23. The aboriginal people were annihilated by colonial settlement
When the First Fleet arrived at Botany Bay in the late 18th century, approximately a quarter of a million aboriginal peoples lived on the Australian continent. By 1920, according to most estimates, there were roughly 60,000. Some historians and other observers have referred to the reduction of the population as a genocide. There were numerous clashes and massacres of native peoples during the colonization of Australia, as well as similar brutal events imposed on the settlers. The number of settlers killed during the period, many of them convicts performing forced labor, were usually not mentioned during discussions of genocide in the colonies.
The vast majority of the natives who died succumbed to disease, not the bullets and knives of settlers and soldiers. With no natural immunity to diseases such as smallpox and measles, epidemics swept through native villages and settlements. Nomadic peoples carried infectious diseases throughout the continent, and ineffective medical practice ensured they were fatal, especially to the elderly and the very young. As in the United States, the forced removal of natives from the lands on which they had hunted and roamed was the result of expansion into the hinterlands, and contact between colonists and natives was inevitable.