Reading Notes: Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier (1981)

The book that changed how Australians understand colonization, by telling it from the Aboriginal side.

Henry Reynolds, then a historian at James Cook University in Townsville, set out to answer a simple question: what did Aboriginal people think and do when the settlers arrived? Using colonial newspapers, police reports, settler letters and Aboriginal testimony, he reconstructed how communities learned about the newcomers, adapted, traded, and resisted.

Key ideas

• Aboriginal resistance was widespread, organized and often effective, especially guerrilla raids on stock and supplies.
• Reynolds estimated that about 20,000 Aboriginal people died in frontier violence, a figure other historians have since revised upward for Queensland in particular.
• Aboriginal people were not passive victims; they made strategic choices about fighting, negotiating and moving.

Why it matters

The book helped start the “history wars” of the 1990s and 2000s and influenced debates that led to the High Court’s Mabo decision in 1992. It is still in copyright, so the Reader offers these notes rather than the text. Look for it at your local or university library.

Part of the Boston Made Reader’s special collection Courage, Conscience & Service. Written for the Reader and free to read here.