Her Majesty's Servants

Doubtless to everyone's surprise, nearly half the massacres perpetrated during the process of civilising Australia were carried out by police and other government agents; while many others were independent actions by have-a-go heroes as the state pursued a policy of laissez-exterminer. The Colonial Frontier Massacres Digital Map Project has found that most mass killings of Aborigines were premeditated, often under the still-fashionable rubric of reprisals for unprovoked attacks on colonists after some legitimate and civilising incidence of theft, abduction, rape or murder. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, as commercial companies took over, the process was efficientised by the advent of private enterprise; total Aboriginal deaths were conservatively estimated to be twenty-seven to thirty-three times more numerous than settler deaths, which demonstrates just how sensible and moderate the whole business was.