110-609: (Redirected from History Wars ) History wars may refer to: Australian history wars Canadian history wars Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title History wars . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_wars&oldid=1230762985 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
220-536: A Parliamentary apology to indigenous Australians, Professor of Australian Studies Richard Nile argued: "the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate", a view contested by others, including conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen . However, an intention to re-engage in the history wars was indicated by then-Federal Opposition member Christopher Pyne . The "history wars" are widely viewed, by external observers and participants on both sides as similar to
330-696: A better response to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage. Keating has argued for the eradication of remaining symbols linked to British origins: including deference for ANZAC Day , the Australian flag and the Monarchy in Australia , while Howard was a supporter of these institutions. Unlike fellow Labor leaders and contemporaries, Bob Hawke and Kim Beazley , Keating never traveled to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day ceremonies. In 2008 he described those who gathered there as "misguided". In 2006, John Howard said in
440-521: A larger mosaic that concentrates all the EPA's enemies against it at one time." According to the progressive media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting , both left-wing and right-wing policy institutes are often quoted and rarely identified as such. The result is that think tank "experts" are sometimes depicted as neutral sources without any ideological predispositions when, in fact, they represent
550-491: A massacre. Reynolds commented that violence against Aboriginals, far from being hushed up or denied, was openly talked about. The nature of the debate began to change in 1999 with the publication of a book Massacre Myth by journalist Rod Moran , who examined the 1926 Forrest River massacre in Western Australia. Moran concluded that the massacre was a myth inspired by the false claims of a missionary (possibly as
660-523: A new conservative view of Australia that valorised the nation's achievements and was grounded in "Judeo-Christian ethics, the progressive spirit of the enlightenment and the institutions and values of British culture". The conflict was played out largely in the popular media, books, and think-tank lectures. Commentators on the political left argued that Australia's national identity was linked to its treatment of Indigenous people and advocated making amends for past injustices on moral grounds, while those on
770-526: A number of articles published in Quadrant and in 2002, he published a book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume 1, Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847 , which focussed on Tasmanian colonial history. Blainey argued in a 2003 book review of Fabrication , that the number of instances where source documents do not support the claims made, and the fact that the divergences overwhelmingly tend to purport claims of violent conflict and massacres, indicate that this
880-1147: A number of categories and presents its findings in the Global Go-To Think Tanks rating index. However, this method of the study and assessment of policy institutes has been criticized by researchers such as Enrique Mendizabal and Goran Buldioski, Director of the Think Tank Fund, assisted by the Open Society Institute . Think tanks may attempt to broadly inform the public by holding conferences to discuss issues which they may broadcast; encouraging scholars to give public lectures, testifying before committees of governmental bodies; publishing and widely distributing books, magazines, newsletters or journals; creating mailing lists to distribute new publications; and engaging in social media. Think tanks may privately influence policy by having their members accept bureaucratic positions, having members serve on political advisory boards, inviting policy-makers to events, allowing individuals to work at
990-511: A number of think tanks that are in the form of governmental, non-governmental, and corporate organizations. In China a number of think tanks are sponsored by governmental agencies such as Development Research Center of the State Council , but still retain sufficient non-official status to be able to propose and debate ideas more freely. In January 2012, the first non-official think tank in mainland China, South Non-Governmental Think-Tank,
1100-722: A particular perspective. In the United States, think tank publications on education are subjected to expert review by the National Education Policy Center 's "Think Twice" think tank review project. A 2014 New York Times report asserted that foreign governments buy influence at many United States think tanks. According to the article: "More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect
1210-592: A pejorative context to the human brain itself when commenting on an individual's failings (in the sense that something was wrong with that person's "think tank"). Around 1958, the first organization to be regularly described in published writings as "the Think Tank" (note the title case and the use of the definite article ) was the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences . However,
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#17327935358001320-598: A phenomenon in the United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with most of the rest being established in other English-speaking countries. Prior to 1945, they tended to focus on the economic issues associated with industrialization and urbanization. During the Cold War , many more American and other Western think tanks were established, which often guided government Cold War policy. Since 1991, more think tanks have been established in non-Western parts of
1430-590: A range of economic and governance issues confronting Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa . It has also been involved in bringing political parties together to engage in dialogue. In particular it has organised Presidential debates every election year since the Ghanaian presidential election, 1996 . Notable think tanks in Ghana include: Afghanistan has a number of think tanks that are in the form of governmental, non-governmental, and corporate organizations. Bangladesh has
