Salutary lessons : Native police and the ‘civilising’ role of legalised violence in colonial Australia

Journal article


Nettelbeck, Amanda and Ryan, Lyndall. (2018). Salutary lessons : Native police and the ‘civilising’ role of legalised violence in colonial Australia. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 46(1), pp. 47-68. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017.1390894
AuthorsNettelbeck, Amanda and Ryan, Lyndall
Abstract

Over much of the nineteenth century, recurring problems of covert and opportunistic conflict between settlers and Indigenous peoples produced considerable debate across the British settler world about how frontier violence could be legally curbed. At the same time, the difficulty of imposing a rule of law on new frontiers was often seen by colonial states as justification for the imposition of order through force. Examining all the mainland Australian colonies from the 1830s to the end of the nineteenth century, this paper asks how this contradictory dilemma played out through deployment of ‘native police’ and the ‘civilising’ role of legalised violence as a strategy for managing the settler frontier. In light of wider debate about a humanely administered empire, Australia’s first native police force established in New South Wales in 1837 was conceived as a measure that would assist in the conciliation and ‘amelioration’ of Aboriginal people. In the coming decades, other Australian colonies employed native police either as dedicated forces or as individual assistants attached to mounted police detachments. Over time, the capacity they held to impose extreme violence on Aboriginal populations in the service of protecting pastoral investments came to reflect an implicit acceptance that punitive measures were required to bring order to disorderly frontiers.

By tracing a gradual shift in the perceived role of native police from one of ‘civilising’ Aboriginal people to one of ‘civilising’ the settler state itself, this paper draws out some of the conditions under which state-sanctioned force became naturalised and legitimated. It concludes that, as an instrument of frontier management, native policing reflected an enduring problem for Australia’s colonial governments in reconciling a legal obligation to treat Aboriginal people as subjects of the crown with a perceived requirement to bring them under colonial authority through the ‘salutary lessons’ of legalised violence.

Keywordsnative police; frontier policing; settler colonialism; colonial governance; Aboriginal history; violence
Year2018
JournalThe Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
Journal citation46 (1), pp. 47-68
PublisherRoutledge
ISSN0308-6534
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2017.1390894
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85032465510
Research or scholarlyResearch
Page range47-68
FunderAustralian Research Council (ARC)
Publisher's version
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All rights reserved
File Access Level
Controlled
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online27 Oct 2017
Publication process dates
Deposited16 Jun 2021
ARC Funded ResearchThis output has been funded, wholly or partially, under the Australian Research Council Act 2001
Grant IDARC/DP150100914
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