A. Dirk Moses, ed. - Genocide and Settler Society

A. Dirk Moses, ed.,

Genocide and Settler Society:

Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australia History

New York and Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2004

Paperback edition, 2005 xv + 325 Pp 1 57181 411 6

This is a collection of thirteen papers from the emerging field of genocide studies. Eleven of these relate to Australia, two to aspects of Nazi racial policies in Europe. The editor’s brief preface indicates that Australian publishers were resistant to issuing the original collection. It has become part of a series on War and Genocide from an American house, whose general editor ‘thought it appropriate’ to include work by two young German historians. ‘Readers can judge for themselves how relevant these cases are for Australia.’(p. xiii) The contributors appeal to different definitions of genocide, a word that can be synonymous with extermination but is also widely used to describe forced cultural assimilation. One contributor, Russell McGregor, explicitly contests the applicability of the term to the second half of the twentieth century at all. He does not endorse assimilationist policies but he insists that to call them ‘genocidal’ is ‘to render the term conceptually and morally incoherent.’ (p. 307) The essays are grouped into three main sections. The first deals with general themes, the second with frontier violence and the third with the removal and institutionalisation of indigenous children. A brief final contribution by Tim Rowse usefully reviews attempts to calculate Aboriginal populations.