Providence and the Destiny of the “Heathen” in Australia’s Settler Colonies, 1788–1860s

ABSTRACT This article seeks to unpick and expose the internal logics of the biblical arguments that were deployed to explain and justify settler colonization in Australia. Pushing beyond “subduing the earth” as the extent of the religious rationale for colonization to an understanding that incorporates the broader biblical narratives drawn on by settler colonists, it argues that colonists’ constructions of Aboriginal people’s spirituality as “heathenism” was vital for settlers’ project to decipher the workings of “Providence.” It argues that Aboriginal people’s supposed “forgetting” of religion was used to explain to their rapid population decline and the possession of their land by colonists. Evangelicals were aware of and concerned for the moral contradictions of the settler-colonial project. Ultimately, however, their allegations that the British Empire itself had behaved in a “heathenish” manner served to urge settler colonists to justify and secure their presence on Aboriginal land through the favor of “Providence.”