What Is War?

The Classification Of Belligerancy

Contributor: Dr Sam White
Scientia Senior Lecturer in Military Law and War Studies, UNSW Canberra.

If you want to be legalistic about it, the state of war didn’t exist. Now, I think the Australian War Memorial is to honour Aboriginal Australians and other Australians who died defending Australia.¹ (Prime Minister John Howard, 1998)

What is War?

What is war? The question appears deceptively simple. The Australian Constitution recognises war as something that allows for a shift in how Federal government works²; lawyers recognise it as a state of affairs where it is lawful to attack someone, and not just act in self-defence. Historians seem to happily recognise war when we see soldiers (as well as sailors and aviators) fighting across battlefields, governments mobilising armies, territory changing hands and, eventually, treaties bringing hostilities to an end. Australian military history is filled with conflicts that fit comfortably within this picture. The First and Second World Wars had identifiable belligerents, armies, campaigns and conclusions. Korea and Vietnam were undoubtedly s, even if there was no declaration. Iraq and Afghanistan are revered in the newly renovated Australian War Memorial for their combat operations. Whatever disagreements historians might have about their causes or character, nobody seriously doubts that they were wars.

The history of conflict on the Australian continent is harder to accommodate. There was no single declaration beginning the Australian Wars, no unified First Nations army and no treaty formally bringing them to an end. It occurred over century, with morphing technology and social expectations of what war was.³ At its core was the fundamental principles of war across history: territory, economics, fear of other people, or fear of threats.⁴ It is for this reason that a collective group of Australian historians, of which I am one, has sought to define war as: “a mortal conflict between two or more types of people over land, water, resources and the ability to exist as a people”.⁵ Violence accompanied the movement of colonists across the Australian continent, but often violence was meted out by private individuals rather than centralised military forces. Does the involvement of private individuals make it, somehow, not war? Does the inverse apply as well – that the involvement of troops somehow prima facie makes it war? Think, here, of my forebear Major James Morisset’s campaign in 1823 against the Wiradjuri.

It is not easy to answer, and the complexity is something that all are caught out by. War is a metaphor that brings with it a litany of baggage – and people who have modern experiences of it rightfully question its application to guerilla warfare two centuries ago. Yet war’s character has always varied enormously, and two centuries of colonisation of the Australian continent is hard to box into easily managed legal creatures. Soldiers, police, settlers and Aboriginal warriors participated in different combinations and at different times. There were attacks, ambushes, raids, reprisals, punitive expeditions, killings and massacres. But these are not legal terms; these are terms of politics.

Some periods of violence were sustained; elsewhere conflict was intermittent, localised or separated by periods of accommodation and relative peace. The difficulty is that our instinctive image of war is itself historically and culturally specific. If war is imagined principally through the experience of modern European states, then armies, uniforms, declarations, campaigns and battlefields begin to look like defining characteristics. Yet these things describe particular ways in which wars have been fought rather than necessarily telling us what war is. If a declaration of war is required for there to be war, then Australia has not had a war since 1942 (against Bulgaria⁶ and Thailand⁷). Iraq and Afghanistan’s exhibitions in the Australian War Memorial are legally unfounded. The current exhibition on Operation Kudu – Australia’s support to Ukraine – equally makes no sense, if John Howard’s requirement for a declaration of war is to be followed.

So, what is war, if it does not require a declaration? Here, lawyers and practitioners have disagreed for centuries. Considering lawyers first, Hugo Grotius, the doyen of international law, noted:

‘In treating of the rights of war, the first point, that we have to consider, is, what is war, which is the subject of our inquiry, and what is the right, which we seek to establish. Cicero styled war a contention by force. But the practice has prevailed to indicate by that name, not an immediate action, but a state of affairs; so that war is the state of contending parties, considered as such. This definition, by its general extent, comprises those wars of every description, that will form the subject of the present treatise. Nor are single combats excluded from this definition. For, as they are in reality more ancient than public wars, and undoubtedly, of the same nature, they may therefore properly be comprehended under one and the same name.’⁸

For Grotius, war is not simply the act of fighting. It is a state in which two or more sides are in conflict and prepared to use force against one another. This means a war can continue even when no actual fighting is taking place. His definition is deliberately broad. It includes wars between states, but can also include conflicts between individuals. For Grotius, the important point is the relationship of conflict between the opposing sides, rather than any particular battle or act of violence.

If lawyers do not wish to define war, then surely members of the Profession of Arms would. It is orthodox for both the practitioners and scholars of War Studies to look to Carl von Clausewitz as a useful starting point. Writing in the early nineteenth century, he famously described war as an “act of force to compel our enemy to do our will”.⁹ His more enduring insight was that war could not sensibly be separated from politics. War was a continuation of political intercourse, albeit through different means.¹⁰ Violence did not somehow escape politics once armies began fighting. It remained directed towards purposes that existed beyond the violence itself.

There are obvious limits to applying the thinking of a nineteenth-century Prussian officer to societies profoundly different from his own. Clausewitz was attempting to understand war in a particular moment of European intellectual and military environment. He also understood guerilla tactics, such as partisan operations and Cossack hit-and-run, to be war. Nevertheless, his insistence upon the political character of war remains valuable because it helps distinguish warfare from violence generally. Murder is violent, as are assault, riot and massacre, but violence alone does not make war. When does it become war? The problem has always been one that lawyers – rightly – back away from. Hedley Bull’s interpretation of war reinforces this view, where war is:

…organised violence carried on by political units against each other. Violence is not war unless it is carried out in the name of a political unit; what distinguishes killing in war from murder is its vicarious and official character…[.] Equally, violence carried out in the name of a political unit is not war unless it is directed against another political unit; the violence employed by the state in …the suppression of pirates does not qualify because it is directed against individuals.¹¹

William Finlason confronted precisely this problem in 1868 when considering the use of martial law to suppress rebellion. He distinguished a riot from a rebellion not simply by the scale of the violence, but by the character of the threat and, importantly, the legal framework thought necessary to meet it:

And these words, riot and rebellion, indicated the scope of the powers of common law and of natural law respectively. Riot is, in its nature, casual, actual, and simple; and simple measures of resistance may suffice, and the simple powers of the common law may be sufficient. But rebellion, as it is more dangerous and deep-seated, so it is necessarily more difficult to deal with, and may require not only full liberty of attack, but, as it may be passive as well as active, may follow a policy of exhaustion and devastation rather than one of aggression or attack, even full liberty of attack may be insufficient to subdue it, and deterrent measures may be necessary, and the power of speedy punishment … Rebellion is war: that is the cardinal principle. War requires measures of war.¹²

Finlason's formulation is revealing. The boundary between ordinary violence and war was not simply a question of how many people were killed, how intense the violence became, or whether soldiers were involved. It also depended upon how the violence was understood: its organisation, purpose, persistence and, ultimately, the measures thought necessary to suppress it. In that sense, the classification itself carried political as well as legal consequences. Martial law, of course, is its own legal creature.¹³ Its declaration does not mean that a society is necessarily at war, just as its absence does not mean that a society is necessarily at peace.

But Finlason exposes the deeper difficulty: there is no single moment at which violence objectively and indisputably becomes war. War is a condition that must be identified from the character, purpose and accumulation of violence, rather than from the presence or absence of a particular legal declaration. Current Australian Army doctrine recognises as such:

[a]ll war is conflict, yet not all conflict is termed war, with the spectrum extending from ‘no conflict’ situations – like humanitarian relief – up to and including ‘total war’ between states. This reaffirms that conflict, at any level, is a competition of political and human will that can use violent and non-violent means to influence a diverse group of actors to achieve the political objective.¹⁴

This is where massacres become important. A single massacre may be capable of forming part of a war, although whether it is sufficient, standing alone, to establish the existence of one remains debatable. A sustained concentration of massacres, close together in space and time, presents a much stronger case. Several such events can demonstrate that violence has ceased to be episodic or merely interpersonal and has become a sustained means of coercion between identifiable groups. This accords with familiar understandings of war: force becomes the principal means of coercion; it is directed towards collective or political ends; it occurs between groups rather than merely between individuals; and it involves the deliberate application of potentially mortal force. In Clausewitzian terms, force is being employed to achieve political ends. In contemporary Australian military terms, force has become the principal means by which one group seeks to compel another.

