Additional information on British reform,  The Russian Revolution, The Maori, Aborigines

and review of the reasons Great Britain exploded in rail transportation.

The Spread of Transportation: England and the Development of Railroads

by James Emmons Of all the great innovations to emerge from the Industrial Revolution, one of the most significant was the harnessing of steam and the subsequent rise of the English railway system. Although an engineering feat in its own right, the development of steam locomotion was not merely important scientifically, it also helped to ensure success in manufacturing—a hallmark of the Industrial Revolution—by providing a method of quick delivery for mass-produced goods. As they improved, railways became vital, not only linking industrial centers with major cities, but also countries throughout continental Europe . The large migrations of people, whether from the countryside to new factory towns or from one European nation to another, all relied on steam power. The speed of rail and the potential to carry large amounts of goods or large numbers of people also changed the nature of war. By the advent of World War I, the military use of rail was well established. Along with other such technological advances as the tank and the airplane, the railroad spelled the end of traditional warfare, which had relied on horse and infantry. England was the force behind the rail revolution, adapting old designs and improving them so well that the rest of Europe looked to the island for guidance. The Early History of Steam The invention of steam-powered machines was neither native to England nor to the modern period. Primitive designs date back to the ancient world when Heron of Alexandria, a first-century A.D. Greek scientist and inventor, devised machines that used steam. True progress, however, came as early as the 17th century when Dutch and French engineers designed working steam engines. English scientists at the turn of the 18th century improved those Continental machines. Advanced technology greatly aided flood-prone mining by helping to pump water out of mine shafts. Steam engines, which generate heat energy and channel it into mechanical energy, create a force that pushes a piston. The piston can be linked to a machine and drive a variety of mechanical devices. Although early machines used a lot of fuel and were prone to explode, they worked sufficiently well to justify further experimentation. Technological Innovation Mining produced two of the main requirements for rail travel: the need for transportation and a use for steam power. Since at least the mid-16th century, when Georgius Agricola discussed wooden rails in his De Re Metallica, or Concerning Metals, miners had used rails to move coal and ore cars more easily. However, wooden rails were fragile and did not last long, a problem that plagued early rail systems until the 18th century, when English inventors replaced wood with metal. Water was a more serious problem. Mines often flooded during heavy rains or when the water table rose, which not only affected the output of the mine but also claimed many lives. To that end, Thomas Savery created a pump that used steam to haul more water than the traditional bucket method. Not a true steam engine, Savery's invention, nonetheless, paved the way for later developments. The "miner's friend," as the pump was called, was useful, but it only removed about 20 feet of water. Thanks to experiments with the machine conducted by Thomas Newcomen and John Calley, those pumps slowly changed into bona fide steam engines. It was British engineer James Watt's innovations that resulted in a marked improvement in transportation. Watt improved Newcomen's steam engine by developing a separate chamber for steam. That technological change did more than make steam engines safer, it also made them far more efficient. His innovation made it possible for pistons to move in two directions rather than the one direction, which was all machines relying on simple atmospheric pressure had allowed. English inventors continued to improve engine design in the next century. One such inventor, Richard Trevithick, whose early life was spent near the metal mines in Cornwall, England, gave steam power a much-needed push. Building on engines that drove water out of the deep, vertical shafts, Trevithick constructed a series of new steam engines that worked over land. The first of its kind, Trevithick's steam engine journeyed from Penydarren to the Merthyr-Cardiff Canal in Wales, a trip of about nine miles, in 1804. His machine could haul 15 tons of iron and carry 70 passengers, but despite its strength, the engine was too heavy and frequently broke the rails. While his engines ultimately failed, Trevithick's ideas stuck, and other English scientists picked up where the Cornish inventor left off. The Birth of English Rail Pride of place belongs to George Stephenson, a self-taught inventor, who refined a mining engine and created the Blucher, an engine that could haul 30 tons of coal. Stephenson continued to refine hauling