Quick questions on The History Wars for HSC History Extension

In 2002, Keith Windschuttle, in The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, mounted a sharp attack on this scholarship. He went back to the footnotes, checking the sources historians had cited, and argued that some claims about frontier killings were exaggerated or unsupported by the evidence cited, accusing parts of the field of poor method. His critics, including Robert Manne in the edited collection Whitewash (2003) and historians such as Lyndall Ryan, replied that he applied an impossibly narrow standard of evidence to a frontier where records were deliberately sparse, misread the sources himself, and used method as a cover for a political agenda. The exchange became a dispute about what counts as adequate evidence and reliable method.

The History Wars are powerful because they let you demonstrate several key questions at once with one case. Use Reynolds and Ryan versus Windschuttle to show the debate over evidence and method, the black armband and three cheers framing to show the debate over purpose and national identity, and the role of politicians to show history as a public and contested practice. Resist taking a partisan side; analyse instead how each party deployed evidence, method and purpose, and what the clash reveals about whether objective history of so charged a subject is possible.

Replace "historians disagreed about the frontier" with "Windschuttle's The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2002) challenged the footnotes in Reynolds' and Ryan's scholarship, answered by Manne's Whitewash (2003)."

A top answer can conclude that the weight of varied evidence supports the general picture of sustained frontier conflict while noting the dispute over exact standards of proof, without declaring a "winner" of the History Wars.

Identify two historians on either side of the History Wars dispute over frontier violence. [3 marks]

Explain the dispute over evidence and method between Windschuttle and his critics. [6 marks]

Analyse how the Australian History Wars demonstrate the collision of evidence, method and politics in the writing of history. [8 marks]