Books

Stephen Gapps
Uprising

History, our high-school teachers remind their students, is not the past. Rather, it is the study of the evidence – primarily written evidence – that remains of the past. As the availability of evidence and the focus of historians changes, so does history. Thus we have the “history wars”, which have raged for the past 30 years of the Australian project, as historians give fresh attention to the treatment of Indigenous peoples, foregrounding voices that had been silenced and opening questions long considered settled.

A key point of contention in these “wars” is whether the conflict between European and Indigenous people should be regarded by historians, war memorials and the Australian public as wars. Serious academic discussion of this point arose in the early 1980s, and the first book-length “military history of the Australian frontier wars” – written by historian John Connor and helpfully titled Australian Frontier Wars – was published in 2002. More followed, including two by historian Stephen Gapps: The Sydney Wars (2018) and Gudyarra (2021), which carefully examine early conflicts in the Sydney and Bathurst areas respectively.

Gapps’ third book, Uprising: War in the Colony of New South Wales, 1838–1844, continues this work, though there is no requirement to read his earlier books, with their separate identities flagged by their distinctly different covers. Uprising features a work by Dhungatti man and Archibald Prize-winner Blak Douglas. It also sets itself apart by covering a far greater range, stretching from Brisbane, through the New South Wales Central West, to Melbourne – significantly, an area that greatly overlaps with the Murray–Darling Basin.

As the titles of his books suggest, it is clear to Gapps that the frontier conflicts were war. He documents support for this position through extensive reference to the rhetorical and logistical evidence of the time. A great many of the sentences in the book contain a quote from primary sources such as contemporary journals, letters and newspaper articles. More important, however, is Gapps’ exploration of the nature of this particular war.

Gudyarra looked at the “First Wiradyuri War of Resistance”. The period covered here contains what has been called the “Second Wiradyuri War of Resistance”, as well as other localised conflicts. In Australian Frontier Wars, Connor repeated the accepted interpretation of these events: “The non-hierarchical organisation of Aboriginal society meant they were unable to unite against the invaders, and each Aboriginal group fought the British on its own.” Uprising rejects this interpretation. Its main contribution is the understanding of this period as one of “co-ordinated resistance”.

Gapps sets the scene. Over the course of these six years, the colonial population increased from 98,000 to 182,000. Squatters moved beyond the “Limits of Location” around Sydney in frenzied pastoral “land rushes”. The territory beyond the Blue Mountains was perfect for sheep and cattle, “as if”, the explorer Major Thomas Mitchell noted, “specially prepared by the Creator for the industrious hands of Englishmen”. Four million sheep grew to six million. Wool accounted for “two-thirds of exports” from the new colony.

Smallpox had already struck the Indigenous population, and the great columns of sheep and cattle further displaced people and food animals. The locals met with the white people and saw they intended to stay. And, of course, Indigenous people knew this was happening across eastern Australia – it’s well established that they had a “vast network of trade routes throughout Australia, trading in goods but also ceremonies and stories”.

Squatters and explorers soon saw groups hundreds of miles from their traditional lands. The bush telegraph of smoke signals preceded settler convoys. New tactics were employed in response to the incursions. Roads were blocked and turned into traps, large groups of warriors were gathered and harrying raids were made on sheep and cattle runs. In particular, infrastructure and livestock were targeted, causing runs to be abandoned, sometimes repeatedly as new squatters took over. This was guerilla warfare, as understood by leading European figures in the colony, many of whom had fought in the Napoleonic Wars.

Gapps does a good job at presenting the evidence and making it legible to modern readers. Most comes from informal writing, so would have required significant effort to extract, even when the events were overtly stated. Public condemnation of attacks led by Major Mitchell and the conviction and hanging of seven white men for the Myall Creek massacre resulted in more circumspect accounts. As the uprising progressed, the increasingly militarised settlers suppressed both news of the resistance and their counteroffensives.

The end notes contain additional comments of interest, although, with the rich detail provided throughout, it would be nice to have an index twice as long to help navigate connections across the book. There are also occasional errors, notably a fiery quotation used as a chapter title (“A commission to wage war against the aboriginal natives”) that has no explanation or source in the text or references. To me, that’s a minor omission, but such things have fuelled the history wars.

I found the author’s interpretation of 1838–1844 as a period of concerted resistance to be convincing. Others, especially those motivated to play down the violence of Australian settlement, will not. Some might wish the author would push his point more forcefully. Gapps is gentle and insistent rather than belligerent, though his subject matter is sometimes brutal. As a historian, he’s bringing a new focus and making available new evidence to study. This is a serious book, a seed of future inquiry. Uprising is clear: there’s much to learn about our past.

NewSouth, 336pp, $36.99

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on April 19, 2025 as "Uprising".

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