1540-471: A result of mental health issues). The principal historian of the Forrest River massacre, Neville Green, describes the massacre as probable but not able to be proven in court. Windschuttle said that reviewing Moran's book inspired his own examination of the wider historical record. Windschuttle argues that much of Australian Aboriginal history, particularly as written since the late 1970s, was based on
1650-595: A significant proportion of late 19th-century and early 20th-century white Australians to see the Aboriginal "race" eliminated. Documents include published letters to the editors of high-circulation newspapers. Certainly this was the case in Queensland, in terms of Indigenous people the most populated section of Australia and certainly the colony with the most violent frontier. In June 1866 Sir Robert Herbert summing up his experience after little more than five years as
1760-452: A speech to mark the 50th anniversary of Quadrant that " political correctness " was dead in Australia but: "we should not underestimate the degree to which the soft-left still holds sway, even dominance, especially in Australia's universities"; and in 2006, The Sydney Morning Herald political editor Peter Hartcher reported that Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd was entering
1870-452: A story, and may feel that the reputation of pioneering ancestors needs to be rescued from an unfortunate fashion for national self-denigration. For this group, the most congenial theory might be that smallpox, after reaching Northern Australia via Macassan traders in the 1780s moved inexorably on, mainly along Aboriginal trade routes, till it reached Sydney. They may also find the chickenpox theory acceptable, because, although it accepts that
1980-499: A veritable proliferation of "think tanks" around the world that began during the 1980s as a result of globalization, the end of the Cold War , and the emergence of transnational problems. Two-thirds of all the think tanks that exist today were established after 1970 and more than half were established since 1980. The effect of globalisation on the proliferation of think tanks is most evident in regions such as Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia, where there
2090-625: Is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy , political strategy , economics , military , technology , and culture . Most think tanks are non-governmental organizations , but some are semi-autonomous agencies within a government, and some are associated with particular political parties, businesses, or the military. Think tanks are often funded by individual donations, with many also accepting government grants. Think tanks publish articles and studies, and sometimes draft legislation on particular matters of policy or society. This information
2200-608: Is a global think tank that works on issues such as Water Diplomacy , Peace and Conflict and Foresight (futures studies) . Think tanks with a development focus include those like the National Centre for Cold-chain Development ('NCCD'), which serve to bring an inclusive policy change by supporting the Planning Commission and related government bodies with industry-specific inputs – in this case, set up at
2310-433: Is at odds with our exhortations that they have connections to the prideful bits". The notion of the white blindfold view of history entered the debate as a pejorative counter-response to the notion of the "black armband school". In his book Why Weren't We Told? in 1999, Henry Reynolds referred to Stanner 's "Great Australian Silence", and to "a 'mental block' which prevented Australians from coming to terms with
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#17327935358002420-713: Is collaboration between policy institutes in different countries. For instance, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace operates offices in Washington, D.C. , Beijing , Beirut , Brussels and formerly in Moscow , where it was closed in April 2022. The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) at the University of Pennsylvania , led by James McGann , annually rates policy institutes worldwide in
2530-547: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Australian history wars The history wars is a term used in Australia to describe the public debate about the interpretation of the history of the European colonisation of Australia and the development of contemporary Australian society, particularly with regard to their impact on Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The term "history wars" emerged in
2640-452: Is done in public think tanks. There is a strong emphasis on the knowledge-based economy and, according to one respondent, think tank research is generally considered high quality. Japan has over 100 think tanks, most of which cover not only policy research but also economy, technology and so on. Some are government related, but most of the think tanks are sponsored by the private sector. Institute of World Economics and Politics (IWEP) at
2750-513: Is not a matter of mere error but bias. The debate had therefore changed from an argument over whether there was an excessive focus on negative aspects of Australian history to one over to what extent, if at all, Australian Aboriginal history had been based on questionable evidence or had been falsified or fabricated and whether this had exaggerated the extent of violence against Indigenous Australians. Particular historians and histories that are challenged include Lyndall Ryan and Henry Reynolds and
2860-425: Is one of heroic achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud than of which we should be ashamed. In saying that I do not exclude or ignore specific aspects of our past where we are rightly held to account. Injustices were done in Australia and no-one should obscure or minimise them. ... But ... our priority should ... [be] to commit to a practical program of action that will remove
2970-488: Is that the Tasmanian instance constitutes a "case for genocide, though not of state planning, mass killing, or extinction". Much of the debate on whether European colonisation of Australia resulted in genocide, centres on whether "the term 'genocide' only applies to cases of deliberate mass killings of Aboriginal people by European settlers, or ... might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by
