The fabrication of Aboriginal history. Volume One : Van Diemen’s Land 1803-1847

Sydney, NSW, Macleay Press, 2002 (revised edition, 2003). Octavo, boards in dustjacket, pp. 472, illustrations, light handling marks, else a fine copy.

A controversial book, self described as ‘the most exhaustive analysis yet undertaken of relations between settlers and Aborigines from the time the British founded the colony in 1803’, which argues that the previous historians have vastly overstated the impact colonisations had on the indigenous population of Tasmania, that the genocide (or attempted genocide) of the indigenous population was myth, and that ‘in the entire history of Europe’s colonisation of the Americas and the Pacific, Van Diemen’s Land was probably the site where the least indigenous blood of all was deliberately shed’ (from the jacket).

While four volumes were intended to cover different aspects of ‘the fabrication of Aboriginal history’, to date only volumes one and three have been published.