Dubious Sources

Murder at Myall Creek: The Trial That Defined a Nation
by Mark Tedeschi
Simon & Schuster, 2016, 319 pages, $32.99
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Someone gave me, as a Christmas present, Mark Tedeschi’s book Murder at Myall Creek. It is not a bad read, though some things are left unexplained, and the book has no index. My criticism of the book arises from its somewhat dubious scholarship.

Tedeschi quotes from an 1837 report of a select committee of the British parliament:

In London, a Select Committee of the House of Commons on Aborigines in the British Settlements concluded that:

The invasion of Aboriginal lands by Europeans has intentionally or unintentionally led to the destruction of Aboriginal society, even genocide … Too often their territory has been usurped; their property seized; their numbers diminished; their character debased; the spread of civilization impeded … It might be presumed that the native inhabitants of any land have an incontrovertible right to their own soil; a plain and sacred right, however, which seems not to have been understood. Europeans have entered their borders uninvited, and, when there, have not only acted as if they were undoubted lords of the soil, but have punished the natives as aggressors if they have evinced a disposition to live in their own country.

Genocide? That word sounded very twentieth-centuryish to me. So I decided to “do a Wind­schuttle”. I looked up the endnote. I expected that Tedeschi would have referenced his quotation to the actual report of the Select Committee. But no, he referenced his quotation to John Ross (ed), Chronicle of Australia, Australasia Pty Ltd, 1993, page 240. I went to a library and located the book, which presents itself as a collection of newspaper articles and other documents highlighting events in Australian history. On page 240 I found what purported to be an article from an unnamed newspaper:

Charges of race murder

London, Aug 29

The Select Committee on Aborigines in the British Settlements has tabled its report in the House of Commons. It does not make for happy reading.

The conclusion that it reluctantly but inevitably reaches is that the invasion of Aboriginal lands by Europeans has intentionally or unintentionally led to the destruction of Aboriginal society, even genocide.

“The intercourse of Europeans”, it says, “in general without any exception in favour of the subjects of Great Britain, has been, unless when attended by missionary exertions, a source of many calamities to uncivilised nations. Too often their territory has been usurped …”

Tedeschi began his apparent quotation from about halfway through the second lead-in sentence of Ross’s purported newspaper article—that is, from the words “the invasion of Aboriginal lands”.

From a reading of Ross’s purported newspaper article, it is clear that the report of the Select Committee did not contain the first two sentences of Ross’s article and that, accordingly, the report of the Select Committee did not contain the first sentence of Tedeschi’s apparent quotation.

To make sure, I checked the actual report of the Select Committee, via the National Library of Australia’s eResources. I found that the name of the report was Report from the Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements) with the Minutes of Evidence. I also found that the first sentence of Tedeschi’s apparent quotation, containing the word genocide, did not appear in the report.

I checked the Macquarie Dictionary for the meaning and origin of the word genocide, and found: “noun extermination of a national or racial group as a planned move [Greek geno(s) race + -cide; coined in 1944 by Dr Raphael Lemkin, 1900–59, Polish lawyer]”.

At the end of Murder at Myall Creek is a note headed “About the Author”. It states: “Mark Tedeschi AM QC is the Senior Crown Prosecutor for New South Wales. He has practised as a barrister in the criminal courts for almost 40 years …” I would have expected that a QC specialising in criminal law would have been more careful with his quotations than appears to have been the case in this instance. I would also have expected that a QC specialising in criminal law would have known that genocide is a word from the mid-twentieth century.

But perhaps Tedeschi can be forgiven, just a little. At the commencement of Chronicle of Australia, Ross states, “In our news pages we have sought to ensure that nothing appears which was not known or available at the time.” In saying this, Ross grossly misled his readers—if his purported newspaper article on page 240 is typical of the book.

At another point in Murder at Myall Creek, I again baulked at something Tedeschi had written. Again, I “did a Windschuttle”, and looked up the endnote. I found that, on this occasion, Tedeschi gave two sources for his views. One was Wikipedia. The other was a website called TreatyRepublic.