The Irish Diaspora and the 'Conquest of the Desert' (1878-1885) in Argentina

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Irish emigration to Argentina never compared in size to the huge numbers that left for North America or Britain, but by the late-nineteenth century a significant Irish Argentine community emerged that contained a powerful elite of business people, ranchers and Catholic clergy. This paper examines first- and second-generation Irish emigrants’ relationships to settler colonialism, in particular both the support and criticism expressed for the so-called ‘Conquest of the Desert’ (1878-1885), the series of violent campaigns conducted by the Argentine military to subjugate indigenous people in the pampas and Patagonia regions. It investigates how some Irish elite figures consciously viewed themselves as agents in global processes of expanding European settlement and the spreading of ideas of 'civilization' in the late-nineteenth century, a transformational period in the development of the Argentine nation-state. Irish-owned newspapers in Buenos Aires – The Southern Cross and The Standard – both supported the ‘Conquest of the Desert’, but with notable differences in how they framed their positions. This support coincided with a period of mass political unrest in Ireland and exposed uncomfortable comparisons between the long history of colonial dispossession in Ireland and emigrant participation in settler colonialism in Argentina.

Niall Whelehan is head of History Subject Area and senior lecturer in History at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. His publications include Changing Land: Diaspora Activism and the Irish Land War (2021) and The Dynamiters: Irish nationalism and political violence in the wider world,1867-1900 (2012). His present monograph project investigates the Irish diaspora in Argentina during the long nineteenth century. 

Chairs: Dr Graciela Iglesias-Rogers (University of Winchester) and Prof Chris Aldous (University of Winchester)

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