engines until 1821, when he began building a passenger system that would ferry miners from Stockton to Darlington and transport coal from Durham to the River Tees. Four years later, on September 27, 1825, the first public system opened. The locomotive engine traveled at 15 miles an hour, taking its 450 passengers to Stockton. A later engine, the Rocket, a locomotive that Stephenson and his son built in an engineering contest to decide which engine would pull cars on the Liverpool-Manchester route, became the model for subsequent engines. Not merely a builder of locomotives, Stephenson also contributed to the infrastructure of rail travel by laying down 40 miles of track that connected the industrial centers of Liverpool and Manchester, working on bridge and tunnel design, and leveling the paths on which locomotives traveled. The success of his design, and its proven efficiency, gave rise to a burgeoning fascination and dependence on rail. In time, and thanks to America, whose Baltimore and Ohio Railroad first used them in 1895, electric locomotives began to replace steam-powered engines. In the late 1840s, the English experimented briefly with pneumatic power, a means of propulsion using compressed air pushed through tubes. Introduced by English rail engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the benefit of pneumatic power was that it reduced the weight put on the tracks. As a result, rail production became less costly and lighter to produce. Pneumatic power ultimately failed in 1848 as engineers could not figure out how to handle intersecting lines. Social Impact Rail irrevocably changed the English landscape. By the late 1830s, most of England's major cities were connected by rail. Several decades later, in the 1850s, England boasted 6,800 miles of track. Rail also had a monumental impact on the movement of goods, especially raw goods like coal, cotton, and timber, which in turn spurred textile, steel, and machinery manufacturing. The advent of the railroad also prompted expedient communication networks, including telegraphs and the daily newspapers. In addition, at the same time that those early lines linked mines and factory towns with one another and with shipping ports, passenger travel steadily grew. Railroads made travel faster, increasing personal and social mobility. With the legislation of Gladstone's Act of 1844, which imposed low-rate fares called parliamentary rates at a penny per mile, railroad travel became more accessible. Many people took advantage of railroad transportation; in 1850, 50% of tickets were bought at the parliamentary rate as compared to 1913, when 96% of tickets were purchased at that rate. The railroad also took a toll on the environment and on traditional modes of life. As the countryside and the cities grew more connected, both changed. Standard timetables, which developed in 1845, solved regional differences in scheduling, but they also took something away from the traditions of local, individual, and unique communities. Mail, travel, and business all occurred much faster than they had before, and as they sped up, so did the pace of life. For example, in 1862, it took only 10-and-a-half hours to travel from London to Edinburgh, while in 1836, that same trip took 43 hours. Throughout the Industrial Revolution in England, rural dwellers who had fallen on hard times sought work in the factory towns. With rail, people could uproot their families and leave the land that their families had lived on for generations. As a result, Victorian cities, like London, were crammed full of people, many of whom had come from the countryside, and many of whom were out of work. The coal smoke from locomotives, combined with the smoke from chimneys, affected public health, the land, and livestock. So, while a boon to commercial enterprise, the railroads had a darker side as well. Meanwhile, other rural residents chose to stay in the countryside. With a ready means of shipping, the production of such goods as textiles, food, and beer moved outward from the rural market. The rural market would have remained outside the vast transformations of the Industrial Revolution without the role of the railroad. Into the Modern Era England, already a world power, was made even stronger by the railroads. Commercially, the rail system boosted the rate at which products reached ports and cities for trade and helped workers get to their places of employment. As the model for rail, England also inspired its global neighbors to develop railroads of their own. Rail made it easier for armies to travel. Even before the outbreak of World War I, European armies discovered the benefit of rapid troop transport. For example, in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Germany overran Austria in only seven weeks, a feat accomplished with the help of railcars. World War I proved again the advantage of rail in deploying armies, but with the development of the automobile and airplane, rail began a slow decline. Thereafter, railways increasingly took to transporting consumer goods and ferrying passengers.

