Southern Patagonia, Tierra Del Fuego, the South Atlantic and The Antarctic Lands Within Global Strategies

Abstract

In this chapter, we approach the integration of the southern region into the capitalist system and the state territorial designs in the 19th century. The study of cartography, based on other documental sources, enables the recognition of spatial representations with underlying ideologies and interests of different actors. Similarly, we consider the coexistence of territorialities with several origins and their own contents and logics, which define the specific rationality of a space of growing geopolitical and economic importance. We identify a cartographical narrative that, together with the imperial ideology of its authors and/or promoters, served the purposes of the British expansion propaganda in the southern hemisphere. Apart from state territorialities—which are shaped on indigenous territories and overlap with each other, triggering sovereignty disputes—we note the development of private projects that influence the valorization of the southern tip of the continent and account for the territorial dynamics throughout the last decades of the 19th century.