The Demonization of Tasmanian Aborigines in the early Vandemonian Press

Abstract

<p>Historians are increasingly reliant on newspapers as a primary source, particularly now that digitisation has made accessing and searching newspaper archives simpler and faster. In doing so, they must acknowledge that newspapers were constructed to attract and persuade a readership, and that they were heavily informed by editorial agendas. This was very much the case in Van Diemen's Land during the administration of Lieutenant Governor George Arthur (May 1824 to October 1836), a highly significant period of Australian colonial history that has generated debates about the role of the colonial state and settlers in the deaths of the Tasmanian Aborigines.</p>