Clusters of massacres therefore provide a useful means of identifying periods and regions of war. They allow concentrations of organised lethal violence to be distinguished both from isolated incidents and from other concentrations occurring at different times or places. Importantly, however, massacres are not themselves synonymous with war. Wars contain far more than massacres: raids, reprisals, ambushes, punitive expeditions, resistance, territorial displacement, coercive policing, military mobilisation and periods of relative quiet may all form part of the same conflict. A cluster of massacres should therefore be treated as an indicator of a state of war, rather than as a self-sufficient definition of it. Its significance must be validated against the wider historical context, including other recorded incidents of violence, patterns of mobilisation and resistance, the assessments of historians, contemporary evidence and, critically, Indigenous knowledges and accounts of the conflict.

These are, perhaps surprisingly, the same problems we face today. Modern International Humanitarian Law (IHL) largely avoids asking whether a situation is war at all. Instead, it asks whether the factual circumstances amount to an armed conflict, because that classification determines whether - and which rules of - IHL apply. The terminology has changed, but the underlying problem remains familiar: at what point does violence cease to be something less than armed conflict and cross the threshold into a qualitatively different legal condition? The ICRC itself describes legal classification as a process of determining, from the facts and the applicable legal criteria, whether a situation constitutes an international or non-international armed conflict.¹⁵

There is no universal casualty count (i.e. massacres) that answers that question – just look to Northern Ireland’s famously named ‘Troubles’. Nor is there a prescribed number of attacks, a particular weapon that must be used, or a declaration that transforms violence into armed conflict. Indeed, the legal position differs depending upon the parties involved. An international armed conflict may arise whenever there is resort to armed force between States, even if the confrontation is brief and casualties are limited (there is divergent opinion about this if the matter is purely law of the sea).¹⁶ Non-international armed conflict is more difficult: the violence must reach a sufficient level of intensity and the non-State party must possess a sufficient degree of organisation. These are factual assessments rather than numerical formulas. The law looks to the character of the confrontation as a whole rather than waiting for a particular body count to be reached. This is why the ICRC emphasises that classification rests upon facts and legal criteria, rather than upon the labels adopted by the parties themselves.

There is an intriguing continuity here with Finlason. His distinction between riot and rebellion was certainly the product of a very different legal order, and his invocation of martial law should not be confused with the modern law of armed conflict. Yet the conceptual difficulty is strikingly similar. Finlason was searching for the point at which ordinary law was no longer sufficient to describe or respond to organised violence: when a riot had become rebellion, and rebellion had acquired the character of war. Modern IHL asks a more carefully developed legal question, but it still confronts the problem of classification. Violence exists along a spectrum, while law necessarily creates categories.

Whose spectrum, then? Modern IHL is often critiqued for being too Eurocentric, and it is clear that modern issues of IHL flow from its ‘original sin’ – that it was written for Europeans, by Europeans.¹⁷ If the characteristics of European war become the test for the existence of war everywhere else, then societies organised differently can almost never satisfy it (and this is an institutional flaw in current international law that is exploited by non-European adversaries).¹⁸

That is particularly problematic in Australia. Before colonisation, the continent was occupied by many different peoples whose relationships to Country, law, authority, kinship and neighbouring communities were complex. Aboriginal Nations traded, negotiated access, recognised boundaries, shared legal spaces and maintained relationships carrying both rights and obligations. The use of the singular “Aboriginal law” can itself obscure this diversity. As Ambelin Kwaymullina has argued, Aboriginal legal traditions were in an important sense international traditions, involving relationships between distinct peoples rather than a single undifferentiated society.¹⁹

Violence existed within those relationships, but it should no more be treated as a single phenomenon than violence within European societies. Historical research has identified formal battles, raids, revenge attacks, ritual trials and other forms of confrontation.²⁰ Others more closely resemble what a modern observer would readily recognise as collective warfare.²¹ At times, it could be a series of individual criminal acts; at other times a concerted campaign on Country.²² The complexity was recognised at the time, and found within the historical records. A micro-example is found in the works of Sir Charles Napier, who remarked:

‘Mr. Moore's assertion accuses Midgegoroo of three murders, Mr. Moore's account proves that Midgegoroo justly and meritoriously slew three invaders! These were the glorious deeds of a man defending his country against an unjustifiable invasion, an invasion made for the undisguised and unprincipled purpose of conquest; an invasion and seizure of territory committed in the most bare-faced manner’.²³

Stephen Gapps establishes in Gudyarra that the Wiradjuri attitude to the conflicts at some point underwent a legal shift from one for one retributive justice applied only to colonial men²⁴ to Gudyarra, all-out war that included attacks on what we would now title non-combatants.²⁵ The same appears to have occurred with Palawa speaking peoples after decades of attacks only on male colonists. After prolonged campaigns, Palawa people finally started attacking women and children, which was followed by the final retaliatory push by the colonial government of Van Diemen's Land (Lutruwita/Tasmania).²⁶

The distinctions are important because acknowledging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander warfare does not require characterising every violent encounter as war, and does not necessarily aim at the complete destruction of an opponent.²⁷ They provide a means for discerning whether a violent act can be understood as an act of war, or not, depending on the circumstances. They also provide ways for describing unique and distinctive characteristics of warfare in the Australian context. At the Australian War Memorial, Miriŋu Dhäwu highlights how the settlement of grievances worked via a makarrata.²⁸ Evidence of traditional conflict describes rules and practices intended to limit unnecessary death and injury. Large confrontations could result in surprisingly few deaths, although serious and lethal conflicts certainly occurred. One account described a battle as successful precisely because nobody had fallen: there had been considerable argument, but the spears were ultimately not thrown. Other accounts describe former opponents socialising shortly after a battle had concluded, apparently without the enduring hostility an outside observer expected. Colonists often noted that 'battles' settled differences and often were ceremonially followed by a corroboree. In 1878 Smyth wrote,

"When the fight is over, the wounded are well cared for. The animosity which influenced some of the more truculent of the warriors is forgotten or concealed, and not seldom help is given to the injured by both parties. Perhaps the day's work is concluded by a dance, and the reconciliation of the tribes completely effected..."²⁹

In 1839 Rev. J. Orton recorded,

"It appeared that some disagreement had induced several tribes to assemble on the bank to the amount of from four to five hundred to settle their disputes by fighting and corroborees (or dances) according to their custom in such cases. Upon their meeting, a few spears were hurled but without any serious consequences, and this assemblage of sable savage warriors terminated their disputes by a succession of corroborees for several nights." ³⁰

While there were cases where these ‘rules of war’ broke down, just as they have at times in other societies, and violence continued without reconciliation or exceeded accepted bounds, this is not to romanticise intra-Indigenous warfare or to suggest that conflict invariably followed prescribed processes of restraint and resolution. The historical and cultural record includes instances of severe, prolonged and destructive violence between Indigenous groups. The important distinction is between war as it was understood to be properly conducted and war as it was sometimes actually practised. Within modern IHL, this is called a problem of respect and compliance. Indigenous laws and customs could prescribe who might fight, for what purpose, against whom, by what means, and when violence should cease, without guaranteeing that those prescriptions were invariably observed.³¹ Departures from those expectations—including excessive, indiscriminate or continuing violence—should therefore not be treated as evidence that no normative system existed. Rather, such conduct might itself have been understood as the wrong way to conduct war.

There is a useful comparative point here. European traditions likewise distinguished, however imperfectly, between warfare conducted according to accepted laws, customs and conventions and the depredations of marauding forces engaged in indiscriminate killing, robbery, rape and pillage. European warfare repeatedly departed from its own normative ideals, sometimes catastrophically, but those departures do not lead us to conclude that European societies possessed no rules governing warfare. Neither tradition should be assessed solely by its worst historical departures from its own normative expectations. Recognising this distinction avoids both a romanticised account of Indigenous conflict and the opposite error of treating examples of brutality as evidence that Indigenous societies possessed no laws, customs or normative expectations governing warfare.

Those ‘rules of war’ were naturally different in pre-colonial Australia from the traditions that developed in Europe. The cosmological and kinship-based connections of Indigenous Australia produced their own normative frameworks governing the resort to violence, who might properly participate, against whom violence might be directed, the means by which it could be exercised, and the circumstances in which hostilities ought to cease and relationships be restored. The relevant question is therefore not whether Indigenous warfare conformed to European expectations of what war should look like, nor whether Indigenous peoples invariably complied with their own rules. It is whether Indigenous societies possessed normative frameworks through which permissible and impermissible forms of collective violence could be understood and distinguished.