Russian Revolution of 1917 The Russian Revolution refers to the events of 1917, which overthrew the Russian imperial regime and instituted the first communist state. The impact of the revolution on the leaders of Russia and the world was without parallel in 20th-century history. Both the reality of a communist government and its ideological commitment to fomenting international revolution shifted the basis of international diplomacy away from the 19th-century practice of balancing great powers and into the 20th-century struggle for ideology. The structure of the Russian government had already been shaken in the revolution of 1905. All of the complaints from that earlier conflict had been greatly exacerbated during World War I, as the Russian people endured shortages of food and fuel (necessary for heat), the increasingly repressive rule of Czar Nicholas II, and the deaths of thousands of Russians in military defeats. In March 1917, the czar was forced to abdicate because of riots in the capital, Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). The liberal Provisional Government in coalition with the Petrograd Soviet came to power. The liberals, led by Aleksandr Kerensky, were dedicated to parliamentary rule and many far reaching reforms. Yet they also continued the war effort, anxious to identify with the liberal republics of their allies, France and England. Unable to pursue the war and social change, the government was plagued by continued social unrest. Such unrest provided the conditions in which the more radical wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party, the Bolsheviks, were able to gain control of the workers' soviets in the summer of 1917. In the October Revolution (November by the Western calendar), the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin organized an insurgency of armed workers, soldiers, and sailors who seized government buildings and the Winter Palace in Petrograd without much opposition. Harder fighting was required in Moscow, but that city was also brought under control as the Bolshevik Party took over the government. They soon signed a peace treaty with Germany that many Russians thought was humiliating. More problematic was the fact that the Bolsheviks were not the most popular party. The armies of Britain, France, the United States, and Japan sent troops to Russia in an attempt to reverse the revolution, but the intervention accomplished nothing, and the war weary troops soon withdrew. Far more devastating was the Russian Civil War in which czarist generals, religious peasants, and minority nationalities fought against the communist regime. By 1922, Lenin and the Bolsheviks (renamed the All-Russian Communist Party) had restored order through the military expertise of the Red Army under the command of Leon Trotsky and a new economic program that stabilized the food supply. By 1923, a new constitution recognized the multinational character of the nation, changing its name from Russia to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. References: Carroll, Warren H., The Rise and Fall of the Communist Revolution, 1995; Dziewanowski, M. K., A History of Soviet Russia, 1997; Katkov, George, Russia 1917: The February Revolution, 1967; Riasanovsky, Nicholas, A History of Russia, 2000; Thompson, John M., Revolutionary Russia, 1917, 1981.

