Description
Line of Blood: The Truth of Alfred Howitt tells the full story of Australia’s so-called ‘ablest anthropologist’; the botanist, geologist, senior public servant and explorer Alfred Howitt—and ancestor of the author, Craig Horne.
Howitt first made his name in Australia as a bushman and explorer—Mt Howitt and Howitt Plain in the Victorian Alps are named in his honour. That he was an extraordinarily capable polymath is not challenged. What this book challenges are the contributions of Howitt’s anthropological conclusions, coupled with his social and political influences, in legitimising the murderous advance of white settlement upon the Australia landscape.
For Howitt, the ‘line of blood’ that followed white settlement was nothing more than the iron law of replacement—whereby an ‘inferior race’ is inevitably usurped by a ‘superior civilisation’. Howitt’s racial ideologies facilitated a pattern of Australia’s mechanical dismissal of First Nations peoples; identifying them as ‘savages’, ‘blacks’, and in need of saving through a determined white policy of paternalistic neglect.
PB, 2023
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Linda Barraclough (verified owner) –
This is not yet a review. It is a reaction to finding, all over the place (back cover of the book, inside the book), even here in the publicity on this page, that the author describes himself as a descendant of Alfred William Howitt. At other times he describes Howitt as an “ancestor”.
He is neither. Immediately after one of these claims, the author explains that his grandmother was the great-grand-daughter of Howitt’s uncle.
There is no ancestor or descendant of A.W. Howitt here.
The author is a member of the extended Howitt family, who shares common ancestors with A.W. Howitt.
But is breathlessly promoted as otherwise.
The book itself will take a little longer to read and review.