Protector of Settlers? Charles Symmons and Aboriginal Protection in Western Australia, 1840–1855

This article charts the colonial career of Charles Symmons (1804–87), the inaugural Protector of Aborigines (1840–55) in Perth, Western Australia. British Imperial policies for the protection of Indigenous peoples emerged in the mid-1830s, in the wake of the abolition of slavery and following the recommendations of the Select Committee on Aborigines that reported in 1837. Symmons was one of many protectors appointed in the Australasian colonies in the years that followed. He is notable for his approach to this task, principally because he placed as much emphasis on the protection of British settlers as he did Aboriginal people. This approach derived in part from the local conditions of the remote colony, which had a small population and a tenuous economy, but it can also be explained by Symmons’s background and the circumstances of his appointment. Unlike colleague protectors elsewhere in the antipodean colonies, he was not strongly motivated by a philanthropic or evangelical spirit. He is an important early example of a Protector of Aborigines, because he embodied a shift in Aboriginal policy in the mid-nineteenth century, whereby the humanitarian impulse of the 1830s was subordinated to the practical aim of safeguarding settler safety and economic interests.