Part One of a history of European occupation, rule, and brutal imperialism of Indigenous Australia, by Dr George Venturini.
Introduction: Head of will Sahul
In the Pleistocene-era what are modern Australia, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste on a single continent: Sahul.
Some 80,000 years ago, the water having receded, the Indigenous People began to arrive.
After some 40,000 generations the English came, bringing their cargo of unwanted victims of their decaying system of privilege and their overflowing gaols.
It was a fatal encounter of two civilisations: one animistic/shamanic inspired by a sense of communal sharing, the other obsessed with possession of ‘real’ property and determined to assert the blasting influence of insane monarchical ‘principle’ on a country until then free.
‘To clear the land’ the invaders reified at first, branded as fauna later, and then attacked the Indigenous People: they proffered them poisoned food, gave them infected blankets and began the systematic massacres.
By a seeming change of mind, they offered ‘protection’, supplied Christian missionaries, concocted ‘assimilation’, and all that with the mental reservation and the arrogant hope that ‘the race would die’.
It was a grand manoeuvre choreographed in ‘the Westminster System’ and its imposing, frumpish wigs and jabots.
In the process the new English – Englanders, to boot – made sure that the Indigenous People should be excluded by the federal pact called the Constitution.
The same sclerotic, Imperial piece of ‘horse-and-buggy’ rag is now claiming the successors, banksters and their courtiers – all ‘second-rate people’ – broadly speaking con-artists all. And killers: they got rid of Whitlam – the dangerous class-traitor – in a truly ‘royal’ operation.
Out of what were once regarded as fauna came some bright young people who gained dexterity in the many aspects of the English language – and in the process trusted that that could make them free participants. Freire, Fanon, Camus and others – many others – were not accessible to tell the old, dangerous story of such illusion/misconception of the colonised who would end up talking about the “sovereignty of the Crown.”
The same highly-educated fine minds fell into the traps of endless talks, committees, consultations, conventions, and reports, some of them to be relied upon because released by Royal Commissions – actually intended as pourparlers among ‘gentlemen’ – and some ladies, too.
But the Blacks? Oh, tell me something! The deceivers still had an eye on the Black victims of old-fashioned plain genocide, with the help of time – and winked to each other. As a diversion, contemplating the derelict, they tendered ‘charity’ and ‘compassion’ for the desperation that ‘the system’, ‘the market’, the ‘Judeo-Christian civilisation’, fate had caused.
Yet, since 2007, Indigenous People of the world – 370million of them – have a chance: it is contained in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
That is also a serious opportunity by an undeserving ‘society’, which remains largely in the hands of shysterish politicians ‘Coalescing’ against Labor – more accurately and historical against the working people.
Whether the present second-class clients of the ‘master of the two places: Wall Street and Buckingham Palace’ deteriorate even further or not, the Indigenous People could spearhead a movement toward the liberation of Australia: for a secular, peaceful, democratic, progressive, humane republic, truly representative of all the people living in Australia.
* * * * *
“Tu sol” pensando “o ideal, sei vero.”
for Giuseppe Mazzini
Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907),
Nobel Prize in Literature (1906)
From the beginning
The venue was one of the newest Australian universities. The gathering was the customary visit to the ‘tea room’ – as it was known in the name of tradition. Most of the law teachers and quite a large number of social sciences people would frequent the room, twice a day if possible. The date? Early April 1982.
Argentina’s invasion of Las Islas Malvinas/the Falkland Islands had begun on 2 April. The islands are some 1,521 kilometres from Argentina.
Sovereignty over the windswept and sparsely populated islands had been a source of tension for decades – at least. Britain has ruled the Falklands uninterrupted since the middle of the nineteenth century and the vast majority of the island’s small population – fewer than 3,000 at the 2012 census – are descendants of British occupiers.
However, the Argentine Government maintains that the country inherited control of them from Spain in the 1800s and points to their proximity to South America to bolster their claim of sovereignty, as will be seen further.
In 1982 Argentina’s military Junta, from the beginning in 1976 sponsored by the duo Nixon-Kissinger, and towards the end headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri, was facing a very serious economic crisis and the Junta hoped that a ‘patriotic’ diversion like an external war would bolster its already limited, and then even more so fading, popularity at home.
The British Government was in the hands of Margaret Thatcher, soon to be known as the Iron Lady. She too was facing ‘political’ difficulties and might have preferred a military solution to possible diplomatic solution of the crisis.
On 5 April the British Government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force before making an amphibious assault on the islands. The conflict lasted 74 days and ended with the Argentine surrender on 14 June 1982, returning the islands to British control. In total, 655 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel, and three Falkland Islanders died during the hostilities.
Not many in the ‘tea room’ would have known that the most ardent Argentine ‘patriots’ had invoked a 1494 treaty to substantiate Buenos Aires’ claim. A social scientist revealed that and explained to a fairly incredulous audience what that treaty was about.