3080-545: Is the question as to why no European colonists caught smallpox in 1789 (although two non-Europeans living in the colony caught it and died). There is also the problem of explaining how the perpetrators could know in advance that this would be the case, unless they were indifferent to the harm they might do to their own people. (Colin Tatz in his 2011 Genocide in Australia: By Accident or Design? rejects as absurd
3190-452: Is then used by governments, businesses, media organizations, social movements or other interest groups. Think tanks range from those associated with highly academic or scholarly activities to those that are overtly ideological and pushing for particular policies, with a wide range among them in terms of the quality of their research. Later generations of think tanks have tended to be more ideologically oriented. Modern think tanks began as
3300-674: Is to maintain analytical and research support for the President of Kazakhstan. Most Malaysian think tanks are related either to the government or a political party. Historically they focused on defense, politics and policy. However, in recent years, think tanks that focus on international trade, economics, and social sciences have also been founded. Notable think tanks in Malaysia include: Pakistan's think tanks mainly revolve around social policy, internal politics, foreign security issues, and regional geo-politics. Most of these are centered on
3410-549: The Académie des frères Dupuy , created in Paris around 1620 by the brothers Pierre and Jacques Dupuy and also known after 1635 as the cabinet des frères Dupuy . The Club de l'Entresol , active in Paris between 1723 and 1731, was another prominent example of an early independent think tank focusing on public policy and current affairs, especially economics and foreign affairs. Several major current think tanks were founded in
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3520-725: The Tasmanian Aboriginal people , during the European colonisation of Australia can be classified as genocide. According to Mark Levene, most Australian experts are now "considerably more circumspect". In the specific instance of the Tasmanian Indigenous Australians, Henry Reynolds , who takes events in other regions of colonial Australia as marked by "genocidal moments", argues that the records show that British administrative policy in Tasmania
3630-485: The list of massacres of Indigenous Australians by British settlers, mainly in the 19th century. Others have pointed to the dramatic reduction in the Tasmanian Aboriginal population in the 19th century and the forced removal of generations of Aboriginal children from their parents during the 20th century as evidence of genocide. The evidence includes documentation of the wish, and sometimes intention, of
3740-647: The political right argued that the left had exaggerated the harms done to Indigenous Australians, that stories of abuses of Indigenous people were undermining Australia's coherent identity, and that contemporary Australians did not feel responsible for abuses committed in the past. Much of the public controversy was related to the release of the government's report on the Stolen Generations commissioned by Keating but released after Howard took office, titled Bringing Them Home . In 1968 Professor W. E. H. "Bill" Stanner , an Australian anthropologist , coined
3850-707: The " culture war " underway in the United States. William D. Rubinstein, writing for the conservative British think tank known as the Social Affairs Unit , refers to the history wars as "the Culture War down under". Participants in the debate including Keith Windschuttle and Robert Manne are frequently described as "culture warriors" for their respective points of view. The "black armband" debate concerns whether or not accounts of Australian history gravitate towards an overly negative or an overly positive point of view. The black armband view of history
3960-743: The "wars". According to the analysis for the Australian Parliamentary Library of Dr Mark McKenna , Howard believed that Keating portrayed Australia pre- Whitlam in an unduly negative light; while Keating sought to distance the modern Labor movement from its historical support for the Monarchy and the White Australia policy by arguing that it was the Conservative Australian parties who had been barriers to national progress and excessively loyal to
4070-619: The 1789 outbreak (that smallpox was deliberately introduced to Australia by the British as a form of germ warfare against the Indigenous Australians) would make it a central issue in the History Wars. Yet the nature and origin of the 1789 outbreak is far from clear. There is an unusual amount of disagreement, both between well-researched academic studies and also between the best secondary sources, extending even to whether
4180-567: The 1860s which seems to have begun in Northern Australia, though it spread within some three years as far south as the Great Australian Bight. The historian Judy Campbell remarks, "between 1780 and 1870 smallpox itself was the major single cause of Aboriginal deaths. The consequences of Aboriginal smallpox are an integral part of modern Australian history." As important as the severity of the first outbreak in 1789
4290-538: The 1940s, most think tanks were known only by the name of the institution. During the Second World War, think tanks were often referred to as "brain boxes". Before the 1950s, the phrase "think tank" did not refer to organizations. From its first appearances in the 1890s up to the 1950s, the phrase was most commonly used in American English to colloquially refer to the braincase or especially in
4400-702: The 1970s, the phrase became more specifically defined in terms of RAND and others. During the 1980s and 1990s, the phrase evolved again to arrive at its broader contemporary meaning of an independent public policy research institute. For most of the 20th century, such institutes were found primarily in the United States, along with much smaller numbers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe. Although think tanks had also existed in Japan for some time, they generally lacked independence, having close associations with government ministries or corporations. There has been
4510-487: The 1997 Bringing Them Home report and the ensuing debate, which was highly acrimonious, Howard in 1999 passed a Parliamentary Motion of Reconciliation describing treatment of Aboriginal people as the "most blemished chapter" in Australian history, but he did not make a Parliamentary apology. Howard argued that an apology was inappropriate as it would imply "intergeneration guilt" and said that "practical" measures were
