Anti-Imperialism and Indigenous Culture in Francis Bond Head's Argentine Travels

This article examines Sir Francis Bond Head’s Romantic representation of Argentine Gauchos and ‘Pampas Indians’ in his bestselling 1826 memoir Rough Notes Taken during Some Rapid Journeys across the Pampas and among the Andes, an account of the author’s travels as a businessman leading the Rio Plata Mining Association’s failed effort to exploit a series of gold and silver mines in South America. Focusing on the text’s critical responses to contemporary racial theory, the Columbian ‘doctrine of discovery’, and the European master narrative of progress, I highlight Head’s anti-colonial critical engagement, including his willingness to consider his own complicities with the oppressive colonial practices he otherwise criticizes. Ultimately, I argue, Head’s Argentine writings demonstrate a self-reflexive critical promise that he failed to enact during his subsequent tenure as Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada (1836–1838).