The Black War was the extermination of Tasmanians by British colonists in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in the first half of the XIX century.
The armed conflict began in May 1804, when an armed detachment of colonists opened fire on a group of Tasmanians hunting local animals.The subsequent intensification of colonization of the island led to an aggravation of relations between foreigners and the indigenous population, who increasingly suffered from a shortage of hunting land used by the colonists for agricultural land, as well as food.Since Tasmanians could not respond with force and weapons to harassment and murder by "white settlers", they most often resorted to tactics of attacking individuals or small groups of people. By the end of the 1820s, the conflict was called the "Black War".In November 1828, the colonialists were officially allowed to kill Tasmanians, and after some time a reward was given for each person killed.In the autumn of 1830, Lieutenant Governor George Arthur decided to isolate the Aborigines in the southeastern part of the island of Tasmania. Specifically for this, it was ordered that all eligible male colonists form a human chain of people (about 2,000 people), which, moving south for six weeks, was supposed to drive the islanders to two small peninsulas in the southeastern part of Tasmania (this chain was called the "Black Line" — English Black Line). Although this "operation" ended in a complete fiasco (only one old man and one boy were captured), the organization of the white colonists struck the imagination of the Tasmanians and they eventually surrendered. In the period from 1831 to 1835, most of the surviving Tasmanians (about 200 people) were resettled on Flinders Island in the Bass Strait. Part of the aborigines assimilated with European colonists as a result of interethnic marriages. Result:the victory of the European colonists