'A Just Estimate of the Value of Human Life': Second Wave Evangelicalism and the Myall Creek Massacre

Abstract

The 'Myall Creek Massacre', as it has become known in Australian lore, has been explored for its significance to the history of frontier warfare, race relations and legal precedents. This essay explores a different aspect of the historic case: its connections to, and dependence upon, the Evangelical humanitarian agenda flowing out of the Colonial Office. The paper will argue that, against a backdrop of general antipathy toward Aboriginal affairs in New South Wales, a collection of Evangelical voices abroad and at home were key in pursuing a legal outcome that valued the lives of the victims and their humanity. The paper traces Colonial developments in England, with the founding of the Aborigines Protection Society (1837) and its connections to Clapham Sect Evangelicalism, as the backdrop against which legal concern for the humanitarian treatment of the colonies' native populations developed. From here, paying close attention to the dispatches of Charles Grant Jr., the Colonial Secretary, to Sir George Gipps, the Governor of New South Wales, the essay follows these developments into the Australian context and identifies a consistent thread of Evangelical pressure surrounding the eventual guilty verdict delivered to Myall Creek perpetrators in December, 1838. Ultimately it will show that it was Evangelical ideals of personhood and justice that sustained the case in the face of significant pressure to the contrary.