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4620-573: The 19th century. The Royal United Services Institute was founded in 1831 in London , and the Fabian Society in 1884. The oldest United States –based think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace , was founded in Washington, D.C. , in 1910 by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie . Carnegie charged trustees to use the fund to "hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization." The Brookings Institution
4730-509: The 800s when emperors and kings began arguing with the Catholic Church about taxes. A tradition of hiring teams of independent lawyers to advise monarchs about their financial and political prerogatives against the church spans from Charlemagne all the way to the 17th century, when the kings of France were still arguing about whether they had the right to appoint bishops and receive a cut of their income." Soll cites as an early example
4840-454: The Australian political and media landscapes. The term largely refers to the extent to which the history of European colonisation post-1788 and government administration since federation in 1901 may be characterised as having been: The history wars also relates to broader themes concerning national identity , as well as methodological questions concerning the historian and the craft of researching and writing history, including issues such as
4950-472: The British Empire. He accused Britain of having abandoned Australia during World War II. Keating was a staunch advocate of a symbolic apology to indigenous people for the misdeeds of past governments, and outlined his view of the origins and potential solutions to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in his Redfern Park Speech (drafted with the assistance of historian Don Watson ). In the aftermath of
5060-528: The British colonists; and also sometimes gave later colonists the illusion of entering an empty or unowned land. Unlike other major diseases, which produced fairly steady mortality, smallpox occurred during the colonial period in three major outbreaks, at longish intervals. Smallpox was first recorded by British observers in April 1789 some 16 months after the First Fleet had arrived, then again four decades later in 1830, and then in an extended outbreak in
5170-603: The Center does not count itself as and is not perceived to be a think tank in the contemporary sense. During the 1960s, the phrase "think tank" was attached more broadly to meetings of experts, electronic computers , and independent military planning organizations. The prototype and most prominent example of the third category was the RAND Corporation , which was founded in 1946 as an offshoot of Douglas Aircraft and became an independent corporation in 1948. In
5280-528: The First Fleet brought the epidemic, there would be no malice involved. (The chickenpox virus never leaves the body; so, it would have been carried to Australia unconsciously by colonists, some of whom later suffered a revival of the disease in the still-infectious form shingles .) Much the same would apply to theories that smallpox was accidentally released from the surgeons’ variolation jars. Think-tank A think tank , or public policy institute,
5390-636: The Foundation of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan was created in 2003. IWEP activities aimed at research problems of the world economy, international relations, geopolitics, security, integration and Eurasia, as well as the study of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan and its contribution to the establishment and strengthening of Kazakhstan as an independent state,
5500-444: The History Wars debate. None of them necessarily frees the settlers from blame. A variant of the third scenario in which it is supposed that the British deliberately released smallpox near Sydney has become the favoured assumption on the radical Aboriginal website National Unity Government. and has been strongly promoted in recent years by the independent scholar Christopher Warren. However, this theory has some problems to solve. First
5610-595: The Philippines could be generally categorized in terms of their linkages with the national government. Several were set up by the Philippine government for the specific purpose of providing research input into the policy-making process. Sri Lanka has a number of think tanks that are in the form of governmental, non-governmental and corporate organizations. There are several think tanks in Singapore that advise
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#17327935358005720-538: The actions of think tanks and potentially bypass the political process, analysing the social background and values of those who work in think tanks. Pautz criticizes this viewpoint because there is in practice a variety of viewpoints in think tanks and argues it dismisses the influence that ideas can have. In some cases, corporate interests, military interests and political groups have found it useful to create policy institutes, advocacy organizations, and think tanks. For example, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition
5830-458: The behest of the government to direct cold chain development. Some think tanks have a fixed set of focus areas and they work towards finding out policy solutions to social problems in the respective areas. Initiatives such as National e-Governance Plan (to automate administrative processes) and National Knowledge Network (NKN) (for data and resource sharing amongst education and research institutions), if implemented properly, should help improve
5940-409: The best-known history of Australia, was named by Blainey in his 1993 speech as having "done much to spread the gloomy view and also the compassionate view with his powerful prose and Old Testament phrases". The Howard government 's responses to the question of how to recount Australian history were initially formulated in the context of former Labor prime minister Paul Keating's characterisation of
6050-773: The capital, Islamabad . One such think tank is the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), which focuses on policy advocacy and research particularly in the area of environment and social development. Another policy research institute based in Islamabad is the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) which works in the fields of education, health, disaster risk reduction, governance , conflict and stabilization. Since 2007 - 2008, I-SAPS has been analyzing public expenditure of federal and provincial governments. Think tanks in