This does not make such conflicts less real, or somehow create a gap that cannot be bridged. Our worlds are not too far removed. Rather, it illustrates the danger of assuming that war must always seek decisive victory, territorial conquest or the annihilation of an enemy. To hold so is, bluntly, historically weak and legally wrong. English law, in 1788, did not require it. In section four of the Introduction to the Commentaries, entitled ‘Of the Countries Subject to the Laws of England’ Blackstone describes the two types of conquered or ceded people.³² The first are those conquered in the Roman style, a right allowed by the ‘law of nature,’ or at least upon that of nations, he remarks.³³ The second form of conquest, under the law of nations, were those of ‘infidels’.³⁴ The tests for both was whether there was:

[f]ounded by a compact either expressly or tacitly made between the conqueror and the conquered, that if they will acknowledge the victor for their master, he will treat them for the future as subjects, and not enemies.³⁵

The significance of Blackstone's test is easy to miss. Conquest was not simply victory in battle. It was the forcible alteration of a political relationship. There was a conqueror and a conquered; an enemy who, through express or tacit compact, became a subject. The object was not necessarily to destroy the opposing people, but to compel their submission to a new political authority. That tells us something important about what war could mean in 1788.

Blackstone was not concerned with defining war. He was concerned with conquest: the acquisition of authority over one political community by another through force. Yet that concept necessarily presupposed a prior contest between political communities. Conquest was not measured simply by casualties inflicted, the destruction of an opposing force, or victory in a decisive battle. Its defining feature was political. One people had, through force, been compelled to acknowledge the authority of another.

On that understanding, the Bathurst conflict presents an uncomfortable case of conquest in precisely the European legal sense. The Wiradjuri were numerous and organised. Warriors were called from across Wiradjuri Country; they fought collectively and in formation; they contested, regained and ultimately lost control of territory; and the conflict ended with Windradyne seeking peace.³⁶ These are not offered as criteria for determining whether the conflict was a “war” in Blackstone’s mind. Blackstone was not interested in that question. Rather, they matter because they make the subsequent establishment of British authority lawful, under English law. Windradyne’s journey to Parramatta therefore matters. The colonial account sought to domesticate the encounter by presenting him as a criminal seeking pardon. But that description sits uneasily with Windradyne marching from Bathurst accompanied by some 150 Wiradjuri warriors and entering the Governor’s feast openly and unchallenged. If this was a capitulation, it was a remarkably public and political one. It looks less like the surrender of an individual criminal offender than the conclusion of an armed contest between political unities.

That characterisation is deliberately provocative. To say that conquest occurred is not to endorse conquest, nor to suggest that Wiradjuri sovereignty, identity or connection to Country somehow disappeared. It is to take European law seriously on its own terms. If British authority at Bathurst was established through conquest as Blackstone understood it, then the legal category cannot be invoked selectively. Conquest carried legal baggage. It presupposed a pre-existing political community capable of being conquered, a body of law governing that community, and legal consequences for the status of its laws and institutions after conquest. The uncomfortable question is therefore not simply whether the Wiradjuri were “conquered”. It is what follows if, according to the legal doctrine the British themselves brought to Australia, they were.

Seen in those terms, Blackstone's account sits remarkably comfortably beside Clausewitz's later description of war as an act of force intended to compel an enemy to do one's will. Both direct us away from the amount or type of violence, and towards its political purpose. War is not made war by a body count, or by military uniforms. Its defining feature is the use of organised force within a political contest: to resist authority, to impose it, or to compel another political community to accept a new state of affairs. That is why Blackstone matters to the Australian Wars. If we ask whether frontier conflict looked like a European battlefield, we are asking the wrong question. Given the extreme differences between British and Indigenous Australian cultures and the differences between European and Australian environments and populations we would not expect warfare to look much like it did in Europe. Even the English law brought to Australia did not make pitched battles, mass casualties or annihilation the measure of conquest. It looked to the political relationship produced by force.

The harder question is therefore much simpler: was political authority being contested through force?

If one people sought to extend its authority over Country, and another used organised violence to resist that authority, the absence of uniforms, declarations of war or spectacular battles does not resolve whether war existed. Nor does the fact that resistance was local, intermittent or sometimes limited in its lethality. On Blackstone's own logic of conquest, the critical transition was from enemy to subject - from resistance, to the acceptance of another's authority. That is precisely what makes the Australian experience so difficult. Where was that transition? Where was the express or tacit compact? When did First Nations peoples cease to resist as political communities and acknowledge the Crown as their political master? The assertion of British sovereignty answers what Britain claimed. It does not, by itself, answer what First Nations accepted.

Blackstone therefore brings us back to the central point. War is not defined by how much violence occurs, but by what the violence is for. Where organised force is used to impose, resist or determine political authority, we are very close to the thing that both eighteenth-century law and Clausewitzian theory understood to lie at the heart of war.

The question for the Australian Wars is not whether enough people died for us to use the word, or whether massed armies marched in formation, or whether there was a formal declaration or a treaty; it is whether they were fighting over who had the right to rule (per English law). There are therefore at least two issues concealed within the apparently simple question of whether Australia experienced war. The first concerns what happened. That is an historical problem. Evidence can tell us about the organisation of violence, its frequency and intensity, the communities involved, their objectives, the relationship between particular incidents and wider patterns of resistance, and the responses of colonial authorities. The answers will differ across time and place. Some episodes may comfortably be described as wars. Others will remain ambiguous. Still others are better understood through different categories altogether.

The second question concerns what we choose to call those events. That decision cannot be entirely separated from politics. It is ultimately a political question, not legal. It is also a question we must answer ourselves. As Professor Cameron Moore notes:

It is not enough to deflect this shame on to the British because it is Australians who have done these things, the doctrine of terra nullius grew from Australian cases rather than a British declaration, it is Australians who are in possession of Australia, and it is Australians who must take responsibility. British people live in Britain, on the other side of the world. British people did not come here, dispossess Aboriginal people, and then all go home. The original British settlers became Australian. They were my ancestors.³⁷

It is for Australians to look to, and decide what we call this. Lawyers can only go so far. Yet this does not mean that war is whatever somebody politically decides it to be. Historical evidence places limits upon plausible interpretations. Nor does it mean that governments possess an exclusive authority to determine whether war exists. Indeed, modern international humanitarian law deliberately looks beyond labels in determining whether an armed conflict exists. Governments cannot necessarily escape legal obligations simply by refusing to use the word war. Why, then, would a sitting Prime Minister make a legalistic argument about the Frontier Wars if there is no basis for it? Well, perhaps because there is no set answer. Law is an easy shield to hide behind.

Public recognition is different from legal classification. Decisions about which conflicts become part of a nation's military history, which dead are understood as war dead, which violence is commemorated and which events are described as battles rather than disturbances inevitably involve judgements about the past. Those judgements can change. For much of Australian history, the dominant conception of warfare made the conflicts fought on this continent unusually difficult to see. Australians readily recognised war when the political community involved was the Australian or British state and the battlefield was overseas. Violence on the Australian frontier was more easily fragmented into episodes of disorder, criminality, policing, massacre and resistance. Sometimes those descriptions were entirely appropriate. Sometimes they may also have obscured the larger political relationship within which violence occurred. Sometimes what might be described as a 'crime' in isolation (such as murder), can be described as an act of war in a broader political context. Clausewitz does not provide a simple answer to the Australian Wars. Nor should he. What he provides is a useful reminder that the essence of war cannot be found in uniforms, declarations or battlefield formations alone. War is connected to political purpose. Once that is accepted, the political worlds of all participants must be taken seriously.

The Australian Wars therefore force us to ask not only how much violence occurred, but what that violence meant to those who participated in it. We need to ask who exercised authority, what was being defended or contested, how collective action was organised, and what participants were attempting to achieve. Those questions cannot be answered by definition. They require careful historical work, and the answers will not be uniform across a continent or across more than a century of colonial expansion. Perhaps that is the most useful answer to the question what is war? War is a category through which we try to make sense of organised political violence, but its boundaries have always been contested. Evidence can establish that violence occurred and illuminate its character and purpose. Law can impose particular thresholds for particular purposes. Historians can compare events and identify patterns. None of these processes, however, completely removes the act of judgement involved in naming a conflict a war.