In 1493, after reports of Columbus’ discoveries had reached them, the Spanish rulers king Ferdinand and queen Isabella enlisted papal support for their claims to the ‘New World’ in order to inhibit the Portuguese and other possible rival claimants. To accommodate them, pope Alexander VI, the Spanish born Rodrigo de Borja, and incidentally one of the most debauched and corrupt of absolute monarchs, issued bulls setting up a line of demarcation from pole to pole 100 leagues – a league which was then just over three nautical miles and a historical unit of distance equal to about 5.5 kilometres – west of the Cape Verde Islands, 570 kilometres off present day Senegal. Spain was given exclusive rights to all newly discovered and undiscovered lands in the region west of the line. Portuguese expeditions were to keep to the east of the line. Neither power was to occupy any territory already in the hands of a Christian ruler – that being a paramount condition.
No other European powers facing the Atlantic Ocean ever accepted this papal arrangement or the subsequent agreement deriving from it. King John II of Portugal was dissatisfied because Portugal’s rights in the ‘New World’ were insufficiently guaranteed, and the Portuguese would not even have sufficient room at sea for their African voyages. On 7 June 1494, meeting at Tordesillas, in north-western Spain, Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors accepted the papal division, but the line itself was moved to 370 leagues – some 1,935 kilometres – west of the Cape Verde Islands, or about 46’30’ W of Greenwich. Pope Julius II finally sanctioned the change in 1506. Thus Spain was to exploit all of the Pacific and America except Brazil, which fell to Portugal along with Africa and Asia. On the other side of the world the demarcation line was determined by continuing longitude 51’W through the North and South poles where it becomes longitude 129’E. The new boundary enabled Portugal to claim the coast of Brazil after its discovery by Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500. The remainder of today’s South America fell under Spanish invasion.
What the audience in the ‘tea room’ was facing was a quick reference to a country born between 1810 and 1816, claiming sovereignty over the Falklands in 1982 on the basis of that 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.
Is it any wonder that the short lecture was met with laughter and guffaws?
One participant, let us call him Outsider, was sitting quietly next to, and to the curiosity of, the lecturer. “What do you think of that?”, he was asked.
The reply came, fairly loud for several people to listen: “I am wondering what our colleagues in, say, Buenos Aires would say of good Lieutenant James Cook landing on an island, later to be called Possession Island, off the tip of Cape York, at the extreme north of the east coast of Australia, and just before dusk on 22 August 1770 declaring the coast from there to Point Hicks, Victoria – about 3,000 kilometres away – British territory in the name of (the already mentally ill) king George III. As Cook wrote in his journal:
“Notwithstand[ing] I had in the Name of His Majesty taken possession of several places upon this coast, I now once more hoisted English Coulers and in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third took possession of the whole Eastern Coast … by the name New South Wales, together with all the Bays, Harbours Rivers and Islands situate upon the said coast.”
The second page of the ‘Secret Instructions for Lieutenant James Cook Appointed to Command His Majesty’s Bark the Endeavour 30 July 1768’ commanded Cook to take such possession “with the consent of the natives.” And Cook, during his voyage north, had recorded signs that “the coast was inhabited … a great number of fires on all the land and islands about them, [which was] ‘a certain sign they are Inhabited’.” Little he knew, that humans had existed on Sahul some 80,000 years ago, and that on his time there were about 750,000 Indigenous People, sorted into some 600 communities and speaking more than 250 languages, different from each other but belonging to a similar linguistic stock. Just over one hundred years after Cook only 60,000 such people had survived the white man.
Neither mirth nor laughter met this reminder.
What is below dispute is that there is little understanding of the manner in which the British took possession of eastern Australia and how their actions related to both international and common law as they were understood in the late eighteenth century.
The British? Hold on!
If fussiness be permitted, ‘Britain’ comes from Latin Britannia/Brittania, through the Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Breteyne. As a matter of historical record the early written reference to the British Isles derives from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia. Later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quotes Pytheas’ use of variants such as Prettanikē: “The Britannic [land, island]”, and nesoi Brettaniai, “Britannic islands” and all of them with “Pretani” being a Celtic word which probably means “the painted ones” or “the tattooed folk”, referring to body decoration. Woad was the most important blue natural dye, used by the Celts.
In the end, οί Πρεττανοί – Prettanoi, Priteni, Pritani or Pretani were early Scots, not British. And the invaders of Sahul – ‘New Holland’ – were Englanders.
Doubtlessly, the claim of sovereignty over half of the continent was unsurprising, but it was a land grab of gigantic proportions. These questions require closer and more detailed consideration, observed yet again and quite recently the eminent Australian historian professor Henry Reynolds: “ … what is not understood is that such a claim related to external sovereignty and was projected outwards to competing European powers and not inward to the Indigenous people.”
Furthermore, the ancient black societies were firmly based on the sanctity of sharing. Translated into modern language that means: communal or public property. One hundred years before the arrival of the First Fleet, William Dampier had observed the Indigenous People of the other side of the continent. He noted that “They live in companies – twenty or thirty men, women and children together.” (William Dampier, Dampier’s voyages, A.E.M. Bayliss ed. (Sydney 1945) at 143-144.