6160-645: The construction of a discourse coalition with a common aim, citing the example of deregulation of trucking, airlines, and telecommunications in the 1970s. Plejwe argues that this deregulation represented a discourse coalition between the Ford Motor Company , FedEx , neo-liberal economists, the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute . Elite theory considers how an "elite" influence
6270-456: The continent by an invading people and the dispossession, with ruthless destructiveness, of another". Docker argues that, "we ignore Lemkin's wide-ranging definition of genocide, inherently linked with colonialism, at our peril". Curthoys argues that the separation between international and local Australian approaches has been deleterious. While calling for "a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship", her own view
6380-424: The debate by arguing that black armband events bring people together in common remembrance and cited Anzac Day as an example; while Aboriginal lawyer Noel Pearson argued that whilst there was much that is worth preserving in the cultural heritage of non-Aboriginal Australia, "To say that ordinary Australians who are part of the national community today do not have any connection with the shameful aspects of our past
6490-500: The debate. Rudd made an official apology to the Stolen Generation with bipartisan support. Like Keating, Rudd supported an Australian Republic , but in contrast to Keating, Rudd declared support for the Australian flag and supported the commemoration of ANZAC Day and expressed admiration for Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies . Following the change of government and the passage, with support from all parties, of
6600-584: The development of international cooperation and the promotion of peace and stability. The Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the RK (KazISS) was established by the Decree of the President of RK on 16 June 1993. Since its foundation the main mission of the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as a national think tank,
6710-478: The disease was truly smallpox. Broadly, there are three alternative explanations, for which appropriate scholarly evidence has been offered, of the 1789 outbreak (and perhaps also of the two later outbreaks). The first is that the disease was smallpox (Variola major or Variola minor), which was already present in the islands of what is today Indonesia; that the smallpox was transferred to northern Australia by Macassan trepangers and traders around 1780, and that it
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#17327935358006820-625: The donors' priorities." Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah , set up various state-supported think tanks in the 1960s. By the 1990s, a variety of policy research centers sprang up in Africa set up by academics who sought to influence public policy in Ghana. One such think tank was The Institute of Economic Affairs, Ghana , which was founded in 1989 when the country was ruled by the Provisional National Defence Council . The IEA undertakes and publishes research on
6930-461: The enduring legacies of disadvantage. In 2009, Howard's successor Kevin Rudd also called for moving away from a black-arm view : Time to leave behind us the polarisation that began to infect our every discussion of our nation's past. To go beyond the so-called "black arm" view that refused to confront some hard truths about our past, as if our forebears were all men and women of absolute nobility, without spot or blemish. But time, too, to go beyond
7040-437: The experts they fund for future government jobs, while others want to push specific areas of research or education." McGann distinguishes think tanks based on independence, source of funding and affiliation, grouping think tanks into autonomous and independent, quasi-independent, government affiliated, quasi-governmental, university affiliated, political-party affiliated or corporate. A new trend, resulting from globalization,
7150-550: The extinction of the Tasmanian Indigenous Australians as a textbook example of a genocide. The Australian historian of genocide, Ben Kiernan , in his recent history of the concept and practice, Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur (2007), treats the Australian evidence over the first century of colonisation as an example of genocide. Among scholars specialising in Australian history much recent debate has focused on whether indeed what happened to groups of Indigenous people, and especially
7260-416: The field. The term "history wars" refers to an ideological conflict over how to perceive Australia as a nation, framed largely by the respective visions of Labor Party Prime Minister Paul Keating (1991–1996), who saw race relations as central to the nation's character and who gave new attention to Indigenous people's issues, and Liberal Prime Minister John Howard (1996–2007), who sought to establish
7370-432: The first Premier of this colony wrote: Every method of dealing with these very dangerous savages has been tried, and I believe no more satisfactory system can be devised than that under which the people of Queensland endeavour to deal with a difficulty which it is feared can never terminate except with the gradual disappearance of the unimprovable race. The "system", for which Herbert was among those personally responsible,
7480-421: The government contended that "no illegal acts were occurring", with the worst incidents being described as merely "indiscretions". The political scientist Kenneth Minogue and other historians such as Keith Windschuttle disagree and think that no genocide took place. Minogue does not try to define genocide but argues that its use is an extreme manifestation of the guilt felt by modern Australian society about
7590-540: The histories of massacres, particularly in Tasmania but also elsewhere in Australia. Windschuttle's naming of historians whom he accused of misrepresentation and fabrication of the historical evidence, created considerable controversy and produced a range of responses including condemnation of as well as support for his work. The case for using the term "Australian genocide" rests on evidence from various sources that people argue proves some form of genocide. People cite
