Welsh Patagonia: 150 years of 'Y Wladfa Gymreig'

Having grown up in a Welsh-speaking community in Cardiff, I have long been familiar and fascinated with the history and concept of Y Wladfa Gymreig, a Welsh-speaking settlement in Patagonia, Argentina. Founded in 1865, 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the establishment of Y Wladfa with celebrations taking place throughout the year in both Wales and Argentina.

Like all emigration, that of the Welsh to Patagonia was driven by the desire for a new and better life. It was fuelled not only by economic factors, but also by the dream of establishing a ‘Cymru newydd’, a new Wales far from persecution and assimilation, which would be Welsh in language, radical in politics and nonconformist in religion. The idea was initially put forward by Professor Michael D. Jones, a Welsh nonconformist preacher from Bala, who proposed setting up a Welsh-speaking colony away from the influence of the English language. Patagonia was chosen for its isolation and the Argentines' offer of 100 square miles of land along the Chubut River in the Argentine Frontier.

Snippet of an advertisement ('Land "Migratory and Commercial Company of the Welsh Colony", in Patagonia) in T.J. Griffiths, Hanes Cymry America (1872). © American Antiquarian Society. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

The settlement of the Chubut Valley and surrounding areas began on 28 July 1865 when 153 Welsh-speaking settlers arrived aboard a converted tea-clipper named the Mimosa. Over the following fifty years, they were joined by hundreds of Welsh immigrants and established towns in the region such as Porth Madryn, Trelew and Trevelin. The immigrants created thriving Welsh communities, in which the Welsh language and nonconformist religion were prominent. A Welsh-medium primary school was founded in 1868, for instance, (a remarkable achievement considering that the first Welsh-medium school was not established in Wales until the opening of Ysgol Gymraeg Aberystwyth in 1939), while Eisteddfodau, Welsh-language festivals of literature, music and performance, were held annually since 1865. The close of the nineteenth century saw an increasing number of new enterprises designed to promote Welshness in Patagonia, including the Camwy Fydd (1890), which was organised to advance Welsh-language literature and acted as a forum to discuss the colony’s future.

Eisteddfod in Patagonia, 1916. The South American Missionary Magazine, Sep 1916. © Church Missionary Society. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Although the colony proved remarkably successful at first, after 1914 a combination of factors, including the Argentine Government’s strict policy of assimilation, the arrival of immigrants from other countries such as Italy, and a decline in Welsh settlers caused stagnation. The use of Welsh continued to decline until 1965 when centenary celebrations saw a revival of Welsh language and culture, including the launch of a bilingual eisteddfod, opening Welsh-language culture to all. Efforts to revive the language have been relatively successful, and in 2006 a Welsh-language school called Ysgol yr Hendre opened in Trelew. Today approximately 5,000 people speak Welsh in Patagonia, and while the language’s status in the region remains uncertain, its future looks brighter than it has done for some time.

Welsh Chapel, Trelew, 1935. The South American Missionary Magazine, Mar 1935, © Church Missionary Society. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

As well as Argentina, significant numbers of Welsh people moved to the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their stories form just one aspect of the history of migration that can be discovered in Adam Matthew’s forthcoming resource Migration to New Worlds. A number of documents featured in this blog were also drawn from the first instalment of the Church Missonary Society Periodicals using our Archive Explorer function, a quick and convenient way for users to search all Adam Matthew collections.

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