Aborigines and European Social Hierarchy

Abstract

Until the 1840s the main emphasis of policy makers in the Australian colonies was on the incorporation of the Aborigines into colonial society. Confidence in this plan declined as the century progressed and some argued all along that the blacks belonged to a doomed race which could never be assimilated. Whereas assimilationists of the mid-twentieth century made no mention of class when they projected future Aboriginal adoption of the 'Australian way of life' their counterparts a hundred years and more earlier usually had a clear picture of a hierarchical society of ranks and orders differentiated by wealth and power and status. Views about colonial society varied and changed over time yet any discussion about the absorption of the Aborigines necessarily involved the question of where in the hierarchy they would be placed. The race question was by its very nature also a class question. This was apparent in almost every area of white-Aboriginal relations - in the policies and attitudes of the Europeans and in the Aboriginal response as well.