In reading the book, parts of Howitt's character made my skin crawl, but the uncovering of his life was revelatory ... I believe the publication of Line of Blood will be at a very pertinent time. - Bruce Pascoe
Line of Blood tells the full story of Australia's so-called 'ablest anthropologist'; the botanist, geologist, senior public servant and explorer Alfred Howitt - and ancestor of the author, Craig Horne.
That Howitt was an extraordinary polymath is not challenged. And yet, his anthropological conclusions, coupled with his social and political influences, legitimised the murderous advance of white settlement upon the Australian landscape.
For Howitt, the 'line of blood' that followed white settlement was nothing more than the iron law of replacement, whereby an 'inferior race' is inevitably usurped by a 'superior civilisation'. His disastrously racist ideologies facilitated a pattern of neglect and dismissal of Australia's First Nations peoples - the conseqences of which reverberate today.