John Creaghe, the Southern Cross , and Land Wars in Argentina

Abstract

John Creaghe was an Irish doctor who arrived in Argentina, via England and the United States, as a confident migrant seeking opportunities to start a medical practice. Yet his experiences increasingly turned him to social radicalism—first to the Irish Land League and Henry George, and later he became a leading figure within Argentine anarchism, one of the largest labor movements in South America before 1914. Land nationalization and the Land League appealed to Creaghe for their potential to transform Ireland, but more important for him were the ways they could be used to challenge elite landowners in Argentina, many of whom were of Irish Catholic descent themselves. Influential Irish Argentine voices disagreed, and Creaghe’s debates with them sheds light on the reception of the Land League in a less familiar corner of the Irish diaspora, while revealing contradictions in their support for both the Land War in Ireland and the violent seizure of indigenous lands in Argentina.