Related Entries  Abstracts Lenin, Trotsky, and the Arts of Insurrection: The Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, October 11-13, 1917  Biographies Aleksandr Kerensky Vladimir Lenin Nicholas II Grand Duke Nicholas Grigori Rasputin Leon Trotsky Grigory Zinoviev  Documents Communist Manifesto (1848)  Events Russian Civil War Russian Revolution of 1905 World War I  Images Russian Revolution of 1917 abdication of Czar Nicholas II  Organizations Bolshevik Party

Maoris in their pah, or fortified village, during the Maori Wars with the British, which lasted from 1845 to 1872.   [North Wind Picture Archives]

Related Entries  Countries New Zealand  Documents Treaty of Waitangi (1840)  Events Maori Wars  Images Maori war canoe Maori statue  Organizations Maori

Irish famine victims Victims of the potato famine in Ireland. One of the great tragedies of the 19th century, Ireland's potato famine claimed more than 1 million lives during the period of 1845 to 1854 and led to a mass emigration of famine survivors to the United States. [Library of Congress] Irish Potato Famine   As Ireland approached the 1840s, conditions were ripe for disaster. Over a fourth of its population—2 million out of 8 million—were without regular employment. Some had found shelter in workhouses built at the expense of local taxpayers as mandated by the Irish Poor Law of 1838. Many more roamed the countryside begging and sleeping in ditches. Nearly half of the country's rural families lived in windowless, mud cabins of one room and survived on the potatoes that they could grow on the half an acre or so of land for which they often paid a very high rent. Only the wealthy landowners—many of them absentee landlords living in England—had any security at all. Potato Blight The peasants were forced to rent the land they lived and worked on from wealthy landowners in England. The crop they depended on primarily for food and for a portion of their rent was potatoes. Since its introduction to Ireland in 1790, the potato had provided a cheap and plentiful source of food for Ireland's peasants. The potato could grow in the poorest conditions, with very little labor. That fact was important because the peasants had to spend most of their waking hours working for their landlords and had precious little time to tend their own crops. Yet the hardy crop was no match for Phytophthora infestans, the potato blight that struck with a vengeance in 1845. That airborne fungus attacked the potato plants; it produced black spots and a white mold on the leaves and soon rotted the potato to a pulp. As much as 90% of that year's potato crop was destroyed or unfit for consumption. Laissez-Faire Government The government of Great Britain had long practiced an economic theory known as laissez-faire, which held that it was not a government's job to provide aid for its citizens or to interfere with the free market of goods or trade. As a result, the British government provided minimal relief to the starving peasants. Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel did, however, push to repeal the Corn Laws, laws that had been in place since the late 1400s and that protected the investments of wealthy British landowners by subjecting any foreign crops brought into Britain to high taxes. Those laws had pretty much limited the grain supply to what was raised in Britain and guaranteed a high price for it. By repealing the laws, Parliament cleared the way for less expensive grains to be brought into Ireland to relieve the famine, but even then, the peasants had no money with which to buy bread. Although Peel was successful in securing the repeal, the resulting protest split the British Conservative Party, and he was forced to resign. His successor, Lord John Russell, was a rigid supporter of laissez-faire and was of very little assistance to the Irish. Evictions The blight continued to affect crops for the next few years. Three more crop failures occurred in 1846, 1848, and 1851. Having eaten any of the potatoes spared by the blight and spent what few coins they had for food, tens of thousands of peasants were unable to pay their rents and were evicted from their homes. They had no place to go. The workhouses were already overcrowded, and there were no opportunities for employment anywhere. Matters worsened when in December 1848, cholera and typhus began to spread through the workhouses, pauper hospitals, and cramped jails in Ireland. Emigration It seemed that the only viable option was to leave. The Poor Law Extension Act held landowners responsible for providing for their own poor. So, many landowners evicted tenants, paid their passage to America or Australia , and ended up with the opportunity to commercialize their agricultural efforts or change from cultivation to beef and dairy farming. Between 1845 and 1855, nearly 2 million people emigrated from Ireland to America and Australia, and another 750,000 went to England. For the emigrants, matters worsened once again. Thousands of people died while crossing the Atlantic. Unregulated ship owners often crowded hundreds of desperate emigrants onto rickety, undersupplied vessels that earned the label "coffin ships." In many cases, those ships reached port only after losing a third of their passengers to disease, hunger, and other causes. The August 4, 1847 edition of the Toronto Globe carried this report on the arrival of an emigrant ship: The Virginius from Liverypool, with 496 passengers, had lost 158 by death, nearly one third of the whole, and she had 180 sick; above one half of the whole will never see their home in the New World. A medical officer at the quarantine station on Grosse Ile off Quebec reported that "the few who were able to come on deck were ghastly, yellow-looking spectres, unshaven and hollow-cheeked . . . not more than six or eight were really healthy and able to exert themselves." Starvation in the Midst of Plenty Authenticated research reveals that the Irish peasants starved in the midst of plenty. Wheat, oats, barley, butter, eggs, beef, and pork were exported from Ireland in large quantities during the so-called famine. All those products were the property of the wealthy, mostly absentee landowners who felt no obligation to forego profits in order to feed the masses. In fact, those goods were brought through the worst famine-stricken areas guarded by British regiments and shipped from guarded ports to England. In 1861, author John Mitchel charged, "The Almighty indeed sent the potato blight but the English created the famine . . . a million and half men, women, and children were carefully, prudently, and peacefully slain by the English government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance which their own hands created." The Irish potato famine took more than a million lives and forever changed Ireland in a profound way. It also changed centuries-old agricultural practices by hastening the end of subsistence farming and ushering in the era of commercial farming. The famine also spurred new waves of emigration and thus shaped the histories of the United States, Australia, and England as well. Today, more than 13 million Americans have Irish roots. Related Entries  Biographies Robert Peel  Countries Ireland  Documents Poor Law (1834)  Events Irish potato famine  Glossary Terms Corn Laws  Images illustration of a "coffin ship" emigration eviction Irish famine victims  Organizations Anti-Corn Law League Poor Law Commission  Statistics Population of Great Britain and Ireland, 1801-1901

Related Entries  Countries Ireland  Events Irish potato famine  Glossary Terms famine  Images illustration of a "coffin ship" emigration eviction

Maori war canoe A Maori war canoe. Between 1845 and 1872, a series of conflicts were fought in New Zealand between the indigenous Maori people and British colonists. In the end, the British confiscated great tracts of land and completely disrupted Maori society. Members of the King Movement took over the west-central North Island, finally annexing it to the British in 1881. [Gianni Dagli Orti/Corbis]

Related Entries  Countries New Zealand  Documents Treaty of Waitangi (1840)  Events Maori King Movement Maori Wars  Images fortified Maori village Maori statue  Maps New Zealand  Organizations Maori

--Click The Australian Aborigines here for additional information on Aborigines---

Then, read this one:

Aborigines

The Worlds Oldest Inhabitants?