7700-484: The history wars. The lack of immunity among Aboriginal Australians to introduced diseases saw smallpox or some related disease inflict a devastating toll in 1789 upon the Aboriginal population near Sydney. This outbreak has been the most discussed of the introduced diseases that destroyed much of the Aboriginal population in the decades after British settlement of Australia began in 1788. Such diseases may have prevented Indigenous Australians from offering serious resistance to
7810-480: The late 1990s during the term of the Howard government , and despite efforts by some of Howard's successors, the debate is ongoing, notably reignited in 2016 and 2020. The "history wars" are often regarded as a culture war ; not to be confused with the historical Australian frontier wars , which are an important subject of the debate, the history wars have played out as a cultural conflict between key figures in
7920-523: The leading landholders, manager of the Scottish Australian Investment Co.'s Bowen Downs in 1866–81 and a future Premier, could be heard making the following acknowledgement in a parliamentary speech, saying, yes settlers in the past did go ... out, and in their pioneering had, of necessity, to use extreme measures to the inhabitants of the soil. The aboriginal, no doubt, had been shot down; no one denied it ... this race
8030-425: The literary and political journal Quadrant in 1993 that the telling of Australian history had moved from an unduly positive rendition (the "Three Cheers View") to an unduly negative view (the " black armband ") and Australian commentators and politicians have continued to debate this subject. Interpretations of Aboriginal history became part of the wider political debate sometimes called the ' culture wars ' during
8140-533: The modern period". A new strand of Australian historiography subsequently emerged which gave much greater attention to the negative experiences of Indigenous Australians during the British settlement of Australia . In the 1970s and 1980s, historians such as Manning Clark and Henry Reynolds published work which they saw as correcting selective historiography that had misrepresented or ignored Indigenous Australian history. The historian Geoffrey Blainey argued in
8250-532: The more established think tanks, created during the Cold War , are focused on international affairs, security studies, and foreign policy. Think tanks vary by ideological perspectives, sources of funding, topical emphasis and prospective consumers. Funding may also represent who or what the institution wants to influence; in the United States, for example, "Some donors want to influence votes in Congress or shape public opinion, others want to position themselves or
8360-480: The native police and the frontier in public in 1880 in the columns of The Queenslander , a prominent settler wrote: "And being a useless race, what does it matter what they suffer any more than the distinguished philanthropist who writes in this behalf cares for the wounded half-dead pigeon he tortures at his shooting matches?". Remarks which were followed up in October of that years by Boyd Dunlop Morehead , one of
8470-575: The notion that the British would have wished to infect their new colony with a disease they dreaded.) A further problem is to explain how the colonists were able to infect Indigenous Australians with a disease that seems not to have existed among themselves. However, it has been argued that the practice of variolation provides a solution to this. It is difficult to be certain how much the History Wars have influenced research into these theories. The issues involved certainly invite moral and political controversy, and may rouse partisan feelings. To believe that
8580-409: The original inhabitants off the land ... confin[ing] them in reserves, where policies of deliberate neglect may be used to reduce their numbers ... Tak[ing] Indigenous children to absorb them within their own midst ... assimilation to detach the people from their culture, language and religion, and often their names." The arrival of smallpox in Australia is of uncertain origin and is a major theme in
8690-497: The past misconduct of their society to Indigenous Australians. In his opinion its use reflects the process by which Australian society is trying to come to terms with its past wrongs and in doing this Australians are stretching the meaning of genocide to fit within this internal debate. In the April 2008 edition of The Monthly , David Day wrote further on the topic of genocide. He wrote that Lemkin considered genocide to encompass more than mass killings but also acts like "driv[ing]
8800-471: The past". He argued that the silence about Australia's history of frontier violence in much of the twentieth century stands in stark contrast with the openness with which violence was admitted and discussed in the nineteenth. Reynolds quotes many excerpts from the press, including an article in the Townsville Herald in Queensland written as late as 1907, by a "pioneer" who described his part in
8910-638: The philosophical debate by arguing in response that "John Howard, is guilty of perpetrating 'a fraud' in his so-called culture wars ... designed not to make real change but to mask the damage inflicted by the Government's economic policies". The defeat of the Howard government in the Australian Federal election of 2007, and its replacement by the Rudd Labor government altered the dynamic of
9020-761: The quality of work done by think tanks. Some notable think tanks in India include: Over 50 think tanks have emerged in Iraq, particularly in the Kurdistan Region. Iraq's leading think tank is the Middle East Research Institute (MERI), based in Erbil. MERI is an independent non-governmental policy research organization, established in 2014 and publishes in English, Kurdish, and Arabic. It
9130-615: The reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers". Historians such as Tony Barta argue that for the victim group it matters little if they were wiped out as part of a planned attack. If a group is decimated as a result of smallpox introduced to Australia by British settlers, or introduced European farming methods causing a group of Indigenous Australians to starve to death, the result is, in his opinion, genocide. Henry Reynolds points out that European colonists and their descendants frequently use expressions that included "extermination", "extinction", and "extirpation" when discussing
