Independent Mapuche nation?

Would there be any chance at all that the Mapuche tribes of Patagonia would be able to unite into a single nation-state to ward off Argentinian and Chilean expansion into the area? Or is it just as likely, possible, feasible, and useful as a confederation of the American Indians?
 
I personally know very little about the Mapuche, but I thought they had de facto independence from the Chileans for a long while.
 
I personally know very little about the Mapuche, but I thought they had de facto independence from the Chileans for a long while.

I believe they did. What I know is that in the 1860s, with the help pf a French lawyer, they tried to formalize this independence and form a kingdom of their own before the Argentinians and Chileans took all of their land. But the kingdom was abortive and lasted only 2 years.
 
They might manage better if the British invasion of Argentina worked out - they could be a dominion or ally if they play their cards correctly.
 
They might manage better if the British invasion of Argentina worked out - they could be a dominion or ally if they play their cards correctly.

That's not, in and of itself, a guarantee. Eventually, someone's going to take that land and a good portion of the Mapuche are going to get killed if they are perceived, by the British or others, as being "in the way".
 
That's not, in and of itself, a guarantee. Eventually, someone's going to take that land and a good portion of the Mapuche are going to get killed if they are perceived, by the British or others, as being "in the way".

Yeah I suppose but its better being something like a British dominion or puppet state like Egypt then an oppressed colony of other colonial countries.
 
Would there be any chance at all that the Mapuche tribes of Patagonia would be able to unite into a single nation-state to ward off Argentinian and Chilean expansion into the area? Or is it just as likely, possible, feasible, and useful as a confederation of the American Indians?

It's more likely to work politically than, say, Tecumseh's alliance as the Mapuche dialects are closely related and the Mapuche people would share much more culturally than the Shawnee and the Creeks for example. However, it would take sustained pressure (which would be difficult for Argentina or Chile to bring to bear, given the Mapuche's geographical isolation) and some very charismatic leaders to unite the tribes, a great degree of luck to actually defeat Chile and Argentina militarily, and a great social change to keep the Mapuche from reigniting wars they can't win by peacetime raiding Chilean farmers.
 
Why not? After all, Araucania, as it was called, survived centuries unconquered IOTL.

Maybe if they hadn't allied with their old oppressor Royalists (why on earth?), the inevitable genocidal revenge at the end the Chilean War of Independence would've fallen elsewhere.

It'd also help if the lawyer died, because its declaration was the excuse for the Occupation of Araudania, and the Mapuche were split on him, a fatal problem in a war, with only some supporting him.

I think they did so well IOTL because they were both far enough from the plagues to revive before the Spanish reached them, and because they had democracy to choose mostly better leadership, which' how we and Britain and the Roman Republic got so MUCH turf. Yes, even lame democracy seems good enough, though more democratic is better.


Why on earth, Xhavnak, would British rule HELP with that? Wasn't your usual practice in the Americas to steal ALL the turf (and plenty of other goodies) from the natives, just like we helpfully learned to from you?
 

mowque

Banned
I doubt since nowhere in the entire New World did any native kingdom/empire/chiefdom/political structure survive contact. All of them, every last one, was crushed under white (or mixed race anyway) boots and incorporated fully into those states.
 
Why on earth, Xhavnak, would British rule HELP with that? Wasn't your usual practice in the Americas to steal ALL the turf (and plenty of other goodies) from the natives, just like we helpfully learned to from you?

My point exactly.
 