The word "aboriginal" means "the first" or "earliest known". The word was first used in Italy and Greece to describe people who lived there, natives or old inhabitants, not newcomers, or invaders.

Australia may well be the home of the worlds first people. Stone tools discovered in a quarry near Penrith, New South Wales, in 1971 show that humans lived in Australia at least twelve thousand years before they appeared in Europe.

So far three early sites have been discovered in Australia, the Penrith one being dated about forty-seven thousand years old, a Western Australian site forty thousand years old and another in Lake Mungo, New South Wales, thirty-five thousand years old.

To put this in perspective, so that we can appreciate the time scales, since the first fleet arrived in 1788 there have only been 8 generations of settlers. On the other hand, there have been in excess of 18,500 generations of aboriginals!!!

Aborigines And Their Culture

More than 30,000 years ago the population of the world was small, and people lived in family groups, hunting, fishing and food gathering. There where no cultivated crops, animals were not herded for food and metalworking was yet to be discovered.

At that time, known as the last great Ice Age, Australia was joined to New Guinea. Islands such as Java and Borneo were larger than today, sea passages between them narrower. This made it possible for the ancestors of the people now called Australian Aboriginals to reach Australia from lands to

It is not known from where the Aboriginals began their journey, but it is certain that people with some kind of water craft crossed the 100 - 160 kilometres stretches of water between the islands to the north; and reach the southern continent. This sea voyage is the earliest evidence of sea travel by prehistoric man.

As the ice flows of the Ice Age began to melt, the sea level rose, isolating Australia, and making the sea passages too wide for crossing by the simple forms of watercraft available at the time. About 10,000 years ago, Tasmania became separated from the main land, thus isolating the people there, and about 5,000 years ago the Australian continent took on the shape of that it has today.

Nobody knows how long the Aboriginals took to reach Australia, or how they settled the continent when they arrived. At present archaeologists are searching ancient camping sites for evidence of their history, and each new discovery provides links in the history of the thousands of years before the white man reached the Great South Land. New discoveries also are changing previous ideas about the length of time that Aboriginals have been in Australia, and modern scientific methods of dating have provided new possibilities for further research. It is certain that man reached Australia more than 40,000 years ago. Australia, once called the "lost continent of prehistory", is fast losing that title.

A Perfect Environment

The first Aboriginals found an Australia with a better environment than today. Large animals, now extinct, provided more meat than the animals with which we are familiar. Some parts of the continent were richer in vegetable foods, but the land contained no cultivated crops, or animals that could be domesticated, such as cattle and sheep.

Whatever their early history, Aboriginals had settled throughout the entire continent many thousands of years before the white man came and had evolved a way of living that was in harmony with the environment, and that satisfied their needs. Because Australia was isolated from the rest of the world, Aboriginals had little contact with outside groups from whom to "borrow" techniques, to trade goods, to acquire crop seeds, or animals, as was happening in the North of the world. It was only for a few centuries prior to white settlement that visitors came from islands to the north. However, the Aboriginals adjusted to the environment, learned to understand it and gained the maximum from it.

Land, The Ultimate Provider

Each clan grouping occupied a well-defined area of land, their "clan" territory with which they had close and dependent relationship. The group belonged with, or to, the land - like the animals and plants of the area; man was an integral part of a relatively unchanging environment. They had no concept of being able to buy or sell land, the land was given long ago in the Dreamtime. Land was not something to be bartered, and the future of the group was tied closely with the continued ability of the land to provide food for gathering, animals to kill, and fresh water.

Gatherers

Aborigines were limited to the range of foods occurring naturally in their area, but they knew exactly when, where and how to find everything edible. But food was not obtained without effort. In some areas both men and women had to spend from half to two thirds of each day hunting or foraging for food.

Inland, the quest for water was a life and death matter. Aborigines survived where others would perish. They knew where the water holes and soaks were in their area. They drained dew, and obtained water from certain trees and roots. They even dug up and squeezed out frogs, which store water in their bodies.

Within the clan grouping, all speaking the same language, or the same dialect, small bands of families carried out their daily living as a group. They moved around their clan country, from place to place, depending on the season and the availability of food. In coastal areas, and the more fertile parts of the continent, groups were relatively static, because food was readily obtainable, but in the desert areas vast tracts of land could support only a few people, and these had to travel long distances in their endless quest for food.

