Black War in the context of "Guerrilla war"

The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells about an attempted invasion of Earth by beings from the planet Mars with much greater intelligence and more advanced weapons than humans. The Martians intend to eliminate mankind and conquer Earth because their own older and smaller world has reached the "last stage of exhaustion". It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann. The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother who escapes to Tillingham in Essex as London and Southern England are invaded by Martians. It is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.

The plot is similar to other works of invasion literature from the same period and has been variously interpreted as a commentary on the theory of evolution, imperialism, and Victorian era fears, superstitions and prejudices. Wells later noted that inspiration for the plot was the catastrophic effect of European colonisation on the Aboriginal Tasmanians. Some historians have argued that Wells wrote the book to encourage his readership to question the morality of imperialism. In the preface to his collected works in 1933, Wells explained: "My early, profound and lifelong admiration for [Jonathan] Swift...is particularly evident in a predisposition to make the stories reflect upon contemporary political and social discussions", adding "The War of the Worlds like The Time Machine was another assault on human self-satisfaction", both being "consciously grim, under the influence of Swift's tradition".

Truganini (c. 1812 – 8 May 1876) was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman who has been widely described as the last "full-blooded" Aboriginal Tasmanian. She was a member of the Nuenonne people and grew up on Bruny Island in south-eastern Tasmania. As a teenager she saw the death and displacement of much of Tasmania's Aboriginal population as a result of European colonisation during the Black War. She became a guide to George Augustus Robinson and took part in a series of expeditions to capture and exile the island's remaining Aboriginal population.

Truganini was herself exiled along with the surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians to the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island in 1835. She later spent time in the Port Phillip District (modern-day Victoria), where she became a fugitive and was tried alongside four others for the murder of a pair of whalers. After being acquitted of the crime, she was returned to Wybalenna and later moved to Oyster Cove. By 1872 she was the only Aboriginal resident left at Oyster Cove and began to be mythologised and romanticised as the "last of a dying race", becoming an object of fascination for the European population.