Among Historians

Klaus Neumann

doi:10.5130/csr.v9i2.3571

Abstract

Trades Hall, Melbourne, 16 March 2003. An expectant buzz fills the auditorium. The capacity crowd, several hundred strong and mainly under thirty, is anticipating a spectacle: a contest between two members of a profession not otherwise known for staging fights in the public arena. This bout could have been billed ‘The Ugly v. The Righteous’. The Ugly is Keith Windschuttle, author of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. The Righteous is Patricia Grimshaw, Professor of History at the University of Melbourne.

Highlights

That endorsement puts Grimshaw at a disadvantage. As she is not a historian of colonial Tasmania, she is not in a position to argue about the use of specific archival evidence
Could Windschuttle be blamed for publishing The Fabrication of Aboriginal History with Macleay Press, which he owns? Could Grimshaw be blamed for drawing a professorial salary, and her employer for routinely subsidising academic publications? References to Windschuttle’s personal wealth detract from a more important issue: his claim that Ryan and others were careless in their use of written evidence is persuasive
In Australia, those scoring victories against superior foes— Geoffrey Blainey is about the only senior Australian historian who has sided with Windschuttle —are often admired

Summary

Introduction

In response to his accusation, the museum organised a symposium—presumably intended to bring together Windschuttle and writers whose work informed the exhibit and, more generally, to generate a discussion about how Australia’s settler-colonial history ought to be represented in a national museum. Frontier Conflict, a collection of articles edited by Bain Attwood and Stephen Foster, is the outcome of that symposium.3 The book combines one article by Windschuttle and fourteen contributions critical of Windschuttle’s views on the history of settler–Indigenous relations.

Results

Conclusion