The necessity to be mobile meant that Aboriginals could afford only those possessions that were essential to their way of life. Many belongings were multipurpose - like the coolamon, a curved wooden dish, which was used to dig, to carry water or the baby; to toss seeds or collect the plant food gathered daily by the women.

Hunters

Often, the men carried only a spear thrower, spears, and those weapons needed to procure the animals native to his territory. The women carried the rest - babies, household utensils - to leave the men free to use the weapons.

Full use was made of natural resources to produce whatever possessions were needed. String, cord and hair were woven into nets, baskets, mats and fishing lines. Wood and bark were used to make dishes, shields, spears, and boomerangs, to make dugout canoes, and other types of watercraft, such as rafts. Stone was chipped to form tools that could be used as weapons, or to cut and carve wood. Large pebbles and flat stones were used to grind seeds to flour. Pieces of bone were sharpened into spear points, and even used as needles to sew together skin for cloaks and rugs. Skins of animals were treated to carry water, and in some places human skulls were used for the same purpose.

Clubs, nets, snare and spears were used to catch different types of animals and birds. Large animals were speared or clubbed, smaller ones caught in pits and nets. Fish were speared, or caught with traps, and sometimes water was poisoned with plant juices. The foot tracks of animals - and of every member of the group - were recognized. After years of training, the Aboriginals developed extraordinary skills in tracking their prey, by following broken twigs, or by very faint markings, even on hard ground.

Many ingenious devices were used to get within striking distance of prey. The men approached their prey running where there was cover, or "freezing" and crawling in the open. They were careful to stay downwind, and sometimes covered themselves with mud to disguise their smell.

Mud also served as camouflage, or the hunter held a bush in front of him while stalking in the open. He glided through the water with a bunch of rushes or a lily-leaf over his head until he was close enough to pull down a water bird. He prepared "hides" and, with bait or birdcalls, lured birds to within grabbing distance. He attracted emus, which are inquisitive birds, by imitating their movements with a stick and a bunch of feathers or some other simple device.

The catch of the hunter was in addition too, not always constant, to the daily plant food and small animals gathered by women. Women collected the larger part of the group's daily needs, and their skill in finding food, even in the poorest conditions, often kept the group alive. Fruit, manna, honey, lizards, snakes, witchetty grubs, roots, yams, grass seeds - almost anything grew, or moved could be use for food. The women then usually prepared and cooked the food in an earth oven.

As Aboriginals had to make use of the natural materials available in their area, huts were often made from bark and boughs, sometimes flimsy and sometimes more substantial, depending on the climate, the time of year, and the length of time that the group forced to remain in one camp.

Children

When an Aboriginals child was born, he began to learn how to cope with the material and non-material elements of his world. He had been born into the group, and had to learn to become a full member with a knowledge of how to keep alive and also the rules and traditions that governed his nomadic society.

When very young, children were indulged - played with and loved by all members of the group. But soon, each child had to begin to fend for himself. Shortly after he could walk, he began to handle small spears, followed his father and the other men, watching while they fished, made tools. Little girls began to follow their mother, helping her and trying to copy what she was doing.

As well as the practical side of life, they began to join in spiritual matters. They were taught the rhythms of dances in preparation for later participation in sacred and non-sacred rituals. Children began to learn songs and stories that embodied knowledge to be passed on from generation to generation.

From early childhood to death, the Aboriginal was continuously learning more about the traditions of the past. Religion was related to the past, the present and future. Man identified with animals, plants and other natural phenomenon, and grouped himself according to this identification - his totem. Relationship with a totem meant a responsibility towards that totem - for example, people of a kangaroo totem might not kill kangaroos, and carry out special ceremonies to ensure the continued increase of the kangaroo.

Dreamtime

The "Dreamtime", the mythological past, was the time when spirit ancestors had traveled throughout the land, giving it its physical form, and setting down the rules to be followed by the Aboriginals. Beings such as the "Fertility Mother", the "Great Rainbow Snake", the Djanggawul brothers and sisters, survive in stories and ceremonies that have been passed down from generation to generation.

Some sacred aspect of these stories and ceremonies were available only to initiated adult males. Women had their own sacred ceremonies from which they excluded men, but there were ceremonies and songs in which the whole group joined men, women and children.