In Australia that judgement has particular significance. The question is not simply whether frontier violence sufficiently resembled the wars Europeans, on the other side of the world, already knew how to recognise. It is whether we are prepared to understand that violence within the political situation in which it actually occurred, here in Australia.

1. Remarks concerning the Australian War Memorial (23 November 1998), archival footage reproduced in Matt Peacock, ‘War Memorial Battle over Frontier Conflict Recognition’, 7.30 Report (ABC Television, 26 February 2009) accessible https://www.nationalunitygovernment.org/content/war-memorial-battle-over-frontier-conflict-recognition ↑

2. Specifically, Australian Constitution section 51(vi); see Australian Communist Party v Commonwealth (1951) 83 CLR 1; Thomas v Mowbray (2007) 233 CLR 307. ↑

3. Roland, A. (1989). Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present by Martin van Creveld (review). Technology and Culture, 30(4), 1037–1039. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.1989.0010 C 4 to C 5. ↑

4. Archer, C. I. (2002). World history of warfare. University of Nebraska Press. p 9. ↑

5. https://australianwars.net ↑

6. Commonwealth, Gazette, No 14, 14 January 1942, 79. ↑

7. Commonwealth Gazette, No 198, 20 July 1942, 1733; see further Moore, Cameron. Crown and Sword: Executive Power and the Use of Force by the Australian Defence Force (Canberra, ACT: Australian National University Press, 2017) p 216. ↑

8. The Rights of War and Peace, including the Law of Nature and of Nations. Translated from the Original Latin of Grotius. With Notes and Illustrations from Political and Legal Writers by A.C. Campbell, A.M. With an Introduction of David J. Hill, Assistant Secretary of State of the United States (New York: M. Walter Dunne, 1901), 17-18. ↑

9. Clausewitz, C. von, Graham, J. J., & NetLibrary, I. (2006). On war. Project Gutenberg. Book 1, Chapter 1, pp 2. ↑

10. Clausewitz, C. von, Graham, J. J., & NetLibrary, I. (2006). On war. Project Gutenberg. Book 1, Chapter 1, pp 24. ↑

11. Bull, H. (1977). The anarchical society: a study of order in world politics. Macmillan. 178. ↑

12. William Finlason, A Review of the Authorities as to the Repression of Riot or Rebellion: With Special Reference to Criminal or Civil Liability (Nabu Press, 2010) 47–8 (emphasis added). ↑

13. Ben Hingley. (2024). A “Nursery of martial law”: Proclamations of martial law in the Australian colonies 1790-1853. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 110(2), 181–208. ↑

14. Australian Army, LWD 1: The Fundamentals of Land Power, ed. Australian Army Research Centre, Land Warfare Doctrine (Canberra, ACT, Australia: Department of Defence, 2017). 9. ↑

15. International Committee of the Red Cross. (2024). How is the Term “Armed Conflict” Defined in International Humanitarian Law? Opinion Paper 2024. ICRC. p 5 - https://www.icrc.org/en/document/icrc-opinion-paper-how-term-armed-conflict-defined-international-humanitarian-law. ↑

16. Moore, C. (2021). Freedom of Navigation and the Law of the Sea: Warships, States and the Use of Force (1st ed.). Routledge. p 9-10 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429425745 ↑

17. Vasiliev, S. (2020). The Crises and Critiques of International Criminal Justice. In K. J. Heller, F. Mégret, S. M. H. Nouwen, J. D. Ohlin, & D. Robinson (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/law/9780198825203.003.0028

    Mégret, F. (2006). From ‘savages’ to ‘unlawful combatants’: a postcolonial look at international humanitarian law’s ‘other.’ In International Law and its Others (pp. 265–317). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511494284.011 p. 265;

    Fazal, T. M., & Greene, B. C. (2015). A Particular Difference: European Identity and Civilian Targeting. British Journal of Political Science, 45(4), 829–851. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123414000210 p. 829.;

    White, S. (2025). War without limits: How sharp war theory is a historical anomaly. International Review of the Red Cross (2005), 107(928), 335–354. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383124000328 ↑

18. Babbage, R. (2020). Ten questionable assumptions about future war in the Indo-Pacific. Australian Journal of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2(1), 28. ↑

19. Kwaymullina, A. (2018). Aboriginal Nations, the Australian nation-state and Indigenous international legal traditions. In I. Watson (Ed.), Indigenous Peoples as Subjects of International Law (1st ed). Routledge. p 1. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315628318-2 ↑

20. Kerkhove, R. (2023). How they fought: indigenous tactics and weaponry of Australia’s frontier wars. Boolarong Press. p 159.

    Reynolds, H. (2006). The other side of the frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia (1st ed.). UNSW Press. p 82, 101, 189. ↑

21. Warner, W. L. (1937). A black civilization; a social study of an Australian tribe (1st ed.). Harper & Brothers. p 156. ↑

22. White, S. (2022). Braiding Boomerangs: A Reappraisal of the Law of Conquest in 1788. New Zealand Yearbook of International Law, 20. p 82. ↑

23. Sir Charles Napier On Military Law and the Punishment of Flogging London T. and W. Boone 1837 preface p ix. ↑

24. Reynolds, H, The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia (UNSW Press, 2006) p 123. ↑

25. Gapps, S. (2021). Gudyarra: The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance — The Bathurst War, 1822–1824. UNSW Press; see further Mina Murray, ‘Our Stories, Our Terms: The Australian Wars from a Wiradyuri Perspective’, in Perkins, R., Gapps, S., Murray, M., & Reynolds, H. (2026). The Australian wars: the truth about the bloody battles fought to establish the nation. Allen & Unwin.) pp 1–19. ↑

26. Clements, Nicholas. The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. 1st ed., University of Queensland Press, 2014. p 159. ↑

27. White, Samuel, and Ray Kerkhove. “Indigenous Australian Laws of War: Makarrata, Milwerangel and Junkarti.” International Review of the Red Cross (2005) [Cambridge, UK], vol. 102, no. 914, August 2020, pp. 978, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383121000497 ↑

28. https://www.awm.gov.au/indigenous/mirinu-project ↑

29. Smyth, R. B. (Robert B. (1878). The aborigines of Victoria: with notes relating to the habits of the natives of other parts of Australia and Tasmania. Melbourne, J. Ferres Government Printer. p 156. ↑

30. Frenkel, D., & Major, J. (2017). Aboriginal Life and Customs through Early European Eyes. La Trobe eBureau. p 52 https://www.latrobe.edu.au/library/ebureau/publications/victorian-aboriginal-life-and-customs-through-early-european-eyes ↑

31. White, Samuel, and Ray Kerkhove. “Indigenous Australian Laws of War: Makarrata, Milwerangel and Junkarti.” International Review of the Red Cross (2005) [Cambridge, UK], vol. 102, no. 914, August 2020, pp. 969, 972, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383121000497. ↑

32. In this system if the land were unpopulated (later termed 'terra nullius') it would be taken in full. ↑

33. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the laws of England (Oxford, 3^rd ed, 1765-69) vol 1, 104. ↑

34. Ibid 110. ↑

35. Ibid 101. ↑

36. Gapps, S. (2021). Gudyarra: The First Wiradyuri War of Resistance — The Bathurst War, 1822–1824. UNSW Press. ↑

37. Moore, C. (2026). Mr Relationship with Aboriginal Armidale. The International Journal of Regional, Rural and Remote Law and Policy, 13(1). p 4. https://bpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blog.une.edu.au/dist/f/1394/files/2026/08/Cameron-Moore_Aboriginal-Armidale_IJRRRLP_Final.pdf ↑

Recommended Reading

• Bosio, N. (2020). What is war? Defining war, conflict and competition. Australian Army Research Centre. https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/land-power-forum/what-war-defining-war-conflict-and-competition
• Callwell, C. E. (1906). Small wars: Their principles and practice (3rd ed.). His Majesty’s Stationery Office. https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/s/small-wars-their-principles-and-practice.html
• Clausewitz, C. von. (2006). On war (J. J. Graham, Trans.). Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1946/pg1946-images.html (Original work published 1832)
• Clausewitz, C. von. (2015). Clausewitz on small war (C. Daase & J. W. Davis, Eds. & Trans.). Oxford University Press.
• Kerkhove, R. (2023). How they fought: indigenous tactics and weaponry of Australia’s frontier wars. Boolarong Press. p 159
• Perkins, R., Gapps, S., Murray, M., & Reynolds, H. (Eds.). (2025). The Australian wars: The truth about the bloody battles fought to establish the nation . Allen & Unwin.
• Reynolds, H, The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia (UNSW Press, 2006)

