The near-destruction of Tasmania's Aboriginal population has been described as an act of genocide by historians including Robert Hughes, James Boyce, Lyndall Ryan and Tom Lawson.[73][74][75][76] The author of the concept of genocide, Raphael Lemkin, considered Tasmania the site of one of the world's clear cases of genocide[77] and Hughes has described the loss of Aboriginal Tasmanians as "the only true genocide in English colonial history".[73]