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The Australian frontier wars were a series of conflicts that were fought between Indigenous Australians and European settlers that spanned a total of 146 years. The first fighting took place several months after the landing of the First Fleet in January 1788 and the last clashes occurred as late as 1934. The most common estimates of fatalities in the fighting are at least 20,000 Indigenous Australians and between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans. However, recent scholarship on the frontier wars in what is now the state of Queensland indicates that Indigenous fatalities may have been significantly higher. Indeed, while battles and massacres occurred in a number of locations across Australia, they were particularly bloody in Queensland, owing to its comparatively larger pre-contact Indigenous population. Far more devastating in their impact on the Aboriginal population, however, were the effects of disease, infertility, loss of hunting grounds, starvation, and general despair, loss of pride, and the alcoholic 'remedy' for this devastation. There are indications that small-pox epidemics may have impacted heavily on some Aboriginal tribes, with depopulation in large sections of what is now Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland up to 50% or more, even before the move inland from Sydney of squatters and their livestock. Other diseases hitherto unknown in the Indigenous populationsuch as the common cold, flu, measles, venereal diseases and tuberculosisalso had an impact, significantly reducing their numbers and tribal cohesion, so limiting their ability to adapt and resist invasion and dispossession. == Background and Population == In 1770 a British expedition under the command of then-Lieutenant James Cook made the first voyage by Europeans along the Australian east coast. On 29 April Cook and a small landing party fired on a group of Tharawal people who sought to prevent the British from landing near their camp at Botany Bay, by Cook described as "a small village". Two Tharawal men made threatening gestures and a stone was thrown to underline that the whites were not welcome to land at that spot. Cook then ordered "a musket to be fired with small-shot" and the eldest of the two was hit in the leg. This caused the two Tharawal men to run to their huts and seize their spears and shields. Subsequently a single spear was thrown at the whites which "happily hurt nobody." This then caused Cook to order "a third musket with small-shots" to be fired, "upon which one of them threw another lance and both immediately ran away." Cook did not make further contact with the Tharawal, but later established a peaceful relationship with the Kokobujundji people when his ship, HM Bark ''Endeavour'', had to be repaired at present-day Cooktown. Cook, in his voyage up the east coast of Australia, observed no signs of agriculture or other development by its inhabitants. Some historians argue that under prevailing European law such land was deemed ''terra nullius'' or land belonging to nobody or land 'empty of inhabitants' (as defined by Emerich de Vattel). Cook claimed the east coast of the continent for Britain on 23 August 1770. The British Government decided to establish a prison colony in Australia in 1786. Under the European legal doctrine of ''terra nullius'', Indigenous Australians were not recognised as having property rights and territory could be acquired through 'original occupation' rather than conquest or consent. The colony's Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, was instructed to "live in amity and kindness" with Indigenous Australians and sought to avoid conflict. However, other historians argue as an inhabited land annexed by Britain, colonists could be granted the right to occupy such areas of the annexed land that did not appear to be under cultivation or some other kind of development (such as a village or town) but were generally expected to respect the property rights of the original inhabitants. These historians contend that as, in European terms, property rights were principally exercised by the cultivation of land, the marking of boundaries and by the building of permanent buildings and settlements, the settlers did not believe that Indigenous Australians claimed property rights to the lands they roamed over. Instead, nomadic hunter-gatherers seemed, to the Europeans, to be concerned only with the right to hunt and kill the wild game, which was their principal source of food. The British invasion and settlement of Australia commenced with the First Fleet in mid-January 1788 in the south-east in what is now the federal state of New South Wales. This process then continued into Tasmania and Victoria from 1803 onward. Since then the population density of white people has remained highest in this section of the Australian continent. The Australian frontier wars however, were never as intense and bloody in the south-eastern colonies as they were in Queensland or the north-eastern sections of the continent. More settlers as well as Indigenous Australians were killed on the Queensland frontier than any other Australian colony. The reason is simple, and is reflected in all evidence and sources dealing with this subject: There were more Aborigines in Queensland. The territory of Queensland was the single most populated section of pre-contact Indigenous Australia, reflected not only in all pre-contact population estimates, but also in the mapping of pre-contact Australia (see Horton's ''Map of Aboriginal Australia'').〔http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/map-aboriginal-australia〕 The indigenous population distribution illustrated below is based on two independent sources, namely the distribution of tribal land and the population estimates made by anthropologists and others over the years.〔Robert Ørsted-Jensen: ''Frontier History Revisited – Colonial Queensland and the History War'' (Brisbane 2011), chapter 1, page 6-15.〕 All evidence suggest that the territory of Queensland had a pre-contact Indigenous population density more than double that of New South Wales, at least six times that of Victoria and at least twenty times that of Tasmania. Equally there are signs that the population density of Indigenous Australia was comparatively higher in the north-eastern sections of New South Wales, and along the northern coast from the Gulf of Carpentaria and westward including certain sections of Northern Territory and Western Australia.〔Statistics compiled by Ørsted-Jensen for ''Frontier History Revisited'' (Brisbane 2011), page 10-11 & 15, see more in ref above.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Australian frontier wars」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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