Global Politics of Welsh Patagonia

Overview & Synopsis

Inspired by decolonial thinking, this book challenges romantic images of Y Wladfa, the Welsh Patagonian settlement founded in 1865. Drawing on archival sources written in Spanish, Welsh and English, it exposes the complex human relationships of this settler colony, and in particular disrupts the myth of Welsh–Indigenous friendship by foregrounding Indigenous experience and revealing less familiar accounts in the record. A newly-developed framework applies three logics – possession, racialization/barbarisation, and assimilation – to make sense of settler colonialism in Patagonia and to debate Wales’s complex position as both colonised and coloniser. A new analysis of contemporary cultural products (television, film, textbooks) further demonstrates how the romantic view continues to shape racial stereotypes today, concluding that such settler origin countries as Wales are vital sites of decolonial debate.