Proletarianisation or Patagonia: Reassessing the rationale for the Afrikaner migration to Argentina, 1902–6

Patagonia in the late nineteenth century was a frontier region of Argentina, contested both by the indigenous people and by the neighbouring Chilean republic. After brutal repression of the Patagonians by the Argentine military forces, the area was opened up for colonial settlement. The Argentine authorities recognised Afrikaners as suitable recruits for colonial settlement and, starting in 1902, groups of settlers made their way to South America. Many explanations for this migration have seen its cause in the defeat of the Boer republics. While these explanations are partly justified, the majority of emigrants were dispossessed Cape landowners and tenant farmers, who chose to move to Patagonia to avoid proletarianisation in the South African mining towns. However, the Afrikaner community in Argentina did not flourish, and was finally broken by the economic depression that started in 1929. With the resurgence of right‐wing nationalism amongst Afrikaners in South Africa in the 1930s, moves to repatriate su...