Henry Reynolds was born in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1938, the son of John Reynolds, who was a journalist who wrote the first biography of Edmund Barton.[1][2]
Following this, he attended the University of Tasmania, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History in 1960,[4] later gaining a Master of Arts in 1964.[5]
Reynolds taught in secondary schools in Australia and England.[1]
He joined the academic staff at Townsville University College (later James Cook University) in 1966.[1] In the 1970s, he undertook an oral history project.[3] He served as associate professor of history and politics from 1982 until his retirement in 1998.[1]
In 2000 Reynolds became professorial fellow at the University of Tasmania in Launceston.[3]
As of September 2022[update], Reynolds was Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Tasmania.[6]
The Other Side of the Frontier, published in 1981, was ground-breaking in that it was the first major work by an historian to write Australian history from an Aboriginal perspective.[3]
In many books and academic articles Reynolds has sought to explain his view of the high level of violence and conflict involved in the colonisation of Australia, and the Aboriginal resistance to numerous massacres of Indigenous people. Reynolds, along with many other historians, estimate that up to 3,000 Europeans and at least 20,000 Aboriginal Australians were killed directly in the frontier violence, and many more Aboriginal peoples died indirectly through the introduction of European diseases and starvation caused by being forced from their productive tribal lands.[7]
Geoffrey Blainey and Keith Windschuttle categorise his approach as a black armband view of Australian history. In 2002, Windschuttle, in his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847,[8][9] disputed whether the colonial settlers of Australia committed widespread genocide against Indigenous Australians, and accused Reynolds of misrepresenting, inventing, or exaggerating evidence. Subsequently, in Whitewash: on Keith Windschuttle's fabrication of Aboriginal history (2003; edited by Robert Manne), it was argued that Windschuttle failed to meet the criteria that he used to assess "orthodox historians" and his accusations were thus flawed.[10][11]
Reynolds struck up a friendship with Eddie Mabo, who was then a groundsman and gardener at James Cook University. In his book Why Weren't We Told?, Reynolds describes the talks they had regarding Mabo's people's rights to their lands, on Murray Island, in the Torres Strait. Reynolds writes:
Eddie [...] would often talk about his village and about his own land, which he assured us would always be there when he returned because everyone knew it belonged to his family. His face shone when he talked of his village and his land.
So intense and so obvious was his attachment to his land that I began to worry about whether he had any idea at all about his legal circumstances. [...] I said something like: "You know how you've been telling us about your land and how everyone knows it's Mabo land? Don't you realise that nobody actually owns land on Murray Island? It's all crown land."
He was stunned. [...] How could the whitefellas question something so obvious as his ownership of his land?[12]
Reynolds looked into the issue of Indigenous land ownership in international law, and encouraged Mabo to take the matter to court. "It was there over the sandwiches and tea that the first step was taken which led to the Mabo judgement in June 1992".[12] Mabo then talked to lawyers, and Reynolds "had little to do with the case itself from that time", although he and Mabo remained friends until the latter's death in January 1992.[13] Reynolds' 1970s oral history project however contributed to the High Court's recognition of land rights.[3]
^Attwood, Bain, ed. (2009). Frontier, race, nation : Henry Reynolds and Australian history. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. ISBN9781921509445.
