The Royal Australian Historical Society is hosting Dr Stephen Gapps for a day lecture on December 5th, ‘Why weren’t we told about the Sydney Wars?’.

Dr Gapps’ 2018 book ,The Sydney Wars (NewSouth Books), tells the history of military engagements between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians – described as ‘this constant sort of war’ by one early colonist – around the greater Sydney region.

Telling the story of the first years of colonial Sydney in a new and original way, this provocative book is the first detailed account of the warfare that occurred across the Sydney region from the arrival of a British expedition in 1788 to the last recorded conflict in the area in 1817. The Sydney Wars sheds new light on how British and Aboriginal forces developed military tactics and how the violence played out.

In this lecture Stephen will answer the hotly debated question, ‘why weren’t we told?’ and explore what might be told in the future.

About the speaker:

Dr Stephen Gapps has a long-standing interest in public history and the history of early colonial Sydney. In 2011 he won the NSW Premier’s History Prize for Regional and Community History with his book, Cabrogal to Fairfield: A History of a Multicultural Community. In 2017 Stephen was awarded the NSW State Library Merewether Fellowship.

This is a free event, but please reserve your ticket.