Over a century ago, it was ‘scientifically correct’ to characterise the people of such societies as ‘primitive communists’ or – better still at the time – ‘savages’. ‘Savages’: it was an appellation which would suit perfectly the invaders. Yet, it should be remembered, that Cook wrote admiringly about those ‘savages.’
In his Journal he wrote:”From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland, they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we (sic) Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: the Earth and the sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life. … In short they seem’d to set no Value upon anything we gave them, nor would they ever part with any thing of their own for any one article we could offer them; this in my opinion argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life and that they have no superfluities.” (The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery: The Life of Captain James Cook, J.C. Beaglehole ed. (Hakluyt Society, London 1974), vol. 1 at 399).
On the other hand, the white invaders’ society was much more firmly based on the ‘sanctity’ of private property. Indeed, the white invasion of Australia was launched in the first place to punish those who violated private property.
Three hundred years ago the so-called Great Powers of the time had a rather simplified and broadly self-serving view of international law.
Under international law a distinction was drawn in governing a colonised ‘wasteland’ – or vacant land – and a land acquired by treaty or cession, which had already been cultivated and organised. If an uninhabited country was discovered and planted by British subjects, the English laws were said to be immediately in force there – for the law was ‘the birthright of every subject, carried wherever they went’. However, the entire body of English law was understood to have application to these new circumstances only to the extent that it was found to be applicable to the occupiers’ – the so-called ‘settlers’ – new situation and consistent with their local comfort and prosperity.
A different rule applied to conquered and ceded countries which already had laws of their own. In such cases, the English Crown had a right to abrogate the former laws and institute completely new ones. Until such new laws were promulgated, the old laws and customs of the country remained in full force to the extent that they were not contrary to religion or morals.
The eminent jurist Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vol. (1765–69), took the position that American colonies were to be deemed principally conquered or ceded countries. He wrote: “Our American Plantations are principally of this later sort, [i.e. ceded or conquered countries] being obtained in the last century either by right of conquest and driving out the natives, (with what natural justice I shall not at present inquire,) or by treaties. And, therefore, the common law of England, as such, has no allowance or authority there; they being no part of the mother country, but distinct, though dependent dominions.” (Blackstone, Commentaries, vol. 1 at 107).
According to Justice Joseph Story, an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1811 to 1845, in a conquered country, where there were no existing laws, or none adaptable to a civilised community, or where the laws were silent, or were rejected and none substituted, the territory must be governed according to the rules of natural equity and right. Englishmen settling there must be deemed to carry with them those rights and privileges which belong to them in their native country. (Blankard v. Galdy (1692) 4 Mod. Rep. 215; 2 Salk 411, 412).
“Moreover,” said Justice Story, “even if it were possible to consider the case, as a case of conquest from the Indians, it would not follow, if the natives did not remain there, but deserted it, and left it a vacant territory, that the rule as to conquests would continue to apply to it. On the contrary, as soon as the crown should choose to found an English colony in such vacant territory, the general principle of settlements in desert countries would govern it. It would cease to be a conquest, and become a colony; and as such be affected by the British laws. This doctrine was laid down with great clearness and force by, Lord Mansfield, in his celebrated judgment in Hall v. Campbell (Cowp. R. 204, 211, 212). In a still more recent case it was laid down by Lord Ellenborough that the law of England might properly be recognised by subjects of England in a place occupied temporarily by British troops, who would impliedly carry that law with them.” (Rex v. Brampton, 10 East R. 22, 288, 289).
Justice Taney confirmed in Martin v. Waddell’s Lessee, 41 U.S. 367 (1842): “The English possessions in America were not claimed by right of conquest, but by right of discovery. For, according to the principles of international law, as understood by the then civilized powers of Europe, the Indian tribes in the new world were regarded as mere temporary occupants of the soil, and the absolute rights of property and dominion were held to belong to the European nation by which any particular portion of the country was first discovered. Whatever forbearance may have been sometimes practised towards the unfortunate aborigines, either from humanity or policy, yet the territory they occupied was disposed of by the governments of Europe, at their pleasure, as if it had been found without inhabitants …”
The ideological legal foundation for the American colonists’ assertion of the right to English liberties and common law rested upon the validity of the claim that the colonies were vacant lands or “wastelands” settled by Englishmen and subject to English law. It is upon this foundation, in part, that the colonists justified their right to revolt against English acts of tyranny in regard to their liberties and rights.
As to the acquisition of the sovereignty of a country by force of arms, exercised by an independent power which reduces the vanquished to the submission of its empire, it was a general rule that, where conquered countries had laws of their own, these laws remained in force after the conquest, until they were abrogated, unless they were contrary to [Christian] religion, or enacted any malum in se. In all such cases the laws of the conquering country would prevail; for it was not to be presumed that laws opposed to religion or sound morals could be sanctioned. (1 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Brown and Shattuck, Cambridge, 1833, Sec. 150). The right that the English government claimed over the territory now composing the United States, was not founded on conquest, but discovery. (Id. Sec. 152, et seq.).
As to discovery, the nations of Europe adopted the principle that the discovery of any part of America gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority it was made, against all European governments.
Continued Monday with: For a ‘redeeming view’ of history
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