English Argentine - English Immigration

English Immigration

English settlers arrived in Buenos Aires in 1806 (then a Spanish colony) in small numbers, mostly as businessmen, when Argentina was an emerging nation and the settlers were welcomed for the stability they brought to commercial life. As the 19th century progressed more English families arrived many bought land to develop the potential of the Argentine pampas for the large-scale growing of crops. The English founded banks, developed the export trade in crops and animal products and imported the luxuries that the growing Argentine middle classes sought.

As well as those who went to Argentina as industrialists and major landowners, others went as railway engineers, civil engineers and to work in banking and commerce. Others went to become whalers, missionaries and simply to seek out a future. English families sent second and younger sons, or what were described as the black sheep of the family, to Argentina to make their fortunes in cattle and wheat. English settlers introduced football to Argentina. Some English families owned sugar plantations.

Read more about this topic:  English Argentine

Famous quotes containing the words english and/or immigration:

    We talked about and that has always been a puzzle to me
    why American men think that success is everything
    when they know that eighty percent of them are not
    going to succeed more than to just keep going and why
    if they are not why do they not keep on being
    interested in the things that interested them when
    they were college men and why American men different
    from English men do not get more interesting as they
    get older.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.
    James Madison (1751–1836)