Henry Reynolds (born 1938) is an Australian historian whose primary work has focused on the frontier conflict between European settlers in Australia and Indigenous Australians. He was the first academic historian to advocate for Indigenous land rights, becoming known with his first major work, The Other Side of the Frontier (1981).
Henry Reynolds was born in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1938, the son of John Reynolds, who was a journalist who wrote the first biography of Edmund Barton.
He attended Hobart High School.
Following this, he attended the University of Tasmania, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in History in 1960, later gaining a Master of Arts degree in 1964.
Reynolds taught in secondary schools in Australia and England.
He joined the academic staff at Townsville University College (later James Cook University) in 1966 to teach. In the 1970s, he undertook an oral history project. He served as associate professor of history and politics from 1982 until his retirement in 1998.
In 2000 Reynolds became professorial fellow at the University of Tasmania in Launceston.
, Reynolds was Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Tasmania.
The Other Side of the Frontier, published in 1981, was the first major work by an historian to write Australian history from an Aboriginal perspective.
In many books and academic articles Reynolds has sought to explain his view of the high level of violence and conflict involved in the colonisation of Australia, and the Aboriginal resistance to numerous massacres of Indigenous people. Reynolds estimated that up to 3,000 Europeans and at least 20,000 Aboriginal Australians were killed directly in the frontier violence, and many more Aboriginal people died indirectly through the introduction of European diseases and starvation caused by being forced from their productive tribal lands. Keith Windschuttle has categorised his approach as a "black armband view" of Australian history. In 2002, Windschuttle, in his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803âÂÂ1847, accused Reynolds of misrepresenting, inventing, or exaggerating evidence about the killings. Windschuttle's version of Australian history has been criticised as flawed by other historians.
In November 2025, Reynolds published Looking from the North: Australian history from the top down, which charts the history colonisation of Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn, which was very different from the south.
Reynolds struck up a friendship with Eddie Mabo, who was employed as a groundsman and gardener at James Cook University from 1967 to 1975. Reynolds, as well as his wife Margaret, were supporters of the Black Community School in South Townsville, which Mabo was instrumental in establishing, and which operated from 1973 to 1985. The Reynolds', as respected members of the Townsville academic community, publicly defended the school when it came under attack from the local Townsville Daily Bulletin newspaper as well as some local politicians in September 1973.
In his book Why Weren't We Told?, Reynolds describes the talks they had regarding Mabo's people's rights to their lands, on Murray Island, in the Torres Strait. Reynolds writes: <blockquote>Eddie [...] would often talk about his village and about his own land, which he assured us would always be there when he returned because everyone knew it belonged to his family. His face shone when he talked of his village and his land.
So intense and so obvious was his attachment to his land that I began to worry about whether he had any idea at all about his legal circumstances. [...] I said something like: "You know how you've been telling us about your land and how everyone knows it's Mabo land? Don't you realise that nobody actually owns land on Murray Island? It's all crown land."
He was stunned. [...] How could the whitefellas question something so obvious as his ownership of his land? </blockquote>
Reynolds looked into the issue of Indigenous land ownership in international law, and encouraged Mabo to take the matter to court. "It was there over the sandwiches and tea that the first step was taken which led to the Mabo judgement in June 1992". Mabo then talked to lawyers, and Reynolds "had little to do with the case itself from that time", although he and Mabo remained friends until the latter's death in January 1992. Reynolds' 1970s oral history project however contributed to the High Court's recognition of land rights.
In September 2022, Reynolds appeared with filmmaker Rachel Perkins at a National Press Club of Australia address, soon after the airing of Perkins' SBS Television series, The Australian Wars.
Henry Reynolds has received the following awards and honours:
In tribute to Reynolds' seventieth year, the conference Race, Nation, History: A Conference in Honour of Henry Reynolds was held in August 2008. It was sponsored by the Australian National University's Research School of the Humanities and the Research School of the Social Sciences, the National Library of Australia, and the University of Tasmania. Larissa Behrendt of University of Technology Sydney was among the speakers.
In December 1963 Henry Reynolds married Margaret Reynolds (née Lyne), who served as an ALP senator for Queensland in Federal Parliament from 1983 until 1999. Their daughter is Anna Reynolds, the Lord Mayor of Hobart.