After the Spaniards conquered Chile in 16th century, they encountered heavy resistance from the Mapuche people. In 1641, after a century of unsuccessfull attempts of conquest, Spain finally recognized the independence of Araucania by the treaty of Killen which settled the Biobio river as border; this independence was strenghtened by 28 other treaties signed between 1641 and 1803. These treaties were followed by development of regular trade and diplomatic relations (a Mapuche embassy in Santiago is attested during the Santiago Agreement of 1774).
But, during the first half of 19th century, this was challenged when the Spanish colonies of Chile and Rio de la Plata became independent.
To safeguard their independence, the Lonkos (Mapuche leaders) imagined to establish a united Mapuche kingdom and offer the crown to an European in order to secure foreign help. The National Council of Lonkos then summoned in the fall of 1860 the Koyog Fütha, a civilian-military-religious Mapuche assembly to discuss the idea (the Koyog Fütha was usually convened only to discuss about matters of national importance for the Mapuches). The proposal of creating a kingdom became especially liked when the machis (priest or priestess) revealed a prophecy about a white man coming to fight alongside of the Mapuches and defend them (delivered during a Nguillatun, one of the most important religious Mapuche ceremonies: the prophecy was delivered by the ngechalmachife who interpreted the 'message' sent during the trance of a machi; in my opinion, the prophecy was very convenient for the Lonkos).
On November 17th, a constitution was drafted, giving officially birth to the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia. The new hereditary monarchy, even if the King was granted great power, was parliamentarian with a Kingdom's Council, formerly the Council of Elders, and a State's Council, formerly the National Council of Lonkos.
The Mapuches choose Antoine de Tounens, a French adventurer in contact with the Lonkos who had told him of their project for some times.
Thus, on November 20th, the French became Fütha Apo Toki, King of the Mapuches, under the regnal name of Orélie-Antoine I (previously, in wartime, the National Council appointed a Toki to lead the unified Mapuche armies; thus, the king is a Toki for life and the office becomes hereditary).
It's a summary based on this text (link).

The Mapuche kingdom ended when Orélie-Antoine, betrayed by a servant, was kidnapped by the Chileans and sent to asylum in Santiago before being freed by the French consul and exiled to France.
To have the kingdom lasting , make Orélie-Antoine avoiding capture long enough to have an European Nation getting interested in the region.
 
It's a summary based on this text (link).

The Mapuche kingdom ended when Orélie-Antoine, betrayed by a servant, was kidnapped by the Chileans and sent to asylum in Santiago before being freed by the French consul and exiled to France.
To have the kingdom lasting , make Orélie-Antoine avoiding capture long enough to have an European Nation getting interested in the region.

That would be possible, although once the US would finish up the ACW it wouldn't be very pleased with any European nation breaking the Monroe Doctrine.
 
They might manage better if the British invasion of Argentina worked out - they could be a dominion or ally if they play their cards correctly.

I once did a population breakdown of all of the provinces and territories in Argentina and Chile that once comprised the Mapuche territory before it was conquered. I can't remember exactly what the ratio of indigenous people to non-indigenous people was, but there were substantially more non-indigenous people in modern times.

I imagine British dominion over Araucania and Patagonia would probably look a lot like New Zealand. There are already many descendants of British settlers in Patagonia (like the Welsh in Chubut Valley), and British rule would bring even more. The Mapuche would be outnumbered by settlers, but they'd probably play an important role in the country's image and identity like the Maori do in New Zealand.
 
From reading about Pedro de Valdivia, the conquistador of Chile, it seems like the final conquest of Chile very nearly failed entirely. The Mapuche seemed to have learned pretty quickly the vulnerabilities of the Spanish horsemanship. Peru was also very unstable during the early years, so if that continued then the Mapuche might have even more breathing room.
 

katchen

Banned
Unfortunately, in this case, the consensus is right. If there was one thing that Europeans stood united on throughout most of the 19th Century it was white supremacy and an unwillingness to treat nonwhites as anything approaching equals for any longer than could possibly be avoided. China (and later Japan, Korea and Siam and Ethiopia and Liberia became the only exceptions. Even Haiti was only accorded diplomatic recognition grudgingly toward the beginning of the 20th Century. And Latin American leaders like Benito Juarez were accorded less respect by Europeans and Americans because they were less than 100% white.
Having said that, I can easily see how the Mapuche could have avoided genocide at the hands of Chileans and Argentinans if Admiral Cochrane had pursued a POD of perhaps a penal colony at Bahia Blanca or Mar del Plata in 1807 instead of occupying Uruguay, where the British were not wanted, followed by treaties with the Mapuche establsihing a British protectorate and permitting white anglo settlement similar to the Treaty of Waitingi in New Zealand. (The British had actually founded a settlement in Patagohia in 1777 on the Rio Negro near what is now Viedma but gave it up after the Spanish conested it with a settlement at Puerto Deseado, further South until the British gave up their settlement as part of an alliance with Spain later in the war against France and the Colonials. ) The Mapuche were organized enough to stop the Incas and the Spanish, but had not picked up enough Western agriculture in their years of contact with the Spanish to fill up their lands with people. If they had, they might have been better able to hold on to what they had and maybe even expand it. Unfortunately, the Chrokees or the Creeks, the Mapuche weren't.
 