Methods for Identifying Australian Wars

Contributor: Dr Bill Pascoe
Research Software Engineer / Humanities Technologist

Definition

On this website we define war as 'Mortal conflict between two or more types of people over land, water, resources and the ability to exist as a people'. There are many definitions of war in dictionaries and theory of war, using various words. This definition is generally in keeping with them all, and accords with canonical European war theory, and the Australian Army Research Centre (Clausewitz, 1989; Clausewitz, 2015; Bosio, 2020). Clausewitz's theory focuses on war as situation where violence is used to achieve political ends (which may include as government of people or territory, law making, access to resources etc). Bosio's theory describes war as a situation where violence is the principle means of coercion. See Major Sam White's discussion 'What is War?' This definition, and theories of war, help us distinguish one war from another in time and by region, and when and where a state of war begins and ends. It also helps us distinguish whether an act of violence is an individual action, or a crime, and when it is an act of war. Colonial violence and resistance to it continued after the Australian Wars, but in different forms such as removals, close control over peoples lives, segregation, eugenics and other forms, to which Indigenous people adapt and continue to adapt forms of resistance through each generation. While there may be other wording for the definition of 'war' it would be hard to argue that this definition does not describe a war.

Wars identified from real events

As there were no declarations of war or treaties, and this was usually against stated British colonial policy, with some exceptions, a state of war in Australian Wars, between Indigenous and colonial peoples can only be identified by the many real events that comprise them. Similarly, the Vietnam War and Korean War were not officially declared wars, but were none the less, in terms of reality, war. By the same token if a nation declared war on another on one day, and declared the next they were not at war, and took no action, we would say that although war was declared but it was not a war in reality.

War in the Australian context

The nature of war in the Australian historical context is different to in other countries. It was unofficial and extremely asymmetrical in terms of culture, technology, and geography. As would be expected, these wars were fought as guerilla wars primarily involving small mobile units, raids, skirmishes, small battles, attacks on logistics supply and economies, stealth tactics, targeted killings, and massacres

There are similarities and differences to wars and colonial in other parts of the world. The closest comparisons are with other British colonies, such as Éire/Ireland, North America, South Africa and Aotearoa/New Zealand. However, Australia is unique and differs from each of these in different ways. Much larger areas of North America were comparatively wet, fertile and highly populated, and rivalries between First Nations became entangled with European and US imperial rivalries.

By contrast with more than 200 language groups on the Australian continent, Māori dialects in Aotearoa were mutually intelligible. Smaller distances, and the different political and environmental context, also meant that the style of warfare was more recognisable to Europeans, while the existence of treaties and agreements, and disputes over their violation, meant that the British Government could be more openly involved.

In South Africa the complexities included African groups expanding their territories and waging wars, alongside conflicts between Boers and the British, and large-scale migrations. Historically and environmentally Ireland was very different, but it is worth comparing Britain's long experience in suppressing a hostile population, the use of militarised police, Irish resistance to it, and the influence of the large numbers of Irish convicts and colonists, as well as the politics and attitudes people brought from elsewhere in the British Isles. For example, many people who colonised and worked land in Australia came from communities in Britain and Ireland affected by eviction, dispossession and rural poverty. Another comparison is that major threats to colonial government that drove increases in frontier policing included Aboriginal resistance, convict rebellion and bushranging.

Massacres used to identify wars

The Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia 1788 to 1930 (Ryan et al, 2025) map shows that extreme violence occurred across Australia, with the spread of the colonial frontier. This frontier is not a thin line, but a broad shifting general area and extent in time, commencing with the first presence of a colonist in the area, up to the time the British or Australian government was able to exercise control over individuals and lands and waters, and to police their law. 'Squatting' or occupying Indigenous land, or what the British government claimed as 'crown land' without permission of either, was a major characteristic of frontier colonisation (the laws around squatting did change and later involved licences in different colonies). Mining was also sometimes a motivation for squatting, and in coastal regions sealing and whaling, and pearling and trepanging. Some of these colonists committed massacres, and government forces were involved in approximately half of the known massacres in Australia. A group of massacres occurring close together in space and time is not an isolated event between individuals but amount to a clear case of 'mortal conflict between two types of people' and on the frontier, this conflict was over 'land, water, resources' and is an attack on Indigenous people's 'ability to exist as a people'.

These clusters of massacres show focal points of intense violence. As these focal points of intensity are somewhat separate to each other, we can distinguish one war from another, even though the spread and distribution of violence may mean it's difficult to draw a clear line between one and another. Looking at the massacre map, many of these clusters are easily seen. Computational methods clustering massacres by specific limits of distance in space and time were used to make an initial identification of distinct wars or resistance movements on this website. These distinctions have been adjusted after consideration in relation to history and Indigenous knowledge and may be adjusted in future as research continues.

How close is 'close'?

In reality how many kilometres would be regarded as 'close' by people living there varies - longer distances are more normal in arid, flat and sparsely populated areas than in wet, mountainous and highly populated areas. "Clustering" as a computational method is not a hypothesis test that 'proves' something with a confidence interval. It is a 'heuristic', ie, it helps us interpret information. It helps us see patterns that we might not otherwise see. Clusters appear as we set different limits on specifically how far 'close' is. At one extreme all points are in a cluster, at the other extreme every point is in its own cluster of one. We set a certain number of kilometres that we mean by 'close', and see what clusters emerge. By adjusting the amount of kilometres, going from one extreme to another, we see large clusters begin to emerge or broad distinctions, and as we change the amount of kilometres that we mean by within these we see smaller and smaller clusters. Clusters of massacres appear between about 75km to 200km. Clusters around 150km to 75kms tend to correspond to wars that have been identified by historians, confirming the effectiveness of the method, while also revealing other less familiar distinctions, ie: providing us with new information to investigate and validate against historical sources and Indigenous knowledge. The clusters that emerge roughly correspond to one or several Aboriginal groups, ecological regions (that provide economic specific incentives for rapid colonisation), and cover an area that may take several days or a week or so to traverse by foot, boat or horse - ie: a region both large and small enough for people to know each other and form a shared interest, and within which group manoeuvres and communication can occur.

For more information on this process, and the initial clusters identified, conducted by Dr Bill Pascoe and Kaine Usher see the code and visualisations at Identified Australian Wars and Resistance

Wars within wars

In histories of frontier conflict it is sometimes discussed in broad terms, such as the 'Rising' of the entire south east of Australia (Kerkhove, 2023; Gapps, 2025) or in terms of smaller regions (Millis, 1992; Collins, 2022) or individual events (Lydon & Ryan, 2017). The more recent 'Australian Wars' books structures chapters around broad regions, focusing on regions at war within these (Perkins et al, 2025).

Working form different distances which reveal large to small clusters we see wars within wars, or smaller regional conflicts that are part of much larger conflicts. The most coherent way to describe the various scales, that accords best with historians and Indigenous people's discussion of these wars and with the clustering methods, is as 4 scales of conflicts within conflicts:

• Periods - There are four broad periods: early, southern, northern and late period. This distinction is based on time.
• Regions - These are broad areas of conflict. This distinction is focused on space. In some cases some wars in a region, are in different periods.
• Wars - These are areas and times of intense and open armed violence between colonists and Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people. At this scale of conflict, the area typically involved one or several peoples or language groups, and often involved the same individuals, neighbours and groups of colonists, such as particular squatters and police officers. This scale usually correspond to an ecological zone, and a region sought after by colonists for economic reasons, such as pastoral regions or for cash crops.
• Stages - Within each war there may be distinct phases, such as an early and late phase, and may involve a flow of conflict from one area to another. Stages help understand the story of a war's ebb and flow. For example, it may begin with attacks near a river and stations, and culminate in the mountains or wetlands.

Naming Wars

Of the wars identified by clusters of massacres, many have already been identified or names as wars, such as the Black War, the Bathurst War, the Eumeralla War, the Bunuba Resistance, demonstrating that the principle is effective. Some of the wars identified do not yet go by a commonly accepted name - although conflicts in all regions of Australia is discussed in histories and referred to by colonists loosely in terms of place names and regions. The names used on this website are provisional, until culturally appropriate and collaborative processes can be worked through to name them. In order to name something, it is necessary first identify and distinguish it.

