Early Modern Histories of Fire on the Australian Continent

This essay explores early modern European records of fire behaviours on the Australian continent. In particular, it analyses the perspectives provided in hitherto relatively unexplored records of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and situates these in relation to contemporary English and later French and British accounts of fire practices. It argues that knowledge, use and textual record of fire practices constituted a key form of power for Europeans, a site of invasion and a tool of violence. Fire produced knowledge of people, of their resources and of their technologies, particularly their weaponry. Fire could be harnessed for European possession. Fire communicated distinctiveness in these records, marking a boundary between Aboriginal peoples and Europeans, and, on some occasions, interactions around fire with Indigenous people aimed to transition local peoples to new technologies and to presumed civilisation. In their own practices, in their perceptions of Aboriginal fire behaviours and in the written accounts that they produced from their experiences, Europeans form part of the story of early modern histories of Antipodean fire. Understanding what such sources reveal and what they obscure can assist in situating them appropriately in modern discussions about historic fire behaviours on the Australian continent.

© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press.

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