What was the reaction of the natives of australia against the advent of the european
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Answer:What was the reaction of the natives of australia against the advent of the european
Explanation:The Europeans who came to Australia already had ideas and theories about Indigenous peoples and these often clouded their ability to understand the peoples they met.
Wurundjeri people at the signing of Batman’s Treaty, 1835
In 1770 Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay, home of the Eora people, and claimed possession of the East Coast of Australia for Britain. According to European international law at the time, there were only three ways that Britain could take possession of another territory:
If it was uninhabited the territory could be claimed and settled.
If the territory was already inhabited, permission could be sought from the inhabitants to use or purchase some of their land.
If the territory was already inhabited, Britain could take over by invasion and conquest. But the original inhabitants would still have rights after such a war of conquest.
Britain did not follow any of these processes in Australia. They did not formally declare war. And although they were well aware that Australia was inhabited, the British Government ignored this fact and proceeded as though it were settling an empty land. They did so on the newly developed belief that land occupied by ‘hunter gatherer’ societies could be deemed to be ownerless. The legality of this action, even according to European internal law at the time, was questionable. Later, in the nineteenth century, this action was justified with the development of the legal concept of terra nullius (Borsch, 2001).
The British set sail from England at a time when ideas of ‘the noble savage’ were in circulation. The idea of the noble savage was about people who were found to be living in a natural state, untouched by the corruption and degeneration brought about by industrialization, urbanization and ‘progress’. Explorers could travel the world looking for these ‘untouched’ people who lived as nature, and god, intended. They would live simply off the land, their tools and implements might be unsophisticated but they would have a natural grace and dignity which would set them apart from Europeans. Noble savage imagery often included a critique of European society.