Wars, historical context and Indigenous knowledge

Massacres are not the only type of events that occur in wars. A cluster of 3 or more massacres provides a clear and unambiguous identification of a war, but many other types of events occur in wars, and there are other factors to consider. For this reason, some of the distinctions between wars have been adjusted after consideration by historians and Indigenous people. Generally speaking, Historians have written on the wars or frontier conflict in all regions of Australia, one way or another - from full books dedicated to a specific war, to chapters or short sections focusing on a particular region. However, there is much more collaborative research yet to do and the identification of wars may be adjusted in future.

Many of these other events and the wider context are recorded in historical records, to be found, organised, interpreted and presented. The colonial record presents a one sided view of this history. Something of an Indigenous perspective can be understood by reading between the lines in the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's knowledge and understanding. Some events, sometimes purposefully hidden by colonists or forgotten, remain in Indigenous historical traditions, recorded in oral history, and in art, dance and song. These and the wider historical context must be considered in identifying and distinguishing wars and in understanding them.

Because the context varies and involve different peoples, in different places and times, and because 'contexts' are often complex and highly contingent, it can be difficult to be definitive about what specifically is a factor in determining whether there is a state of war, but some many examples, are quite clear and unequivocal. Several wars on this website include less than 3 massacres. For example: colonists at the time referred to it as 'war' in the region, the existence of an organised armed resistance with an identified leader or leaders carrying out attacks over a sustained period of time; organisation of colonial militia forces; colonists being forced off country in response to resistance; the colonial governments calling in military forces or boosting armed police forces and positions to suppress resistance; police/military strategies and campaigns to attack and suppress; strong economic motivations for occupying and exploiting regions, and so also to suppress resistance - these are some of the factors to consider in identifying wars.

Mapping events and listing people: Who, what, when, where, why and how?

As the only way to understand these guerilla style wars is through real events, we need to find, gather and map the many events that occurred in them - when and where they happened. Mapping them and seeing the patterns emerge helps us answer the question 'What wars?' and, to count and name them, as well as understand what happened in them. Listing who was involved in wars is a fundamental part of war memorial and commemoration. As there was a concerted attempt to destroy people on the Indigenous side in particular, and this involved dehumanising, there should be a concerted attempt to remember them, and re-humanise them. Many individuals were named and many were not. This is an important part of the ethics of researching Australian Wars and resistance. Having identified, when, where and what, we can begin to understand how and why these wars occurred. Having the information available, mapped and listed, in time, we can piece together the many human stories of the Australian Wars.

Recommended Reading

Bosio, N. (2020, March 5). What is war? Defining war, conflict and competition. Australian Army Research Centre. https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/land-power-forum/what-war-defining-war-conflict-and-competition

Clausewitz, C. von. (1989). On war (M. Howard & P. Paret, Eds. & Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1832).

Clausewitz, C. von. (2015). Clausewitz on small war (C. Daase & J. W. Davis, Eds. & Trans.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198737131.001.0001

Collins, P. (2022). Goodbye Bussamarai: Aboriginal landowners, colonisers and Native Police at war, southern Queensland 1842–1852. InHouse Publishing.

Connor, J. (2002). The Australian frontier wars, 1788–1838. University of New South Wales Press.

Gapps, S. (2025). Uprising: War in the colony of New South Wales, 1838–1844. NewSouth Publishing.

Kerkhove, R. (2023). How they fought: Indigenous tactics and weaponry of Australia’s frontier wars. Boolarong Press.

Lydon, J., & Ryan, L. (Eds.). (2018). Remembering the Myall Creek massacre. NewSouth Publishing.

Milliss, R. (1992). Waterloo Creek: The Australia Day massacre of 1838, George Gipps and the British conquest of New South Wales. McPhee Gribble.

Perkins, R., Gapps, S., Murray, M., & Reynolds, H. (Eds.). (2025). The Australian Wars: The truth about the bloody battles fought to establish the nation. Allen & Unwin.

Comparison with other British colonial conflicts

Anderson, D. M., & Killingray, D. (Eds.). (1991). Policing the empire: Government, authority and control, 1830–1940. Manchester University Press.

Bartlett, T. (2010). Ireland: A history. Cambridge University Press.

Laband, J. (2014). Zulu warriors: The battle for the South African frontier. Yale University Press.

O’Malley, V. (2016). The great war for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000. Bridget Williams Books.

Peires, J. B. (1982). The house of Phalo: A history of the Xhosa people in the days of their independence. University of California Press.

Richter, D. K. (2001). Facing east from Indian country: A Native history of early America. Harvard University Press.

White, R. (2011). The middle ground: Indians, empires, and republics in the Great Lakes region, 1650–1815 (20th anniversary ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Strategy and Tactics In Australian Wars

Contributor: Ray Kerkhove
Historian and author
(adapted from How They Fought)

1. Combatants
   • Composition and size
   • Organisational structure
2. Weaponry and defences
3. General nature of engagements
   • Tactics used by both sides
   • Tactics specific to settlers
   • Tactics specific to First Nations
4. Sources

COMBATANTS

COMPOSITION AND SIZE

Settler combatants

Many frontier war incidents involved no more than 2-12 armed pastoralists/ prospectors/ timber-getters/ fishers/ bullockies/ explorers engaging in a ‘skirmish’ with a group of warriors. It was almost always settler parties of this small size, accompanied with horses and (sometimes) stock who conducted the first forays into ‘unsettled’ lands. These were civilians, although explorers often included personnel of military/ naval rank.

Native Mounted Police corps comprised an officer or two, overseeing a body of 8-10 Indigenous troopers. These were highly mobile units. Many officers had formerly held military posts.

Armed forces were also involved in the Australian Wars. Detachments and squads from military regiments – mostly foot soldiers - participated. These could include persons of various ranks but usually numbered 12-30 per unit.

In some engagements, a number of NMP corps or military units were combined or simultaneously employed across a given region, meaning that in a few cases there might be scores or even hundreds of soldiers or police involved, albeit usually widely dispersed.

Another very common mode of activity was punitive expeditions. These tended to involve larger numbers: 30-70 armed men. In some rare cases a hundred and more men were deployed for a single skirmish. Punitive expeditions were typically mixed: a few ranked police, army officers or persons with previous military/ naval experience leading numerous armed civilians.

First Nations combatants

Squads conducting ‘payback’ (vengeance) expeditions and defensive reconnaissance were the usual units employed in resistance activities. They were generally small (3, 7 or a dozen warriors) but there were cases of scores of warriors being involved. The squads were composed of ritually prepared warriors led by a chief avenger or henchman, who was usually related to the person being avenged. They usually had forward scouts.

For larger confrontations, kin-related allies would be mustered. This could swell numbers being fielded to 200-300 warriors or in some cases, even 700-1,000 warriors.

Such numbers were often recorded during skirmishes with settlers. First Nations groups relied strongly on bluff. They were aware that they held a numeric advantage, so they often rallied in large numbers to any engagement, to intimidate and frighten away settlers.

ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

Settler forces

From 1789 until about 1849, detachments from military regiments and their officers were sporadically employed in campaigns against First Nations peoples. This was subsidiary to their main duty of guarding convicts.

Beginning in the late 1830s, small, mobile paramilitary units (corps) such as the Border Police and Native Mounted Police were developed. By the 1850s-1890s, most skirmishing with Indigenous groups was conducted by these bodies.

The other major force were squads of armed civilians. These vigilantes were usually landholders and squatter-pastoralists living along the edge of areas newly ‘settled’ districts, but included staff such as overseers, stockmen and shepherds.

Between the 1890s and 1900s, Native Mounted Police forces were disbanded. Thereafter (into the 1940s), warfare became part of general policing, sometimes backed up with vigilante settler-squads. However, in many cases, persons chosen to police the frontiers at this time had a military background.

First Nations forces

Pinya – payback squads – acted under the instruction of the council of elders, especially the ceremony bosses and medicine men/ women. They were a democratic unit, except that they took their inspiration from the main avenger or henchman who directed them. Some pinya were very wide-ranging. These were directly under the authority of a medicine-man, who sometimes participated in the attacks. Such squads moved between tribal groups to enforce tribal Law, relying on totemic affiliation to ensure safe passage.