9240-426: The subject. John Howard argued in a 1996 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture that the "balance sheet of Australian history" had come to be misrepresented: The 'black armband' view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. ... I believe that the balance sheet of our history
9350-579: The success of the 1788 settlement in Sydney depended on an act of germ warfare would validate the intense sense of grievance felt by many Indigenous Australians. As well, many non-Indigenous Australians (especially on the Left of Australian politics) feel strongly that the injustices of the past now need to be fully and urgently recognised. Yet others, especially on the Right, may be embarrassed or horrified by such
9460-850: The tenure of the Coalition government from 1996 to 2007, with Prime Minister of Australia John Howard publicly championing the views of some of those associated with Quadrant . This debate extended into a controversy over the way history was presented in the National Museum of Australia and in high school history curricula. It also migrated into the general Australian media, with regular opinion pieces being published in major broadsheets such as The Australian , The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age . Marcia Langton has referred to much of this wider debate as "war porn" and an "intellectual dead end". Two Australian prime ministers, Paul Keating and John Howard, were major participants in
9570-639: The term the "Great Australian Silence" in a Boyer Lecture titled "After the Dreaming", where he argued that the writing of Australian history was incomplete. He asserted that Australian national history as documented up to that point had largely been presented in a positive light, but that Indigenous Australians had been virtually ignored. He saw this as a structural and deliberate process to omit "several hundred thousand Aboriginal people who lived and died between 1788 and 1938 ... (who were but) ... negative facts of history and ... were in no way consequential for
9680-511: The think tank; employing former policy-makers; or preparing studies for policy makers. The role of think tanks has been conceptualized through the lens of social theory. Plehwe argues that think tanks function knowledge actors within a network of relationships with other knowledge actors. Such relationships including citing academics in publications or employing them on advisory boards, as well as relationships with media, political groups and corporate funders. They argue that these links allow for
9790-747: The time was edited by academic and political scientist Robert Manne and later by writer and historian Keith Windschuttle , two of the leading "history warriors", albeit on opposing sides of the debate. The phrase then began to be used by some commentators pejoratively to describe historians viewed as writing excessively critical Australian history "while wearing a black armband " of "mourning and grieving, or shame ". New interpretations of Australia's history since 1788 were contested for focussing almost exclusively on official and unofficial imperialism , exploitation , ill-treatment, colonial dispossession and cultural genocide and ignoring positive aspects of Australia's history. Historian Manning Clark , author of
9900-638: The transfer of sovereignty to China in 1997, more think tanks were established by various groups of intellectuals and professionals. They have various missions and objectives including promoting civic education; undertaking research on economic, social and political policies; and promoting "public understanding of and participation in the political, economic, and social development of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region ". Think tanks in Hong Kong include: India has
10010-399: The treatment of Aboriginal people during the colonial period, and as in his opinion genocide "can take many forms, not all of them violent". Janine Roberts has argued that genocide was Australian policy, even if only by omission. She notes that despite contemporary newspapers regularly decrying "the barbarous crop of exterminators", and "a system of native slaughter ... merciless and complete",
10120-527: The use of questionable or unreliable evidence and on deliberate misrepresentation and fabrication of historical evidence. He based his conclusions on his examination of the evidence cited in previous historical accounts and reported incidences of non-existent documents being cited, misquoting and misleadingly selective quoting from documents and of documents being cited as evidence that certain events took place when his examination concluded that they do not support those claims. Windschuttle reported his conclusions in
10230-442: The value and reliability of written records (of the authorities and settlers) and the oral tradition (of the Indigenous Australians), along with the political or similar ideological biases of those who interpret them. One theme is how British or multicultural Australian identity has been in history and today. At the same time the history wars were in play, professional history seemed in decline, and popular writers began reclaiming
10340-425: The view that we should only celebrate the reformers, the renegades and revolutionaries, thus neglecting or even deriding the great stories of our explorers, of our pioneers, and of our entrepreneurs. Any truthful reflection of our nation's past is that these are all part of the rich fabric of our remarkable story ... Stephen Muecke , Professor of Ethnography at the University of New South Wales , contributed to
10450-547: The world's second-largest number of think tanks . Most are based in New Delhi, and a few are government-sponsored. There are few think tanks that promote environmentally responsible and climate resilient ideas like Centre for Science and Environment , Centre for Policy Research and World Resources Institute . There are other prominent think tanks like Observer Research Foundation , Tillotoma Foundation and Centre for Civil Society . In Mumbai, Strategic Foresight Group
10560-466: The world. More than half of all think tanks that exist today were established after 1980. As of 2023, there are more than 11,000 think tanks around the world. According to historian Jacob Soll , while the term "think tank" is modern, with its origin "traced to the humanist academies and scholarly networks of the 16th and 17th centuries," Soll writes that, "in Europe, the origins of think tanks go back to