Art

Art was regarded as an integral part of life, not simply something that was decorative but outside the import and areas of life. Bodies were painted for ceremonies; the markings and designs have totemic significance and were taught to the young. Rocks were engraved and became one of the few art forms to survive. Designs were painted on the walls of rock shelters; these were perishable, and relied upon regular re-touching for preservation.

Bark painting is probably the most well known Aboriginal art form but this could be done only in areas where trees with suitable bark were available, such as Arnhem Land. Pigments were made from rocks, clay and charcoal, a narrow range of colours that produced characteristic red, brown, black and white of Aboriginal art.

Paintings told stories; in fact they were the forms by which preliterate people kept a record of their daily life and religious beliefs. They reflected also what was happening around them - drawing the animals of the area, and later telling stories of contact with other peoples, such as the Macassans who visited Arnhem Land and other northern coastal regions.

Adulthood

As children reach puberty they began to take on greater responsibilities. To mark the transition from childhood special ceremonies were held. For girls these were fairly simple, although they could be spectacular. For boy's initiation ceremonies extended over several years, and were associated with the intensive training in the traditions and mythology of the clan - in many clans the focal point of initiation was circumcision. From the point of view of the group, the boy was entering upon membership of society. However, he did not learn everything at his initiation, it merely open the door of adulthood, and to the sacred life of the group.

After a boy's final initiation ceremonies, he could marry, and it was only when he had a wife, and sometimes a child, that the community regarded him as a fully-grown man. He now had an obligation, obtaining food by using hunting skills learned in childhood, skills used for the group's survival.

The Supernatural

In Aboriginal society, like every other society, there were problems; droughts, shortages of food, people became sick or injured, and they died. Supernatural forces were blamed for almost every event, and magic and ritual used to correct the situation. The "medicine man" or "doctor" was a powerful man, and tried to cure many physical ills, sometimes by massage or sucking, to remove the "evil" causing the pain, or by the application of natural medicines made from plants or roots. The emphasis on healing was on the spirit, rather than the body. It was the belief that the spirit was the primary resource of illness - evil thoughts act first on the spirit, and the physical symptoms came later - that led to "evil thinking" someone, as in the well-known custom of "bone pointing". The person who was a victim of a spell would usually sicken and die, because he believed that this would happen.

Old people in Aboriginal society were cared for, and respected for their wisdom and knowledge. When a person died the mourning custom and burial rights were complex and varied from region to region. The mourners freely expressed their sorrow and distress, sometimes covering themselves in ochre and clay. The dead were either buried, cremated, placed on platforms in trees, or left in caves or rock shelters. Sometimes the bones were recovered and part, such as the bone of the forearm, kept as relics for long periods.

First Sightings

The first recorded sighting of Australia was in 1606 by the Dutch captain of "Duyfken" William Jansz who described the natives as "...savage, cruel, black barbarians who slew some of our sailors". In the same year the Spaniard, Luis Vaez de Torres sailed around the strait that bears his name. He described the natives as "...very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill fashioned". Jan Carstenz in 1623 described several armed encounters with Aboriginals, and judged the country "...the most arid and barren region that could be found anywhere on earth; the inhabitants too, are the most wretched and poorest creatures that I have ever seen in my age or time". As a result of such reports the Dutch government decided the land that was not suitable for colonization.

Macassans: The First Visitors?

In northern Arnhem Land, and on Melville and Bathurst Islands, the Aboriginals carved special wooden grave posts. These posts were adapted from the masts of the Macassan boats that visited the northern coast each year from Macassar and Celedes to collect trepang.

The Macassan visitors came in what the Aboriginals regard as historic times, and their camps were both large and well organized. The campsites are still marked by tamarind trees, which grew from the seeds of the fruit, dropped by the fishermen.

The Macassan introduced the dugout canoes and taught the Aboriginals the use of steel in making knives, spear blades and tomahawks. The Aboriginals watched or took part in the entertainment and ceremonies; they learned to play cards, and began to adapt their song rhythms to the strange tunes and sounds of foreign musical instruments.

The Aboriginals learned more about the culture of the visitors by traveling to Macassar with the fishermen, returning with the fleet the following season; some of them remained in Macassar. The Aboriginals adopted some Macassan words into their own languages; for example compass directions, names of tools and parts of the boats. The names of Macassans are still remembered, and Aboriginals often adopted Macassan names as well as their own

William Dampier

In 1697, the Englishman William Dampier had published his "New Voyage Round the World" in which he described Aboriginals on the Western Australian coast as "the miserablest people in the World ... they were tall, straight bodied, and thin, with small long limbs. They have great heads, round foreheads and great brows. Their eyelids are always half closed, to keep the flies out of their eyes." His observations remained the most detailed description of the Western Australian Aboriginals for well over a century.

