Between 1825 and 1831 close to 200 Britons and 1000 Aborigines died violently in Tasmania’s Black War. It was by far the most intense frontier conflict in Aus

“[A] scholarly overview of military technology throughout history—starting roughly in the 15th century and extending into the future . . . insightful.”—

Little more than seventy years after the British settled Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania) in 1803, the indigenous community had been virtually wiped out. Yet

‘We are at war with them,’ wrote a Tasmanian settler in 1831. ‘What we call their crime is what in a white man we should call patriotism.’ Australia is