Organising larger confrontations similarly relied on the sanction of major ceremony bosses/ medicine men/women across a region, although they were conducted through a key headman/ headwoman ‘umpire’. Under the neutral ‘umpire’ were ‘section heads’ – the uncles or elder brothers of small units of warriors representing various clans. Additionally, there were various specialists: champion or ‘boss’ spearmen, trap-setters, messengers etc who were employed at various phases of a campaign.

Many tribes formed larger alliances for mutual protection and joint activities. If large numbers were required for a fight with settlers, ceremony bosses and ‘umpire-heads’ would send out messengers to call in these allies to assist.

WEAPONRY AND DEFENCES

Settler weapons/ defences

Settlers employed muskets and cutlasses until the 1850s-1860s, when repeating rifles such as Sniders came into use. Repeating rifles greatly improved the capacity of settlers to kill many people.

Civilians were heavily armed with several rifles and pistols each when operating on the frontiers. Their staff in some cases lacked arms and used repurposed farm tools, iron bars etc.

Most settler fighting was done from horseback (mounted) - which afforded a distinct advantage. In some cases, flocks or herds were driven into Aboriginal camps as a type of weapon.

Most settler defences were rudimentary and makeshift – for instance, windowless huts with loopholes (slots for shooting), but these seem to have been very common. In some cases, military and penal forts were used against First Nations people.

Native Mounted Police barracks and camps were generally unfortified, although some had loopholed walls. Areas around barracks were cleared to allow maximum visibility. NMP camps and barracks were placed strategically overlooking major Indigenous pathways and camps. They were constantly moved in step with the edge of the frontier.

First Nations weapons/ defences

The spear was the main Indigenous weapon. War spears were distinct from hunting spears and could be tossed accurately and silently over vast distances, making them quite lethal – especially as men carried a dozen each, and could hurl these quicker than muskets could be reloaded. Woomeras extended their range.

First Nations also employed a variety of throwing clubs, throwing axes, ‘killer’ boomerangs and throwing sticks. ‘Killer’ boomerangs could take unexpected trajectories, hitting victims even behind trees and boulders. Many of these weapons were stockpiled to create ready arsenals.

First Nations’ people widely used fire as a weapon – burning grasses over broad fronts to drive away enemies.

From scrap metal and broken bottles, First Nations people crafted and traded iron-headed and glass-headed spears and throwing tomahawks to fight settlers. In some cases, they also obtained guns and horses to use against settlers. A few resistance fighters even moulded their own bullets.

Defences consisted of shields, boulders, trees and hideouts. The latter were natural refuges such as islands, caves, dense forests, hills, swamp and rocky terrain. Against or within these sites, Aboriginal people maintained hidden camps. In some cases, camps were also defended with brush walls, or by the watch of posted sentry-guards.

GENERAL NATURE OF ENGAGEMENTS

TACTICS USED BY BOTH SIDES

Small Wars/ Guerilla Warfare

Virtually all the Australian Wars can be considered ‘Small (Guerilla) Wars’ because they employed only a portion of the populations involved and were conducted as a series of small skirmishes and affrays, and rarely as large-scale battles. Moreover, both Indigenous and settler tactics were of the usual varieties seen in guerilla warfare: hit-and-run; raiding; extensive use of refuges; and the lack of distinction between civilian and military ranks.

Pitched (open) battles

Both in traditional European and Aboriginal society, a pitched (open) battle involving large numbers of people and many rules and protocols was the norm. However, First Nations people quickly discovered this was never a ‘fair fight’ if firearms or horses (cavalry) were involved. Therefore, they only resorted to pitched battles in initial confrontations, or if the odds seemed likely to be in their favour due to their numbers or the terrain.

Indigenous pitched battle with settlers saw rows of warriors hurl numerous projectiles (spears, throwing clubs etc) in simultaneous volleys. In many cases, they employed ‘stockyarding’ – a tactic whereby ‘wings’ of warriors encircled, corralled and engulfed the settler combatants.

Property damage and impeding communication/ transportation

Both settlers and First Nations people frequently engaged in extensive theft and destruction of each other’s property - especially game, weaponry, food stores and homes. This served to intimidate or disable their enemy.

Native Mounted Police disrupted smoke-signalling networks and apprehended messengers (runners) to break efforts at resistance. Pathways were frequently usurped.

Likewise, First Nations people are recorded blocking roads with logs, killing mailmen, dispersing or killing horses, removing riding gear, destroying beacons, frightening or attacking all settler travellers off their traditional pathways, or constantly attacking ‘road trains’ (convoys of drays). This impeded settler communication/supply chains and helped maintain control of ancient routes and songlines. Along the northern coasts, First Nations people also often hijacked settlers’ boats.

Psychological warfare: harassment, mockery and vandalism

Both settlers and First Nations groups employed this tactic. Settlers created loud sounds, effigies and masks that they attributed to evil spirits, as a means of terrorising First Nations groups, and often they deliberately defaced sacred places or belittled elders and ceremony bosses in front of youths. Others mounted cannons or guns at their homesteads, to scare off Aboriginal parties through frequent ‘warning shots.’ Bluff was a major element of Indigenous warfare. It included magic art to hex invaders, ridicule of settlers, name-calling, threats, ‘warning shots’ (spears thrown very near), and frightening displays of aggression (war dances). It sometimes extended to deliberate uprooting or destruction of graves, fences and property.

TACTICS SPECIFIC TO SETTLERS

Punitive expeditions: dawn raids, camp battles and massacres

Soon after a triggering incident such as Indigenous spearing of shepherds or the killing or removal of cattle or sheep, a message would be sent out riders to homesteads, inns, outstations, telegraph stations, or mining and timber getting camps within a certain radius. Civilian vigilantes - male overseers and staff of these places - would elect to engage in an armed punitive campaign to track down the purported offenders and either take vengeance or apprehend the accused group or their supposed ringleader(s).

In some instances, this activity was organised or led by military or policing officers. Certain punitive expeditions traversed very large areas, employing several parties. Many were unsuccessful in locating or interacting with the accused. Others randomly shot at any First Nations persons they happened to encounter.

For many of these expeditions, settlers rode to a major base camp or inter-tribal gathering, as this would ensure a greater concentration of would be present in one location. Often vigilantes struck at dawn or pre-dawn when there was less likelihood of being detected, surrounding the camp and shooting into it.

At other times, a forward party was sent to apprehend the key suspect(s) whilst other settlers waited nearby. This often erupted into a violent confrontation with other First Nations people coming to the defence of the accused, which resulted in settler ‘back up forces’ entering the affray.

Depending on the agenda of the vigilantes, they would either frighten and drive away the camp residents or slaughter (massacre) as many as possible either in their huts or as they fled. As there was often a spirited resistance (able-bodied warriors forming a wall of defence to enable the rest of the tribe to flee), this often became a ‘camp battle’, with the settler vigilantes destroying as much as they could of the camp’s huts and weaponry, and warriors trying to prevent this or retaliate. Sometimes the vigilantes would be evicted from the camp once the warriors reassembled.

Military and policing patrols: intimidation and dispersals

The Border Police, Native Mounted Police, armed forces and similar bodies often conducted their activities in the same manner as vigilante squads: storming camps through dawn raids. However, as their presence was also meant to intimidate, they frequently engaged in armed demonstrations and lengthy patrols as a ‘show of force.’ Their patrols often saw no engagements but nevertheless served to keep First Nations groups wary and distant.

Native Mounted Police were instructed to ‘disperse’ any large Indigenous gatherings. This consisted in frightening off Aboriginal persons or (more often) wounding and killing large numbers, either when encountered in passing, or wherever they assembled in large bodies.

Stealth poisonings

Baiting flour, bread or water with arsenic and other poisons and leaving these in stores or places where they would be consumed by First Nations people was sometimes employed by civilians as a means of reducing local Indigenous populations. Likewise, diseased blankets were sometimes distributed with this goal.

TACTICS SPECIFIC TO FIRST NATIONS

Vengeance raids: ambush executions and ‘spot killings’

Most Indigenous resistance consisted of ‘payback’ expeditions. These were campaigns that specifically avenged the breaking of tribal law and especially the death of one of your people.

The payback squad would be ritually prepared and would doggedly track the accused often far from home. They could wait months or even decades to strike, counting strongly on the element of surprise to deliver a definitive ambush ‘execution.’

Such expeditions were conducted continuously and over very broad areas, which added an element of terror as they occurred anywhere and often completely unexpected. Most Indigenous actions consisted of such surprise ‘spot killings’, resulting in 1-3 deaths per attack. These could become so numerous that over months and years, hundreds of people were slain.