I doubt since nowhere in the entire New World did any native kingdom/empire/chiefdom/political structure survive contact. All of them, every last one, was crushed under white (or mixed race anyway) boots and incorporated fully into those states.

The Mapuche might stand a better chance than most other Native societies with a POD after around 1600, though (with sixteenth century PODs, I'd be inclined to concede a fighting chance to the Incas, Mayans and Mexicas).
 
Unlike other groups, the Mapuche survived the first wave of European colonialism in the XVI century. There are many factors in this, but I personaly wouldn't underman the roll one man played in this: Lautaro.

From 1550 to 1860, the Mapuche were not only able to keep the Spanish at bay, but were able to expand east accross the Andes. By 1800, Mapundungum was spoken from the Southernmost part of Patagonia to Central Argentina, and from the Paciffic coast of Chile to the western limits of the province of Buenos Aires. The Mapuche adopted European crops (wheat, apples) and animals (horses, sheep), in the same way thay had previously adopted incan techniques (silver metalurgy) and animals (llamas, in Central Chile).

Yet they keept organized in tribes, and their agrigulture was never as intensive as Spanish or Andean agriculture had been. This meant their numbers, at least in the Pampas (where they had assimilated local tribes), where never bigger than tens of thousands.

They never produced guns, for example, nor did they have proper cities.

This meant they weren't able to stand the second age of European Imperialism, in the late XIX century. Thechnically, they were attacked by Agentina and Chile, not by European states. But the effect was the same, and it was all part of the same process, that saw the Natieve North Americans in the West, the Zulu in Africa, the maori in New Zealand and the Tuareg in the Sahel defeated by culturaly Western countries. Mapuche couldn't beat armies armed with Remigntons rifels, nor could they outnumber the population both Argentina and Chile have (Argentina was slightly populated, but even so it was much largers in terms of population than the Mapuche, and was in condition to draw in millions from overseas.

In short, unless the Mapuche are able to arganize a proper State between 1600 and 1850, with intensive agriculture, cities and large population, and are able to produce their own guns*, they won't be able to survive the XIX century, unless an European power like France establishes a protectorate and commits a lot of funds, weapons and men to their protection.


*the problem is that, if they build such a state, the Spanish in Chile may redouble their effors to conquer them, since they'd be wealthier.
 
It's more likely to work politically than, say, Tecumseh's alliance as the Mapuche dialects are closely related and the Mapuche people would share much more culturally than the Shawnee and the Creeks for example. However, it would take sustained pressure (which would be difficult for Argentina or Chile to bring to bear, given the Mapuche's geographical isolation) and some very charismatic leaders to unite the tribes, a great degree of luck to actually defeat Chile and Argentina militarily, and a great social change to keep the Mapuche from reigniting wars they can't win by peacetime raiding Chilean farmers.
True: Mapudungan is a single language, unlike the Iroqouis, which is an entire language family.

Not to mention that the Mapuche had some advantages lacking to the Northeastern Woodlands, namely: Rugged terrain; greater isolation; and a long history of contact with more complex, expansionist societies. In the latter case, the Mapuche even fought off the Inka successfully in the Battle of Maule, stopping the southward expansion of the empire; at least it shows they have a history of standing up to world powers, if nothing else.

Despite their historical success, they would certainly need to form a centralized government and have at least some industrial development to ward off the Argentinians or the Chileans, something they lacked at the Battle of Maule. I cannot see the Mapuche remaining an independent people with a POD after the 18th century, to be honest; with that said, if they could modernize in the way described above, say during the Spanish Colonial period, they would have quite a good chance of even expanding against the Neo-European nation-states of the Southern Cone.
 
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