Late Nineteenth To Early Twentieth Century
The development of the sheep-breeding industry in the second half of the 19th century was accompanied by substantial immigration, increasing the population sevenfold in fifty years, from 287 in 1851 to 2,043 in 1901. The vast majority of immigrants during that period came from the British Isles, mostly from Scotland. Scots were particularly common in Darwin, many of them coming from the Orkney and Shetland Islands, which have a similar climate to these areas.
| “ | In 1871, many shepherds situation on the Falkland Islands Company's main farm at Darwin were of Scottish origin, and members of the Free Kirk of Scotland. Finding a growing need for a minister of their own, they undertook, with the assistance of the Company to employ a minister for Darwin, and in 1872, Rev Yeoman took up the appointment. In 1873, an iron constructed church was brought from England and erected at Darwin. About this time, it was estimated that one third of the Falklands' population belonged to the Presbyterian church. (...) As Stanley grew, the Darwin minister visited the town occasionally and held services in the infants' school. | ” |
An additional boost to that population growth came from the expansion of Stanley’s port activities in service of the ships sailing between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific via the Strait of Magellan or Cape Horn. The port was particularly busy during the California Gold Rush, subsiding following the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914.
The early 20th century brought about a new industry to the region, Antarctic whaling in South Georgia, that supported a transient population varying from few hundred in winter to over 1,000 in summer. Some Falkland Islanders found employment with South Georgian whaling bases or ships, while some whalers settled in the Falklands to blend into the local populace. The whalers were predominantly Scandinavian (Norwegians, Swedes and Danes), with a minority of Britons, Germans, and a variety of other European nations. As a result of both natural demographic growth and ongoing immigration, the population of the Falkland Islands reached a peak of 2,392 recorded in the 1931 census, a figure that would not be surpassed until late in the twentieth century.
Read more about this topic: Origins Of Falkland Islanders
Famous quotes containing the words twentieth century, late, nineteenth, early and/or twentieth:
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Thou waitest late and com’st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,”
—William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
“... the nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not. Not.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)