Alioune DVToure wrote:Alex Sapphire wrote:Mikhail Chigorin wrote:In the early 20th century, British workmen had gone to Argentina to build the railways there and a number had stayed and married Argentinian girls, hence such an outcome.
there might have been a few English navvies, but mostly the Brits down there were businessmen, landowners and toffs. It wastreated like it was empire. That's how Argentina came to have two presidents of English descent
Nothing to do with Welsh settlement in Patagonia, then? (Genuine question, not smug sarcasm).
That was about 1,200 settlers, across three villages- a tiny proportion of British migrants to Argentina. At its maximum (ie pre-integration) population, it was only 4,000 people. I think even rugby was introduced by non-Welsh settlers.
What actually makes them interesting is that they kept the Welsh language alive (although before contact was reestablished in the 1950s, fluent Welsh speakers were literally in the tens), and are revered by the modern Welsh Nationalist movement for this, anot their cultural input into Argentina, which was basically zero.
"Ferguson. Žvaka kurac."
(Ferguson. Chewing-gum cock.)
Old man in a bar in rural Bosnia.