignored. Quite an achievement for an ‘amateur’.
One of the passages of Fabrication that lives with me is the statement, by Tasmania’s Solicitor-General, in the course of a public debate about ‘extirpation’, that certain atrocities against the blacks had been such as to merit death (by those who perpetrated them) ten times over. There’s a whole package of stuff to be unscrambled right there. I wish Windschuttle had pursued these quotes further. No doubt future historians will do so.
As regards Reynolds, the fact that a close and hostile examination of his work has managed to turn up one erroneous quote suggests to me that the whole is very accurate. Ryan certainly seems to have been sloppy, but she is a relatively minor figure – the general view of what happened in Tasmania does not depend on her relatively recent work.
By the standards he applies to Reynolds, Windschuttle’s own work has been discredited many times over.
How about a few footnotes to support Reynold’s estimate of 20,000 aboriginals killed before Federation then?
Glenn Condell Says: September 13th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
Condell is hard to please. It is a travesty to belittle as “hagohistory” the monumental works of scholarship these writers have put out. The only problem with these scholars is their occasional tendency to move of the academic reservation and into the booby-trapped world of op-ed writing, usually in a right-wing direction.
Hanson has written a superb book on the rise of Hellenic civilization, but has obviously succumbed to war fever when he writes on military matters but. Likewise Lewis is the go-to scholar on the rise of Arabic civilization, but should have kept his mouth shut on foreign policy. Huntington is one of America’s most respected scholars, on both the development of American civilizaton and its propensity to Clash with others. He has managed to not put a foot wrong on matters of public policy, largely because he has kept his mouth shut.
They all compare favourably to other writers who have had a go at this growing field of Big Picture history, eg Schama, Ferguson, Diamond,
This makes me supect that Glen Condell’s problem with these writers is ideological, rather than intellectual. Which means he is guilty of the sin he accuses them of.
What is the nature of this Western Civilisation that needs assistance from the wackos of the wing nut Right to defend itself against the wackos of the religious islamic Right? Windshuttle is simply making the point that a person has to make a living somehow, and at the moment, the best way to make a good living, is to ensure that your writings support, endorse and defend the current social, political and economic status quo.
The powerful reward their friends and punish their enemies. Why should New Ltd pay some scribbler who attempts to throw some doubt on the idea that the world view espused by News represents the apotheosis of Western civilisation? The think tanks with money and influence are those that people with lots of money like to fund. It’s not so hard to work out. What is so funny, is the fact that so many misunderstand the nature of much of what passes for the so called ‘culture wars’, and miss completely the basic fact that what we have are a series of well funded claques, paid for and supported by the powerful, to do the work that the real elites simply have no time for. Heck, it’s a living.
Elizabeth Says: September 14th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
Has anyone actually read The Fabrication of ABoriginal History? Just trying to do a straw poll. Yes or No. (I bought a remaindered copy, but still to read it)
It seems that since Liz’s post, the great majority of posters haven’t read the book – would that be true? If so, what is indeed the fuss.
Those who believe that Windschuttle merely picks over footnotes to achieve a “transient populist appeal�, that has been “discredited many times over�, have clearly not read his book. But if “the almighty� can’t see further than their prejudice, His or Her omniscience isn’t what it used to be.
The first volume of “The Fabrication of Aboriginal History” is on its third printing. It obliterated the Tasmanian genocide thesis so thoroughly that black-armband historians are falling all over each other to protest that they never did hold to that orthodoxy. Or they are equivocating between “genocide”, “cultural genocideâ€?, “genocidal momentsâ€? etc. They have failed to challenge Windschuttle’s death toll statistics – unless you call promises of data that is never delivered, ad hominem and misrepresentation a challenge. They have retreated so far that they are now saying that all the debate is about is whether the true death toll can “be precisely knownâ€?!
Windschuttle’s book bulges with FACTS that demonstrate how the Tasmanian black-armband history was fabricated (the erroneous footnotes mentioned above are only a tiny tip of the iceberg). So far no one has presented here any FACTS that Windschuttle evaded or got wrong! Even witch trials require evidence. So I appeal to those who recognize the mark of the devil; please re-read whichever get-Windschuttle hatchet job(s) convinced you, and bring to this debate any FACTS you can find against Windschuttle. Facts about the historical record rather than about how many academics call Windschuttle names. Hundreds of them have been chasing the prize for the anti-Windschuttle potion for years now – what have they come up with?
John Dawson
Jack
if I burped you’d argue with it.
Anyway you’re probably right – you do have a flair for ephemera, but a corollary weakness in relation to bigger pictures. A bit like those hagiohistorians eh?
John Q, Windschuttle’s critics have done him over to their own complete satisfaction, largely on the basis of his perceived political agenda, but the arguments in Whitewash are really pretty thin. Reynolds wastes most of his essay on ad hominen attacks and only towards the end of it gets round to questioning KW’s actual historical methodology. By then the reader is tired of the abuse anyway.
John D, my major reservation about KW is his treatment of George Augustus Robertson. who is presented as a witness of truth when it suits KW’s argument, but as the opposite when it does not. A historian that uses the key witness in that way has to explain the reasons very carefully, and I don’t think KW does. Maybe Keith is right in treating him that way, but it fails to convince. My feeling after having read Fabrication was one of wanting to find and read his account myself and make up my own mind. I’d regard that as a serious flaw in any historical work and I think it is such in KW’s case.
