Henry Reynolds (historian)

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Henry A. Reynolds, (born March 1, 1938), is an eminent Australian historian whose primary work has focused on the frontier conflict between European settlement of Australia and indigenous Australians.

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[edit] Education and Career

Reynolds received a state school education in Hobart, Tasmania from 1944 to 1954, followed by attendance at the University of Tasmania to gain his Masters in Arts degree, then taught in secondary schools in Australia and England. After pursuing graduate study in London, he returned to Australia in 1964, accepting a post as lecturer and set up the programme in Australian History at Townsville University College, now known as James Cook University. He gained his doctorate in history from James Cook University, and was later Associate Professor of History and Politics at the University from 1982 until his retirement in 1998.

Henry Reynolds is married to Margaret Reynolds, an ALP Senator for Queensland in Federal Parliament (1983 until 1999).

[edit] Historical research

In more than ten books and numerous academic articles Reynolds has researched and explained what he sees as the high level of violence and conflict involved in the colonisation of Australia, and the aboriginal resistance that resulted in numerous massacres of indigenous people. Reynolds, and other historians, estimate [1] that up to 3,000 Europeans and 20,000 indigenous Australians were killed directly in the frontier violence, and many more Aborigines died indirectly through the introduction of European diseases and starvation caused by being forced from their productive tribal lands.

Geoffrey Blainey and Keith Windschuttle categorise his approach as a black armband view of Australian history.

In 2002 historian and journalist, Keith Windschuttle, in his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, disputed whether the colonial settlers of Australia committed widespread genocide against Indigenous Australians, especially focussing on the Black War in Tasmania, and denied the claims by historians such as Reynolds and Professor Lyndall Ryan that there was a campaign of guerrilla warfare against British settlement. He went further to accuse Reynolds of inventing evidence and making many claims without any documentary support at all.

Windschuttle's claims and research have been widely criticised by other historians, in an anthology edited and introduced by Robert Manne, Professor of politics at La Trobe University. In 2004, John Dawson dissected the "Whitewash" anthology in Washout: On the academic response to The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, claiming to refute "the fallacies, errors and distortion" in "Whitewash". (See History Wars)

[edit] Awards and Honours

Henry Reynolds has received the following awards and honours:

  • 1970-71 British Council Travelling Scholarship
  • 1982 Ernest Scott Historical Prize for The other side of the frontier
  • 1986 Harold White Fellowship, National Library of Australia
  • 1988 Human Rights Commission Award for Literature for The law of the land
  • 1996 Australian Book Council Award: the Banjo Award for non-fiction

[edit] Major works

[edit] External links

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