Small numbers of whalers and sealers set up communities along the Northern Coast and the Bass Strait islands.
Sporadic skirmishes over land and women occurred between the settlers and the Aboriginal people, but few records of the conflict exist.
Communities around Hobart and Launceston were established, which would eventually become the largest settlements on Tasmania, and railways connecting the towns were built.
Much of this land had been settled for farming, with colonists exporting grain to Britain and rearing cattle for local consumption.
[3] Authors such as Jeremy Paxman and Niall Ferguson have concluded that the colonisation of Tasmania led to the genocide of the Aboriginal Tasmanians.
It is unknown how many Aboriginal people were living there when the Dutch arrived in 1642, nor when James Cook landed in 1777, but when British settlers began to colonise the region in 1803, there existed an estimated population of 7,000-8,000, many of whom were already dying from diseases thought to have been contracted from European sailors, explorers and seal hunters.
By 1835 only one Aboriginal family remained on the island, who were living in a white sealing village near the Bass Strait, hiding from the colonial authorities.
[6] Recent figures for the number of people claiming Aboriginal Tasmanian descent vary according to the criteria used to determine this identity, ranging from 6,000 to over 23,000.