Stabilising Violence in Colonial Rule: Settlement and the Indentured Labour Trade in Queensland in the 1870s

Abstract

This article examines the dynamics of colonial violence through three apparently insignificant and disconnected events. In Queensland in the 1870s, a structural framework of laws and regulations standardised violent and often fatal conditions in the labour trade. In the imagined remoteness of frontiers from civilisation, Indigenous, indentured and non-white peoples were grouped together with environmental and natural hazards to be battled. Colonial governance called for more subtle forms of violence. Inaction and acquiescence played a role in the sanction, maintenance and institutionalisation of violence in conventionalised forms. The central theme of the article is that violence was inherent to the colonial project. It shows the shared role of humanitarian concerns and the need for land and labour in the performance and regulation of colonial violence. It provides insight into the role of violence in colonial relations more generally as it illustrates how violence in and around Queensland was consciously produced and operated. Each of the chosen incidents shows that violence was highly rationalised around principles such as race, and how implicit sanctions rendered violence non-visible as understandings of violence and its justification were normalised.