Global Politics of Welsh Patagonia

Settler colonialism from the margins

Author(s) Lucy Taylor

Language: English

Genre(s): Politics, History

Series: Race, Ethnicity, Wales and the World

  • February 2025 · 248 pages ·216x138mm

  • · Paperback - 9781837722167
  • · eBook - pdf - 9781837722174
  • · eBook - epub - 9781837722181

About The Book

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.

Contents

Chapter One: Introduction: Where the Welsh Are
Chapter Two: Theorizing Y Wladfa
Chapter Three: Y Wladfa in Historical and Global Perspective
Chapter Four: Possession in Y Wladfa
Chapter Five: Barbarization and the Myth of Friendship
Chapter Six: Y Wladfa and Assimilation
Chapter Seven: Y Wladfa, Assimilation and Coloniality Today
Chapter Eight: Conclusion – and Ways Forwards
Bibliography

About the Author(s)

Author(s): Lucy Taylor

Lucy Taylor is Senior Lecturer at the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.

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