First Fleet - First Fleet Smallpox

First Fleet Smallpox

Recent scholars, Christopher Warren (2007), Craig Mear (2008), and Michael Bennett (2009) have argued that the First Fleet probably introduced live smallpox virus into Australian aboriginal tribes. Earlier writers were divided over 1) whether the First Fleet introduced smallpox and 2) whether this was deliberate. Mear's paper argues that the First Fleet was the origin of the disease but says there is no proof that smallpox was deliberately released . Bennett suggests that brutalised veterans from the American War of Independence could have used smallpox, but Bennett notes that convicts were more likely as an act of revenge after Australian natives killed and attacked unarmed convicts.

Historian Judy Campbell argues that it is highly improbable that the First Fleet was the source of the epidemic as "smallpox had not occurred in any members of the First Fleet" as the only possible source of infection from the Fleet being the variolous matter imported for inoculation against smallpox. Campbell argues that the variolous matter was probably inactivated by heat and humidity and that there is no evidence that Aboriginal people were ever exposed to the material. She points to regular contact between Macassans from the Indonesia archipelago, where smallpox was episodic (excluding Macassar), and Aboriginal people in Australia's North as a possible source for the introduction of smallpox. There remains some disputation in avowedly conservative media such as Quadrant particularly as it now appears there was no outbreak of smallpox at Macassar prior to the Sydney outbreak.