Tom Lawson is Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Winchester. He is the author of Debates on the Holocaust and The Church of England and the Holocaust: Christianity, Memory and Nazism.
"'This clearly-written, accessible and strongly-argued book contends that the British Government committed genocide in Van Diemen's Land/Tasmania - and, by implication, in other parts of the British Empire. This study, whilst obviously controversial, provides an important contribution to the current public debate that is reassessing the record of the British Empire following the recent emergence of new archival sources.' John S. Connor, author of The Australian Frontier Wars ""The Last Man enhances our knowledge of British imperial history as it played out in one of its most distant colonies, Tasmania. It shows how British policies and practice meant that Aboriginal society there was almost destroyed. In using the international scholarship on genocide along with its own original and detailed empirical historical study, it reminds us of the enormity of what happened. As if that were not enough, The Last Man then goes on to show how understandings of this Tasmanian genocide have since reverberated through British culture, right up to the present. In doing so, it asks us to reconsider the nature and meaning of British history for us now."" Ann Curthoys, author of Freedom Ride"