Editing Tasmania (section)

====Black War====
{{main|Black War}}

[[File:Benjamin Duterrau - Timmy, a Tasmanian Aboriginal, throwing a spear - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright|Painting of a Tasmanian Aboriginal throwing a spear, 1838]]

Tensions between Tasmania's Aboriginal and white inhabitants rose, partly driven by increasing competition for kangaroo and other game.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13150130?searchTerm=treaty%20aboriginal |title=The Fate Of The Aboriginal Inhabitants (Sydney Morning Herald, 21 Feb 1867, p.8) |newspaper=Sydney Morning Herald |date=21 February 1867 |access-date=17 August 2022 |archive-date=17 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220817003525/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13150130?searchTerm=treaty%20aboriginal |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url = http://theconversation.com/tasmanias-black-war-a-tragic-case-of-lest-we-remember-25663 | title = Tasmania's Black War: a tragic case of lest we remember? | first = Nicholas | last = Clements | date = 24 April 2014 | work = Honorary Research Associate, University of Tasmania | publisher = The Conversation | access-date = 27 October 2016 | archive-date = 27 October 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20161027124612/http://theconversation.com/tasmanias-black-war-a-tragic-case-of-lest-we-remember-25663 | url-status = live }}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia | url = https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-War | title = Black War – Australian History | encyclopedia = The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica | publisher = Encyclopædia Britannica | access-date = 27 October 2016 | archive-date = 27 October 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20161027125931/https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-War | url-status = live }}</ref> Explorer and naval officer [[John Oxley]] in 1810 noted the "many atrocious cruelties" inflicted on Aboriginal people by convict [[bushranger]]s in the north, which in turn led to black attacks on solitary white hunters.<ref>{{Citation | last=Clements | first = Nicholas | title = The Black War  |page=36| publisher = University of Queensland Press | year = 2014 | location = Brisbane | isbn = 978-0-70225-006-4}}</ref> Hostilities increased further with the arrival of 600 colonists from [[Norfolk Island]] between 1807 and 1813. They established farms along the River Derwent and east and west of [[Launceston, Tasmania|Launceston]], occupying ten percent of Van Diemen's Land. By 1824 the colonial population had swelled to 12,600, while the island's sheep population had reached 200,000. The rapid colonisation transformed traditional kangaroo hunting grounds into farms with grazing livestock as well as fences, hedges and stone walls, while police and military patrols were increased to control the convict farm labourers.<ref>{{Citation | last=Ryan | first = Lyndall | title = Tasmanian Aborigines  | publisher = Allen & Unwin | year = 2012 | pages=58, 62, 66, 74–75|location = Sydney | isbn = 978-1-74237-068-2}}</ref>

Violence began to spiral rapidly from the mid-1820s in what became described as the "[[Black War]]".<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/65989331 |title=The Black War (The Cornwall Chronicle, Launceston: 8 Sep, 1860, p.3) |newspaper=Cornwall Chronicle |date=8 September 1860 |access-date=10 August 2022 |archive-date=10 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220810231144/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/65989331 |url-status=live }}</ref> Aboriginal inhabitants were driven to desperation by hunger – that included a desire for agricultural produce, as well as feeling anger at the prevalence of abductions of women and girls. New settlers motivated by fear carried out self-defence operations as well as attacks as a means of suppressing the native threat – or even in some cases, exacting revenge.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8791038 |title=The Black Natives (Hobart Town Gazette, 11 Nov 1926, p.2) |newspaper=Hobart Town Gazette |date=11 November 1826 |access-date=10 August 2022 |archive-date=10 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220810225234/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8791038 |url-status=live }}</ref> Van Diemen's Land had an enormous gender imbalance, with male colonists outnumbering females six to one in 1822{{mdash}}and 16 to one among the convict population. Historian Nicholas Clements has suggested the "voracious appetite" for native women was the most important trigger for the explosion of violence from the late 1820s.<ref>{{Citation | last=Clements | first = Nicholas | title = The Black War  |pages=20, 49| publisher = University of Queensland Press | year = 2014 | location = Brisbane | isbn = 978-0-70225-006-4}}</ref>

From 1825 to 1828, the number of native attacks more than doubled each year, raising panic among settlers. Over the summer of 1826{{ndash}}1827 clans from the Big River, Oyster Bay and North Midlands nations speared stock-keepers on farms and made it clear that they wanted the settlers and their sheep and cattle to move from their kangaroo hunting grounds. Settlers responded vigorously, resulting in many mass-killings. In November 1826, Governor [[Sir George Arthur, 1st Baronet|Sir George Arthur]] issued a government notice declaring that colonists were free to kill Aboriginal people when they attacked settlers or their property, and in the following eight months more than 200 Aboriginal people were killed in the Settled Districts in reprisal for the deaths of 15 colonists. After another eight months, the death toll had risen to 43 colonists and probably 350 Aboriginal people.<ref>{{Citation | last=Ryan | first = Lyndall | title = Tasmanian Aborigines  | publisher = Allen & Unwin | year = 2012 | pages=93–100|location = Sydney | isbn = 978-1-74237-068-2}}</ref> In April 1828, Arthur issued a [[1828 Proclamation of Demarcation|Proclamation of Demarcation]] forbidding Aboriginal people to enter the settled districts without a passport issued by the government.<ref name="Carroll2014">{{cite book |author=Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P9CpBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA92 |title=Art in the Time of Colony |date=28 April 2014 |publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. |isbn=978-1-4094-5596-7 |pages=92–}}</ref><ref name="Morgan2003">{{cite book|author=Sharon Morgan|title=Land Settlement in Early Tasmania: Creating an Antipodean England|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bTJeskna35YC&pg=PA151|date=11 December 2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-52296-0|pages=151–}}</ref> Arthur declared [[martial law]] in the colony in November that year, and this remained in force for over three years, the longest period of martial law in Australian history.<ref>{{Citation | last=Ryan | first = Lyndall | title = Tasmanian Aborigines  | publisher = Allen & Unwin | year = 2012 | pages=101–105, 123|location = Sydney | isbn = 978-1-74237-068-2}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | last=Clements | first = Nicholas | title = The Black War  |pages=95–101| publisher = University of Queensland Press | year = 2014 | location = Brisbane | isbn = 978-0-70225-006-4}}</ref>

In November 1830, Arthur organised the so-called "[[Black Line]]", ordering every able-bodied male colonist to assemble at one of seven designated places in the Settled Districts to join a massive drive to sweep Aboriginal people out of the region and on to the [[Tasman Peninsula]]. The campaign failed and was abandoned seven weeks later, but by then Tasmania's Aboriginal population had fallen to about 300.<ref>{{Cite book|title = The Forgotten War|last = Reynolds|first = Henry|publisher = UNSW Australia|year = 2013|isbn = 9781742233925|page = 63}}</ref>