VAN DIEMEN'S LAND

(16421855), the southeastern Australian island colony that became the commonwealth state of Tasmania. Named for Anthony van Diemen, governor general of the Dutch East Indies, the island was discovered and named in 1642 by Abel J. Tasman, a celebrated navigator under Van Diemen's command. The first British settlers in the early 19th century retained the name. After being a part of the colony of New South Wales since 1803, Van Diemen's Land became a separate colony in 1825. It achieved self-governing status in 1850. In the first half of the 19th century the administrators, soldiers, and settlers of Van Diemen's Land brutalized and harassed the island's Aborigines to such an extent that the race was virtually extinct by the second half of the 19th century (see Black War). Vandiemonians initiated the large-scale colonization of the future colony of Victoria in the mid-1830s. The island was renamed Tasmania in 1855.