10670-547: Was a concerted effort by other countries to assist in the creation of independent public policy research organizations. A survey performed by the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program underscores the significance of this effort and documents the fact that most of the think tanks in these regions have been established since 1992. As of 2014 , there were more than 11,000 of these institutions worldwide. Many of
10780-514: Was a phrase first used by Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey in his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture to describe views of history which, he believed, posited that "much of [pre-multicultural] Australian history had been a disgrace" and focused mainly on the treatment of minority groups (especially Aboriginal people). He contrasted this with the Three Cheers view, according to which "nearly everything that came after [the convict era]
10890-589: Was active debate among the surgeons, at the time and for some decades after, as to whether the disease was smallpox or chickenpox. The third explanation is that the disease was indeed smallpox, and that it was brought to south-eastern Australia by European ships, very likely by the British First Fleet , and was then transferred either accidentally or deliberately into the Aboriginal population. All three explanations have their strong points, and their difficulties; and each has different implications for
11000-576: Was being worked off the face of the earth. That that was so everyone knew, and that it must be so, none would deny ... For his own part he did not believe that the aboriginal race was worth preserving. If there were no aboriginals it would be a very good thing After the introduction of the word "genocide" in the 1940s by Raphael Lemkin , Lemkin himself and most comparative scholars of genocide and many general historians, such as Robert Hughes , Ward Churchill , Leo Kuper and Jared Diamond , basing their analysis on previously published histories, present
11110-450: Was believed to be pretty good". Blainey argued that both such accounts of Australian history were inaccurate, saying: "The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self-congratulatory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced." The lecture was subsequently published in the political and literary journal, Quadrant , which at
11220-626: Was established in the Guangdong province. In 2009 the China Center for International Economic Exchanges was founded. In Hong Kong, early think tanks established in the late 1980s and early 1990s focused on political development, including the first direct Legislative Council members election in 1991 and the political framework of " One Country, Two Systems ", manifested in the Sino-British Joint Declaration . After
11330-472: Was explicitly concerned to avoid extermination. However, in practice, the activities of British people on the ground led to virtual extinction. Tony Barta, John Docker and Ann Curthoys however emphasize Lemkin's linkage between colonialism and genocide . Barta, an Australian expert in German history, argued from Lemkin that, "there is no dispute that the basic fact of Australian history is the appropriation of
11440-548: Was expressed in Queensland, including in an 1877 editorial in The Queenslander (the weekly edition of the colony's main newspaper, the Brisbane Courier ): "The desire for progressive advancement and substantial prosperity is, after all, stronger than sentimental dislike to the extinction of a savage and useless race". Classifying Indigenous Australians as a useless or unimprovable race was common. Debating
11550-578: Was formed in the mid-1990s to dispute research finding an association between second-hand smoke and cancer . Military contractors may spend a portion of their tender on funding pro-war think tanks. According to an internal memorandum from Philip Morris Companies referring to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "The credibility of the EPA is defeatable, but not on the basis of ETS [ environmental tobacco smoke ] alone,... It must be part of
11660-516: Was founded shortly thereafter in 1916 by Robert S. Brookings and was conceived as a bipartisan "research center modeled on academic institutions and focused on addressing the questions of the federal government." In the early 1920s, fascist and other far-right think tanks appeared in the Netherlands . After 1945, the number of policy institutes increased, with many small new ones forming to express various issues and policy agendas. Until
11770-546: Was its timing. It came when the Eora People were still so numerous that some historians believe they might have been able to destroy the new British colony. Though venereal disease and possibly other diseases struck first, smallpox was the first disease that is recorded as seriously lowering the population of Indigenous Australians. Governor Arthur Phillip estimated that about half of the local Eora tribe had perished in some two or three months. One possible explanation of
11880-631: Was listed in the global ranking by the United States's Lauder Institute of the University of Pennsylvania as 46th in the Middle East. There are many think tank teams in Israel, including: In South Korea , think tanks are prolific and influential and are a government go-to. Think tanks are prolific in the Korean landscape. Many policy research organisations in Korea focus on economoy and most research
11990-508: Was the " Native Police system" which allegedly went about "dispersing" any Indigenous groups thought to be a threat to law and order. This police force was poorly resourced, but used Aboriginal trackers to great effect when pursuing alleged criminals. An attempt to scientifically calculate the number of Indigenous Australians killed in encounters with the Native Police indicates that numbers may exceed 45,000. The phrase "useless race"
12100-407: Was then spread, largely along Aboriginal trading routes, to the south of Australia. The second is that the disease was not smallpox (which would normally have killed numerous Europeans) but chickenpox , a disease that rarely kills Europeans but can produce similar symptoms and create quite high mortality among populations that have no inherited immunity to it. In the case of the 1830 outbreak, there
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