EYES WIDE SHUT – A MILITARY CAMPAIGN & ARTHUR PHILLIP
1787 – London, 25 April: ‘You are to endeavour by every means possible to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections enjoining all or subjects to live in amity and kindness with them…and if any of our subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, it it our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the offence’. King George III to Captain Arthur Phillip RN, Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1 Parts 1 and 2
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1790 – 13 December Sydney: ‘Bring in six [6] of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or if that should be found impractical…put that number [6] to death…hatchets to cut off the heads….bags provided…bring in the heads of the slain…ropes to bind…bring away two [2] prisoners to execute in the most public and exemplary manner, in the presence of as many of their countrymen as can be collected’. General Orders: Governor Arthur Phillip RN to Marine Captain Watkin Tench. Cited Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. F.L Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961.
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Britain invaded New Holland because; ‘From the coast of China it lies not more than about a thousand leagues, and nearly the same distance from the East Indies, from the Spice Islands about seven hundred leagues, and near a month’s run from Cape of Good Hope…or suppose we were again involved in a war with Spain, here are ports of shelter and refreshment for our ships, should it be necessary to send any into the South Sea’. Admiral Sir George Young, Plan [New Holland] to Home Secretary Lord Sydney. Bladen
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Extravagant lies, none are more destructive than ‘amity and kindness’.
‘Twenty-five regiments of British infantry served in the colonies between 1790 and 1870. They fought in one of the most prolonged frontier wars in the history of the British empire, and for the first half of their stay were probably more frequently in action than the garrison of any other colony besides that of southern Africa’. Dr Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison,The British Army in Australia, 1788-1870, Kangaroo Press, 1986
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Why did Britain invade New Holland? ‘In the first place, Pitt, Dundas, Castlereagh and other British ministers were to a great extent advocates of ‘maritime’ strategy as Dundas argued in 1801;
“From our insular position, from our limited population not admitting of extensive continental operations, and from the importance depending in so material a degree upon the extent of our commerce and navigation, it is obvious that, be the causes of the war what they may, the primary object of our attention ought to be, by what means we can most effectually increase those resources on which depend our naval superiority, and at the same time diminish or appropriate to ourselves those which might enable the enemy to contend with us in this respect”. Henry Dundas, cited Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, Fontana Press, 3rd ed. London 1976
What took Governor Arthur Phillip from ‘amity and kindness’ to ‘bring in the heads of the slain’?
‘The revival of Tudor ambition, the return to an ideal of trade…the search for a new Cathay led unexpectedly perhaps not to Nootka Sound as a halfway house to Canton or to a business deal between George III and the Emperor of China but to settlement in Australasia’. Vincent T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire 1763-1793, Vol 2. Longmans 1964
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1787 – Portsmouth, 13 May: Captain Arthur Phillip RN commander of a large armed squadron of eleven (11) ships – two (2) warships, six (6) troop transports, three (3) supply vessels, known in Britain as the ‘First Fleet’ set sail from England to invade the island continent of New Holland.See: A Riddle – When an invasion fleet was not an invasion fleet? When it’s the ‘First Fleet’.
Have not used this part.
Via the southern oceans, in time of global warfare (1793-1815), a permanent military presence and naval base on the south eastern coast of New Holland – Australia – would secure Britain alternate sea-routes to and from India, China, Africa, South America and could frustrate any effort by an enemy, and there were many, to mount an effective economic blockade of the British Isles.
EPILOGUE
‘Appropriate to ourselves’ – ‘New Holland is a good blind, then, when we want to add to the military strength of India’. Anon. Historical Records of New South Wales’
‘The pattern of conflict in Australia ran parallel to the pattern of settlement. From the early days around Sydney Cove the hostility of the Aboriginal Peoples to the depredations of the whites was clear to all’. Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, The British Period 1788-1870, Cambridge Press, 2001
In 2018 ‘the depredations of the whites’ are not clear to all’; ‘Dispossession” is a concept which has never reflected the actual circumstances at any time. Whites and blacks got along fairly well in the Sydney coastal region from the start…‘Robert Murray, To The Land, Boys, We Live In, Quadrant, January-February, 2018
Tags: Aborigines, empire, First Fleet, Invasion, settlement