The British and the Patagonia Rebelde: News and Classifications about Labour in the Sheep Industry of the Fuego-Patagonian Region (1899-1949)

Abstract

Since the end of the 19th century, men from Britain and its colonies became owners or managers of ranches and slaughterhouses in the sheep industry of Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. This situation was not unique in the British world. Agents and media around the empire wrote about the development of the workplaces where their compatriots were in charge of production. The aim of this article is to present and analyse some examples of British information on labour and workers of the Fuego-Patagonian region. Using a comparative lens, it examines the press and consular documents, as examples of both mass and confidential sources of information within the empire. Despite their different objectives and audiences, all these sources became containers of colonial, classifying, differentiating and anti-labour organisation discourses, which were normal in the imperial circulations of the period.