I’ve not read your own book yet but I enjoyed your essays in Quadrant.
Ok John D, I’ll bite.
When you write:
So I appeal to those who recognize the mark of the devil; please re-read whichever get-Windschuttle hatchet job(s) convinced you, and bring to this debate any FACTS you can find against Windschuttle. Facts about the historical record rather than about how many academics call Windschuttle names. Hundreds of them have been chasing the prize for the anti-Windschuttle potion for years now – what have they come up with?
Perhaps you could briefly demonstrate how you rebut Mark Finnane rebuttal of Windschuttle?
Interested observers can find an early version of Finnane’s rebuttal here with a more detailed version available in Whitewash.
Also do you agree with this statement by Windschuttle:
Despite its infamous reputation, Van Diemen’s Land was host to nothing that resembled genocide, or any intention to exterminate the Aborigines. In the entire period from 1803 when the colonists first arrived, to 1834 when all but one family of Aborigines had been removed to Flinders Island, the British were responsible for killing only 118 of the original inhabitants. In all of Europe’s colonial encounters with the new worlds of the Americas and the Pacific, the colony of Van Diemen’s Land was probably the site where the least indigenous blood of all was deliberately shed.
Thanks in advance.
That last quoted paragraph is probably accurate but misleading in a number of respects. These are: it’s not the absolute numbers but the proportion of the population that counts; it’s not the direct destruction but the indirect effects that count, the analogues of habitat destruction and so on; and, the statistics are necessarily only estimates, and subject to whatever bias the interpreter may have.
That said, Windschuttle is clearly aiming at bringing out the facts of the situation and minimising observer bias, not only of the lefty black armband sort but from any variety of intellectual honesty, and his information does support his conclusion. Don’t forget that most of these biases are self adjusting, when used as here for comparison with comparable scenarios in other times and places. So this summary does accurately support the limited inference draws here.
As Homer Simpson once said dismissively, “Facts! You can prove anything with facts!”.
I’d disagree that Windschuttle is “clearly aiming at bringing out the facts of the situation and minimizing observer bias” – he might claim this rhetorically, but in practice he has clearly done everything to reduce the reported Aboriginal deaths.
For example, it takes a very big leap of faith to assume that every Aboriginal death has been reported accurately in the historical literature. So statements such as “the British were responsible for killing only 118 of the original inhabitants” are far from being facts.
The comparison issue is also interesting. If we took Windschuttle’s methodology and applied it to any other historical conflict we would have to radically reduce the deaths. For example, how many Cambodian’s were executed under Pol Pot, or Maoris killed in the various New Zealand wars? If we only accepted death’s for which there are eye witnesses who left records, we would get a considerably lower count than the numbers quoted in the history books. So far from the biases being self-adjusting, we are getting the exact opposite.
John D.
Could you clarify the distinction between facts and FACTS?
Rob says:
My feeling after having read …. was one of wanting to find and read his account myself and make up my own mind. I’d regard that as a serious flaw in any historical work …
Funnily, he says, hopping over to the other side of the argument, I’d regard that as good result if I was the author. A book that stimulates further inquiry, and especially a book that tempts readers back to the original sources, can’t be all bad, even if it is this otherwise regrettable tome. In such cases, to adapt an Ashes saying, history is the winner.
Ken Miles asks for brief rebuttal of Mark Finnane.
While the other “Whitewash” contributors declare Windschuttle’s tally of 118 (now 121) Tasmanian Aborigines killed by whites to be too extraordinarily low to be believable, Mark Finnane declares it to be so extraordinarily high that it makes the Tasmanian colonists the bloodiest of four continents for four centuries. Worse, for instance, than the Spanish conquistadors who killed 40,000 Aztecs in the last days of the siege of Tenochtitlan in 1521.
Finnane’s trick is to assume that the only meaningful death toll figure is the per-head-per-annum statistic. So the killing of one Tasmanian Aborigine becomes as bloody a deed as the killing of ten, twenty, fifty whites; because the white population was ten, twenty or fifty times the size of the Aboriginal population. So statistics that show that an Aborigine was nearly twice as likely to kill a colonist than be killed by one, portrays him as the victim of a one sided slaughter.
If you accept this methodology, you have to accept that the killing of one Tasmanian Aborigine was not only as atrocious as the killing 10 whites, but was as atrocious as the killing of 100 mainland Aborigines – or, that the killing of one New Zealander is as heinous as killing five Australians, which is as horendous a massacre as killing 50 Indians.
This, along with Finanne’s disgusting misrepresentations, demonstrates only one thing: if you’re a highly ranked academic, anything goes, as long as it “discredits� the right foe.
Rob raises a valid point when he says that Windschuttle believes some of George Augustus Robinson’s reports and disbelieves others. So do the orthodox historians – there is really no alternative. Robinson is the most prolific and sympathetic recorder of the Aboriginal side of the colonisation of Tasmania, so to ignore his reports would be to deny the best witness for their side of the story. On the other hand, so many of his reports have been proved false, that historians have to judge the credibility of each report by cross checking it. Windschuttle always gives his reasons for believing a report or not.