-BUMP-
I also find it rather strange that nobody tried harder to colonize Patagonia, specially Tierra del Fuego (given its strategic importance). After all, it was very sparsely populated (South-Central Chile and Neuquen were its denser area, but even there the population wasn't very high).
There was an attemp by the Spanish in the XVI century, but it failed completely. There were also a few Spanish settlements on the Eastern Patagonian shore in the late XVIII century, but both also failed. The only succesfull one was the Spanish colonization of Chiloe.
I'm not sure why:
- Yes, the Mapuche/Araucanos were strong, and had defeated te Incas and the Spaniards... but the Mapuche were only in Southern/Central Chile (from Chiloé to Maule River) and in the Northwest of present day Argentinian Patagonia (western Neuquen). They didn't "Araucanized" the pampas and most of continental Patagonia till the 1700s, after their adoption of horses. And even then the population in Santa Cruz or Chubut remained extremly low. There, most of the ancient inhabitants - the Aoniken (named "Tehuelche" by the Mapuche and "Patagones" by Magellan) - survived rather untouched, although heavily influenced culturally by the Mapuche. The Tehuelche couldn't have seriosly opposed to a serious colonization attempt.
- Yes, the Eastern shore is rather arid and windy, and the western one had a people who weren't willing to submitt. But that doesn't seem enough. After all, the Welsh proved that the Chubut valley was fertile, and so had done the Spanish in Floridablanca (the settlement was abandoned in not becouse crops had failed, but for other reasons) and in Carmen de Patagones.
- I think the main reason was that the (apparent) hostility of the environment convined with the (apparent) absence of gold or silver, and with the lack of an exploitable workforce (the Mapuche were too rebellious, and the Tehuelche and the Pampas were too few).
Still, even if this explains why we don't see the kind of colonization we may see in Peru in the XVI century, it doesn't explain why nor the Spanish in the XVI century, nor the Dutch in the XVII nor the British later didn't took Tierra del Fuego
for strategic reasons. After all, it's closer to the Magellan strait and the Drake passage, and it has resources the Malvinas haven't (like wood or gold). These would have made a settlement sustainable (at least more sustainable than the one in Malvinas), and less dependant from the ouside world in case of need.
The island could have been used as a base to control the only ocean route between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It would also be profitable, as they could hunt whales and sealions at its coasts (for oil), raise sheep for wool, mine gold and (later) refine oil.
Fortunatly, nobody noticed this lands, till we were strong enough to control them.


(There was a British Anglican mission in Ushuaia in the XIX century, which was somehow under the authority of the Fallklands governor, or whoever was in charge there. But they handed it to Argentina in 1884. Guess the Brits aren't that bad after all...


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