Benjamin Bryce. To Belong in Buenos Aires

Benjamin Bryce’s deeply researched and well-written book To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society reminds us that ethnic and national identities are rarely fixed or static. In the case of Germans in Argentina, they started arriving before Germany existed, and many came from places that would never form part of Germany, including Switzerland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, and even countries that neighbored Argentina. The immigrants were Catholic, Lutheran, and Jewish, and their politics defied easy categorization. Their economic and class statuses varied widely, though they tended to arrive with more resources and also enjoyed more consistent and robust economic and cultural support from the homeland than many of their Southern European counterparts. Like other immigrant groups, more men than women came over, and so exogamous marriage was typical, especially after the first generation. Thus, if “German” was initially an expansive category, it grew more so with successive generations.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Economic history · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Expansive · Genealogy · Geography · German · Homeland · Immigration · Judaism · Nationality · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies