Regions with significant populations | |
---|---|
Mainly in Chubut and Río Negro | |
Languages | |
Spanish · Afrikaans | |
Religion | |
Majority: Protestantism Minority: Catholicism · Irreligion | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Other Afrikaners ·other Boers Afrikaner Canadians · Afrikaner Australians · Afrikaner New Zealanders · Afrikaner Americans |
South African Argentines, also known as Boer Argentines, are Argentine citizens of South African descent, primarily Afrikaners who emigrated to Argentina in the early 20th century following the Second Anglo-Boer War. This migration was motivated by a desire to preserve their cultural identity and avoid British rule.
By the time of their migration, slavery had long been abolished in both South Africa and Argentina, and the Boer settlers established predominantly European communities. [1]
The settlement began on 4 June 1902, with Afrikaners primarily establishing themselves in the Chubut Province of southern Argentina, particularly in the town of Sarmiento. A smaller group settled in the Río Negro Province. These regions were selected due to agricultural opportunities and favourable conditions for establishing Afrikaner communities. [2]
South African settlers were entirely of Boer origin. While the Afrikaans language persists within the community today, it is spoken by only around 3,000,000 individuals. Argentina was chosen as a destination due to the government’s support for colonisation and opportunities for cultural and religious autonomy. [3]
Between 1902 and 1907/08 about 600 to 650 Boer settlers came to Argentina. [4] [5] These Boers were descendants of Dutch and French settlers of South Africa (also called Afrikaners). They came mostly from the Transvaal Province and Orange Free State. Most left South Africa following the Second Anglo-Boer War as many had lost their farms in the war or regarded themselves as Bittereinders who felt they could not live under a British government. [5]
To migrate to the Argentine Patagonia region, the settlers sent two representatives to Comodoro Rivadavia (Louis Baumann and Camillo Ricchiardi), Chubut Province, to manage the establishment of the new colony. They were greeted by Francisco Pietrobelli, with whom toured the region, and called for the government land. [6] They came on British cargo ships with bullock carts (ox wagons) and the national government provided them mules and tents. The distribution of land was authorized by then President Julio Argentino Roca and the Minister of Agriculture, Wenceslao Escalante, who was honoured with the name of the colony and, later, the department where it is located. [7]
Boers are the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled the Dutch Cape Colony, which the United Kingdom incorporated into the British Empire in 1806. The name of the group is derived from Trekboer then later "boer", which means "farmer" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
The Union of South Africa was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange River colonies. It included the territories that were formerly part of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State.
The first modern humans are believed to have inhabited South Africa more than 100,000 years ago. South Africa's first known inhabitants have been collectively referred to as the Khoisan, the Khoekhoe and the San. Starting in about 400 AD, these groups were then joined by the Bantu ethnic groups who migrated from Western and Central Africa during what is known as the Bantu expansion. These Bantu groups were mainly limited to the area north of the Soutpansberg and the northeastern part of South Africa until the later Middle Iron Age, after which they started migrating south into the interior of the country.
Y Wladfa, also occasionally Y Wladychfa Gymreig, refers to the establishment of settlements by Welsh colonists and immigrants in the Argentine Patagonia, beginning in 1865, mainly along the coast of the lower Chubut Valley. In 1881, the area became part of the Chubut National Territory of Argentina which, in 1955, became Chubut Province.
The Great Trek was a northward migration of Dutch-speaking settlers who travelled by wagon trains from the Cape Colony into the interior of modern South Africa from 1836 onwards, seeking to live beyond the Cape's British colonial administration. The Great Trek resulted from the culmination of tensions between rural descendants of the Cape's original European settlers, known collectively as Boers, and the British. It was also reflective of an increasingly common trend among individual Boer communities to pursue an isolationist and semi-nomadic lifestyle away from the developing administrative complexities in Cape Town. Boers who took part in the Great Trek identified themselves as voortrekkers, meaning "pioneers" or "pathfinders" in Dutch and Afrikaans.
The Ossewabrandwag (OB) was a pro-Nazi Afrikaner nationalist organization with strong ties to National Socialism, founded in South Africa in Bloemfontein on 4 February 1939. It was strongly opposed to South African participation in World War II and vocally supportive of Nazi Germany. In late 1940, the Ossewabrandwag plotted a pro-German insurrection against Prime Minister Jan Smuts, albeit the plan was aborted.
