Table of Contents

Introduction: History, Memory and Genocide in Tasmania Chapter 1: Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing 1804-1832 Chapter 2: Saving Souls and Cultural Genocide 1832-1876 Chapter 3: Memory and Return: Genocide in British Culture 1804-2011 Conclusion

Promotional Information

By exploring the memory of destruction, The Last Man provides the first comprehensive picture of the British role in the destruction of the Tasmanian Aboriginal population.

About the Author

Tom Lawson is Professor of History at Northumbria University. He is the author of Debates on the Holocaust and The Church of England and the Holocaust: Christianity, Memory and Nazism.

Reviews

'This clearly-written, accessible and strongly-argued book contends that the British Government committed genocide in Van Diemen's Land/Tasmania - and, by implication, in other parts of the British Empire. This study, whilst obviously controversial, provides an important contribution to the current public debate that is reassessing the record of the British Empire following the recent emergence of new archival sources.' John S. Connor, author of The Australian Frontier Wars "The Last Man enhances our knowledge of British imperial history as it played out in one of its most distant colonies, Tasmania. It shows how British policies and practice meant that Aboriginal society there was almost destroyed. In using the international scholarship on genocide along with its own original and detailed empirical historical study, it reminds us of the enormity of what happened. As if that were not enough, The Last Man then goes on to show how understandings of this Tasmanian genocide have since reverberated through British culture, right up to the present. In doing so, it asks us to reconsider the nature and meaning of British history for us now." Ann Curthoys, author of Freedom Ride