Captain James Cook RN

About this time in Europe, the concept of the "noble savage" was changing people's attitude to other races, a belief that the material and spiritual simplicity of "primitive" people's was an ideal to be aspired to. This idea was given to later explorers, and was adopted readily by Captain James Cook. He set out in 1768 with the aim of exercising "...The utmost patience and forbearance with respect to the native ... They are human creatures, the work of the same omnipotent author, equally under his care with the most polished European; perhaps being less offensive, more entitled to his favour."

Captain Cook's observations of the Aboriginals were numerous and detailed; "these people may truly be said to be in the pure state of nature, and may appear to some to be the most wretched upon the earth; but in reality they are far happier than ... we Europeans."

Colonization

In 1788 when the First Fleet arrived in Australia, the country was inhabited by an estimated 300,000 Aboriginals.

The British did not wish harm the Aboriginals - in fact, Governor Phillip began the penal settlement with the good intentions of "reconciling the Aboriginals to live amongst us, and to teach them the advantages they will reap from cultivating the land". But the newcomers assumed that their ways were superior to those of the Aboriginals, and that a people who were not Christians and who did not try to "improve" the land of their birth by agriculture were not only inferior beings, but also deserve to have their country take over.

Few attempts were made to understand the Aboriginals, their beliefs or their customs, or to understand how the Aboriginals had come to terms with an often-harsh environment - an environment that ruined many early settlers and cause the death of some white "explorers". Governor Macquarie in 1816 invited the natives to "relinquish their wandering, idle and predatory habits of life, and to become industrious and useful members of a community where they will find protection and encouragement".

Not surprisingly, the Aboriginals did not want to give up their way of life and enthusiastically embrace the ways of the newcomers, who in turn found their reluctance only further proof of the Aboriginals inferiority.

There were no treaties to regulate the movement of the British on to Aboriginals Land, and the attitudes of the two groups towards Land differed greatly. To the Aboriginals, to whom the Land was part of this life and the future of his group, land was not something to be bought and sold - it was not a commodity for exchange. The British believed that land could not only be bought and sold, but taken to be exploited by productive agriculture, and that those who carry out this obligation had some kind of "moral right" to the land.

As the settlers moved inland, the Aboriginals began to lose their hunting grounds, their watering holes, in fact their source of life. They contracted diseases to which they had no resistance; they suffered from the effects of alcohol, and from fighting between the groups.

Aboriginals resisted the advancing parties of the white man, sometimes so effectively that farming and grazing ventures had to be abandoned. Settlers retaliated and with their superior weapons sometimes wiped out whole groups of Aboriginals, justifying violence with the argument that these "savages" needed to be "taught a lesson" to ensure for future peace. Although the Aboriginals were supposed to be protected by British law, this protection was difficult to enforced - almost impossible at the frontiers of settlement.

Aboriginal Flag

The Aboriginal flag is divided horizontally into two equal halves of black (top) and red (bottom), with a yellow circle in the centre. The black symbolizes Aboriginal people and the yellow represents the sun, the constant renewer of life. Red depicts the earth and also represents ochre, which is used by Aboriginal People in ceremonies.

The flag - designed by Harold Thomas - was first flown at Victoria Square, Adelaide, on National Aborigines' Day on 12 July 1971. It was used later at the Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972.

Today the flag has been adopted by all Aboriginal groups and is flown or displayed permanently at Aboriginal centers throughout Australia.

Torres Strait Islander Flag

The Torres Strait Islander flag - designed by the late Bernard Namok - stands for the unity and identity of all Torres Strait Islanders.

It features three horizontal colored stripes, with green at the top and bottom and blue in between - divided by thin black lines.

A white dhari (headdress) sits in the centre, with a five-pointed white underneath it. The colours green is for the land, and the dhari is a symbol of all Torres Strait Islanders. The black represents the people and the blue is for the sea. The five-pointed start represents the island groups. Used in navigation, the star is also an important symbol for the seafaring Torres Strait Islander people. The colours white of the star represents peace.

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