Chubut is a province in southern Argentina, situated between the 42nd parallel south, the 46th parallel south, the Andes range to the west, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. The province's name derives from the Tehuelche word chupat, meaning "transparent", their description of the Chubut River.
The Griquas are a subgroup of mixed-race heterogeneous formerly Xiri-speaking nations in South Africa with a unique origin in the early history of the Dutch Cape Colony. Like the Boers they migrated inland from the Cape and in the 19th century established several states in what is now South Africa and Namibia. The Griqua consider themselves as being South Africa’s first multiracial nation with people descended directly from Dutch settlers in the Cape, and local peoples.
Cape Dutch, also commonly known as Cape Afrikaners, were a historic socioeconomic class of Afrikaners who lived in the Western Cape during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The terms have been evoked to describe an affluent, educated section of the Cape Colony's Afrikaner population which did not participate in the Great Trek or the subsequent founding of the Boer republics. Today, the Cape Dutch are credited with helping shape and promote a unique Afrikaner cultural identity through their formation of civic associations such as the Afrikaner Bond, and promotion of the Afrikaans language.
Comodoro Rivadavia, often shortened to Comodoro, is a city in the Patagonian province of Chubut in southern Argentina, located on the San Jorge Gulf, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, at the foot of the Chenque Hill. Comodoro Rivadavia is the most important city of the San Jorge Basin, and is the largest city in Chubut as well as the largest city south of the southern 45th parallel.
The Chubut River is located in the Patagonia region of southern Argentina. Its name comes from the Tehuelche word chupat, which means "transparent". The Argentine Chubut Province, through which the river flows, is named after it. Welsh settlers called the river "Afon Camwy", meaning "twisting river".
The Covenant is a historical novel by American author James A. Michener, published in 1980.
The 1820 Settlers were several groups of British colonists from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, settled by the government of the United Kingdom and the Cape Colony authorities in the Eastern Cape of South Africa in 1820.
Sarmiento is a town in the province of Chubut, Argentina. It has about 8,000 inhabitants as per the 2001 census [INDEC], and is the head town of the department of the same name. It is located on the so-called Central Corridor of Patagonia, in a fertile valley amidst an otherwise arid region, 140 km west from Comodoro Rivadavia, in the south of Chubut. It sits between two lakes, Lake Musters and Lake Colhue Huapi. Notable attractions are the Petrified Forest and caves with Aborigine hand paintings.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Cape Colony was annexed by the British and officially became their colony in 1815. Britain encouraged settlers to the Cape, and in particular, sponsored the 1820 Settlers to farm in the disputed area between the colony and the Xhosa in what is now the Eastern Cape. The changing image of the Cape from Dutch to British excluded the Dutch farmers in the area, the Boers who in the 1820s started their Great Trek to the northern areas of modern South Africa. This period also marked the rise in power of the Zulu under their king Shaka Zulu. Subsequently, several conflicts arose between the British, Boers and Zulus, which led to the Zulu defeat and the ultimate Boer defeat in the Second Anglo-Boer War. However, the Treaty of Vereeniging established the framework of South African limited independence as the Union of South Africa.
White Africans of European ancestry refers to citizens or residents in Africa who can trace full or partial ancestry to Europe. They are distinguished from indigenous North African people who are sometimes identified as white but not European. In 1989, there were an estimated 4.6 million white people with European ancestry on the African continent.
Afrikaners are a Southern African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch settlers first arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. Until 1994, they dominated South Africa's politics as well as the country's commercial agricultural sector.
De Zuid-Afrikaan was a nineteenth-century Dutch language newspaper based in Cape Town that circulated throughout the Cape Colony, published between 1830 and 1930.
The Comodoro Rivadavia and Colonia Sarmiento Railway was an Argentine railway company that built and operated a broad gauge line that connected the port of Comodoro Rivadavia with Colonia Sarmiento in Chubut Province. The FCCRCS -belonging to Argentine State Railway- also connected to Central Chubut Railway.
Patagonian Afrikaans is a form of Afrikaans brought to Argentina by Boer immigrants following the Second Boer War (1899–1902).