Uprising

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Uprising: War in the Colony of New South Wales, 1838-1844

By Stephen Gapps

Details: Non-fiction, published 2025.

Format: Soft cover, 336 pages.

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In Uprising, Stephen Gapps argues that the seemingly unrelated Aboriginal attacks on settlers and their stock between 1838 and 1844 in colonial New South Wales represented a coherent Aboriginal uprising against British colonisation. This fighting took place along the waterways of the colony, which at the time also included the present-day states of Victoria and Queensland.

Uprising is a companion book to The Sydney Wars (2018) and Gudyarra (2021), which detail conflict in the Sydney basin, and around Bathurst respectively. Gapps’ new delineation of this period of warfare is a fresh and thought-provoking contribution to the growing historiography of the Australian Frontier Wars. It features multiple clear maps, close readings of primary sources, and consultation with Aboriginal Elders.

Gapps continues his project, begun in The Sydney Wars, to stitch the Australian Frontier Wars into the fabric of Australia’s military history. Even at the time, these conflicts were not easily understood as part of the British Empire’s military history. The militarised colony that Gapps described in his first book had swelled beyond the protection of the British Army by the late 1830s.

As he shows, while it was the settlers themselves who put down the uprising, they did so using the militarised structures that had been developed since 1788.

Gapps has an excellent grasp of the historiography of the state of New South Wales, but his historiography of the state of Victoria is somewhat dated. Uprising would have benefited from engagement with my book The Civilisation of Port Phillip (2018), and also with James Boyce’s 1835 (2011). Disappointingly, the publisher has not included a bibliography (which did appear in Gapps’ two previous books), which hinders researchers keen on following up the amazing array of primary source material that he has consulted.

These quibbles aside, Uprising is a provocative and stimulating reading of eastern Australia’s history, and will appeal to all those hoping to understand the conflicts that founded Australia.