Economic sabotage and usurping rural industries

Economic sabotage (‘white war’) was the second most common means of resistance. First Nations people called it “starving out.” It entailed dispersing, maiming/ damaging, raiding or destroying the economic base of the settlers: sheep, cattle, horses, pigs, seal pelts, food crops etc. It sometimes extended to destroying stockpiles and food stores; sacking convoys of fleece-filled drays (wagons); and destroying (burning) the pastures on which livestock relied. Such destruction was sometimes conducted on a vast scale across many properties simultaneously.

This was a highly successful tactic, used all over Australia. It often resulted in settlers abandoning or selling their holdings for months to years, due to being economically unsustainable.

A variation of this practice was ‘usurping pastoralism’ - the theft of large quantities of flocks, herds and horses and placing them under Indigenous management. Livestock were driven tens to hundreds of kilometres away from pastoral holdings. Once here, Indigenous pastoralists would move them around various grazing areas, killing some when needed, much like settler pastoralists.

These First Nations livestock-minders used natural enclosures (e.g. between a campsite and cliffs, bodies of water, or gorges) or otherwise made ‘bush pens’ of brush or rock whenever they needed to box up the livestock.

Many frontier war incidents consisted of the arduous quest of settlers hunting for stolen flocks and herds. Warrior squads would deliberately lead these searchers astray or into traps. When settlers finally located the hidden livestock, there were violent affrays as both sides tried to assert their ownership.

Continual harassment

A defining style of Indigenous warfare was a campaign of constant interference: daily thefts, spearing, displays of aggression, vandalism etc carried out with great frequency, regularity and persistence sometimes day and night for months and years. Although these acts were in themselves minor, in combination, they ‘wore out’ settler incursions and forced withdrawal from newly settled areas.

Sieges and confinement

A commonly recorded tactic was the siege of a homestead, outstation or (sometimes) a small hamlet. This entailed some spies or decoys being sent out for surveillance to discern an opportune moment and keeping a party of warriors in hiding ready to surround the hut/ homestead/hamlet. These pounce into action to make it impossible for the occupants to leave the site.

The purpose of this action was varied. In some cases, warriors sought to contain and extinguish the occupants and their dwellings. In other cases, the aim was harassment to the point that the occupants ran out of ammunition and food and fled the buildings, which were then destroyed. In still other cases, it was a delaying tactic, enabling other groups of combatants to raid stores or shift a flock or herd to a distant location whilst the settlers were confined.

Withdrawal and noncompliance

This was largely passive resistance: ‘walkouts’ where First Nations people would simply remove themselves from missions and homesteads, would refuse to assist or engage with settlers or would withdraw to refuge areas. Apart from the psychological effect of widespread animosity and distrust, this tactic crippled many isolated settlers and economically ruined some stations, as many places relied on Indigenous labour and Indigenous know-how and guides.

Sources

• Berndt, Ronald M., Catherine H. Berndt and John E. Stanton, 1993, A World That Was: The Yaraldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia, Melbourne: Miegunyah/Melbourne University Press.
• Berndt, Ronald M. and Catherine H. Berndt, 1992, The World of the First Australians: Past and Present, 5th edition Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
• Blandowski, William, 2010 [1860], Harry Allen, ed., Australia: William Blandowski’s Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
• Duncan-Kemp, Alice M., 1968, Where Strange Gods Call, Brisbane: W R Smith & Patterson.
• Gray, W.J.B., 1902, ‘The early days – pioneers and pioneering on the Darling Downs’, Collection of Mrs J. Pollard.
• Kennedy, Edward B., 1904, The Black Police of Queensland: Reminiscences of Official Work and Personal Adventures in the Early Days of the Colony, London: J. Murray.
• Lumholtz, Carl, 1890, ‘A strange tournament’, Southern Argus (Port Elliot), 17 July 1890, p.6.
• MacKenzie, Willie (Gaiarbau), 1982, ‘Some original views around Kilcoy: The Aboriginal perspective’, Gerry Langevad, ed., Queensland Ethnohistory Transcripts, Vol.1:1, St. Lucia: University of Queensland (Archaeology Branch).
• MacKnight, David, 2005, Of Marriage, Violence and Sorcery: The Quest for Power in Northern Queensland, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
• Petrie, C. C., 1904, Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland (Brisbane: Watson & Ferguson.
• Roth, W. E., 1910, North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 8, Sydney: Australian Museum.
• Venbrux, Eric, 1995, A Death in the Tiwi Islands: Conflict, Ritual and Social Life in an Australian Aboriginal Community, New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Warner, William Lloyd, 1964, A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe, Chicago: Harper & Row.

Contributor: Ray Kerkhove, 2025

Summary

Contributor: Ray Kerkhove
Historian and author
(adapted from How They Fought)

Firearms were initially not a great advantage for Europeans during the Frontier Wars. Most Australian spears had an equal or superior range to the firing of a European musket. Aboriginal warriors were able to toss these and other projectiles (clubs, tomahawks and fighting boomerangs) with great accuracy, silence and unpredictable trajectories. Also, Aboriginal warriors came equipped with dozens of spears each, tossing them in volleys whilst musket-users were busy reloading their weapons. These disadvantages of muskets are shown in the relatively mild tallies of early First Nations/ European skirmishes.

However, once European firearms advanced with repeating rifles in the 1860s, it became possible for even a few well-armed settlers to inflict devastating tolls, despite being vastly outnumbered. For this reason, most Aboriginal fighters became reluctant to meet settlers in open battle and relied increasingly on stealth and surprise one-off assassinations.

Several factors limited First Nations access to guns. Firstly, legal measures restricted firearms being traded en masse to Aboriginal people. Secondly, settlement expanded so rapidly in Australia that it often overtook the time required to master the new technology or acquire sufficient arsenals (most Australia being seized in 50 years – 1830-1880 - versus the 300 years invasion of North America). Finally, the only source for firearms for Aboriginal warriors was a hostile one: British settlers. This contrasts with North America, where various enemies of American settlers (French, English and Mexican traders) were eager to sell large quantities of guns to First Nations groups. By contrast, Aboriginal fighters mostly had to steal whatever guns they required.

Despite all these disadvantages, accounts of guns being used against settlers occur in most parts of Australia. Beginning in the 1810s and through to the 1940s, firearms were often stolen and used in raids or in attacks on cattle. In the Northern Rivers and New England districts of NSW and in the Kimberley region of WA, many First Nations attacks involved guns. For NSW, this was especially so between the 1840s and 1860s. One report from this area in 1860 complained that ‘the natives are now all armed with firearms and attack in ambush.’ In northern Queensland and the Kimberlys, some warrior-leaders even stole bullet moulds and cast their own bullets.

If First Nations peoples could not obtain firearms, or were unfamiliar with how to use them, they would instead resort to destroying or evading firearms. They developed many tactics for doing this: plugging up portholes; bending and breaking gun muzzles; dampening gunpowder; and removing all musket balls. Sometimes entire arsenals were destroyed. Warriors became adept at always staying just out of the range of fire; attacking between musket reloadings; luring settlers into exhausting their ammunition or otherwise jumping between trees and boulders to shield themselves as they advanced.

Iron provided another settler advantage. Steel swords, sabres, cutlasses, knives and bayonets were at times used against First Nations peoples. For instance, in 1827, police attacked Tasmanian groups using bayonets.

Although First Nations peoples did not know iron technology until the arrival of Macassar traders and Europeans in the last few centuries, they made concerted efforts to procure large quantities as soon as they realised its efficiency. Even the smallest European outposts and camps had iron objects constantly removed by Aboriginal peoples. Iron was also salvaged from dumps, drays and shipwrecks.

In what has been called ‘Australia’s Iron Age’, iron tools and fragments were rapidly traded across the continent. They were beaten and shaped into a range of new weapons. These included nail-headed clubs, sheep shear-headed spears, pronged wire and spike-headed spears, and tomahawks fashioned from horseshoe fragments. One of the most distinctive new weapons across northern Australia was the ‘shovel-nosed spear’ – a very deadly spear fashioned from the inner section of European shovels.

Iron weapons were stockpiled for use against settlers, and to more effectively kill or wound horses and stock. The decimation of stock was partly an adaptation to decreasing local game but was also at times conducted to deplete the economic base on which settlers survived.

Recommended Reading

References for each euphemism are included in the Summary