A review by melbsreads
Van Diemen's Land by James Boyce
5.0
This book is fabulous. It covers Tasmanian history from the arrival of sealers and whalers on the Bass Strait islands and the settlement of the Derwent Valley in 1803 to the colony's name changing from Van Diemen's Land to Tasmania in 1856. It's a history that's been told many times before, but Boyce's history is different. It's primarily environmental, discussing how the landscape and the abundant wildlife of Van Diemen's Land shaped the colony and ensured not only its survival but the health of its inhabitants. At all points of the story, Boyce discusses the impact that settlement had on the Indigenous population, from early and often fraught encounters to regular and friendly contact with convict shepherds to the massacres of the 1820s and the eventual banishment and decimation of the population at Wybalenna.
There's little of the traditional history here, the history of governors and the colonial elite. This, instead, is the story of Van Diemen's Land's common people. The initial convicts, the women, the Aboriginal population. It's incredibly readable, even when it's utterly heartbreaking. The appendix on the colony's government policies towards Aboriginal people from 1827-1838 feels slightly out of place - it almost feels like Boyce started writing a separate book on Indigenous history, and then it somehow ended up published in this instead - but it's still an excellent and important inclusion to the story.
Essentially, this is the story that doesn't get taught in schools but which really should be.
There's little of the traditional history here, the history of governors and the colonial elite. This, instead, is the story of Van Diemen's Land's common people. The initial convicts, the women, the Aboriginal population. It's incredibly readable, even when it's utterly heartbreaking. The appendix on the colony's government policies towards Aboriginal people from 1827-1838 feels slightly out of place - it almost feels like Boyce started writing a separate book on Indigenous history, and then it somehow ended up published in this instead - but it's still an excellent and important inclusion to the story.
Essentially, this is the story that doesn't get taught in schools but which really should be.