Hi EJ,

Yeah, the legal system was pretty brutal until Peel's reforms in the 1820s. One of my gr-gr-gr-grandmothers was pinged for theft of an expensive item (and nabbed just up the street trying to sell it) in about 1812 and given the option of transportation or execution: she said she didn't want to be transported because she got sea-sick, but the judge commuted the sentence anyway.

Nick,

It would be interesting to trace the gradual spread of Islam over what is now Indonesia: I suspect that it was slower in Sulawesi and eastern Java - and in eastern Indonesia generally - than in, say, Aceh (although the first Muslim conversions in Java seemed to have been around Gresik in the sixteenth century, about the time that the first Christian missionaries got there. The people there weren't exactly a blank slate, being strongly animist, with Hinduism and Buddhism being very influential across Java and Sumatra, not to mention Bali.

Hey, thanks for the hominems, guys ! Nothing else ?

Joe

NNN asks: Why do you say "spared"? What exactly is that?
Posted by nicknamenick, Monday, 18 September 2017 6:21:05 PM

"Spared" means it didn't happen to them. The march of the Islamic cult stopped in Bali, though it didn't stop the Moslems murdering so many people in 1965 that the sea wall at Bali beach consists of packed skulls. This didn't happen in Australia because the occupation following the British landing, and the democratic society that superseded it from 1854, caused the rapid march of Islam to be slowed down.

Joe, my comments are informed from doing years of research and reading from the likes of Attwood, Marks, Johnson, McFarlane, Clements, Brodie, Reynolds, Ryan, Connor, Flood, Maynard, Goodall, Pascoe, Langton and firsthand accounts from those such as Watkin Tench and David Collins. To label my comments as BS is to label all of the above as such for creating it. Nice work in trying to trash (mostly) esteemed historians.

You also misrepresent my comments about convicts and literacy levels. Again, the recorded history clearly shows many were illiterate beyond being able to write their name…although that was often enough for them to be recorded as being literate. Of course, not ALL had poor literacy levels but if you had read my comment with care you would have noted that there was a distinct lack of resources to write on for those away from settlements and on the frontiers. Literate or not, it makes no difference if there is nothing to write with and on. And it is worth noting you accuse me of not having facts and then present the following, ‘ I think most would have been quite literate - in fact, I doubt whether many of them were ever flogged’. All unsubstantiated opinion.

When it came to languages very few missions allowed native languages to be spoken. Many of them banned it and punishments were given out to those attempting to speak in their own language or engage in cultural practices. Some missions did allow cultural practices to continue but they were the minority. Missions, overall, caused more damage than they prevented though, as they often failed to recognize tribal differences and would put feuding groups together and then wonder why there was conflict.

And to finish with as I have made graphically clear previously, just because something is written doesn’t make it true. Keep on believing the master narrative though as it clearly suits your purpose and outdated (and discredited) views.

Emperor Julian
"And it still remains true that Aborigines were spared the horrific megadeath injustices and massacres that have prevailed in Moslem Indonesia in recent times, even to this day in captive West Papua."
OK the Muslims who weren't in Oz didn't massacre Aborigines in Oz. Can't argue with that . Or with Oz newspapers and histories about British attacks on Aborigines . Dutch massacred Balinese prisoners.Yanks killed ."The war and occupation by the U.S. changed the cultural landscape of the islands, as people dealt with an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 total Filipino civilians dead,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] disestablishment of the Catholic Church in the Philippines as a state religion, and the introduction of the English language in the islands as the primary language of government, education, business, industry, and among families and educated individuals increasingly in future decades."
Loudmouth.
Your Indonesian history is so far off the truth that it resembles your Australian Aboriginal history.

Loudmouth wrote: "Yeah, the legal system was pretty brutal until Peel's reforms in the 1820s."

Peel's reforms notwithstanding, the British judiciary are still corrupt up to the armpits today. See Lord Denning's comments supporting the frameup of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four in the late 1970s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Denning,_Baron_Denning) - and Denning was one of the less-worse of the British judges! Convicts sent to the Penal Colony were victims of this gross injustice and to call them criminals is simply more injustice.

The rebellion against the British at Eureka was a breath of fresh air and its date - December 03 (1854) is by far the most appropriate for commemorating our national heritage.

Hi Minotaur,

Well, I suppose there is a sort of hierarchy of evidence, something like this:

* physical evidence, forensic examinations of sites, artifacts;

* primary written sources, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous;

* secondary and tertiary written sources, such as the authors who you rely on;

* story.

Any judge in any court would be aware of this sort of break-down. What do you reckon she might tend to rely on ?

I don't disbelieve or deny, I simply suspend my convictions about something happening until, ideally, there is something of the first source mentioned. Primary written sources are probably less reliable unless they are cross-checked or triangulated by other primary sources.

The third option, secondary written sources, can't be any more reliable than primary sources. That's logical. 'Story' - which by definition provides no evidence at all, is particularly unreliable, unless backed up by the first two in some way.

I've typed up about fifteen thousand pages - pages, not words - of primary data and it's on my web-site: www.firstsources.info . Clearly, I'm biased towards first sources (otherwise I would have called the site www.prooflessyarns.info). But physical evidence would be more crucial even that primary sources.

My trigger, back in about 1983, was the 600-page Journal of the Rev. George Taplin, missionary who set up Pt McLeay, on Lake Alexandrina, my wife's community. Of course, being on the extreme Left back then, I suspected from the outset that he was doctoring his Journal especially for me to read, 124 years later, sanitising and fabricating everything that he was REALLY doing. But it didn't take too long to realise that this was paranoid fantasy, he simply didn't have time to doctor anything, especially not for me. So I settled back and enjoyed it. Like most missionaries, he was an amazing and a good man, treasuring the language and culture of the people, dying of exhaustion in their Cause. Would that somebody on the Left could be as dedicated. No ? Anybody ? No, all wnakers.

Joe