Argentina became inhabited more than 12,000 years ago. The archaeological site of Cueva de las Manos ("Cave of the Hands") was home to prehistoric guanaco herders. The site was likely founded by ancestors of the Tehuelche people, and the presence of obsidian implies trade with faraway lands.
The Indigenous peoples of southern Argentina, in the Patagonian Desert, tended to be hunter-gatherers, while the peoples of other regions were either hunter-gatherers or farmers with pottery.
Meanwhile, the redirecting of the Deseado River from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific precipitated the gradual decline of Cueva de los Manos, resulting in its ultimate abandonment by the 8th century.
In the late 15th century, the Quecha-speaking Inca Empire of Peru conquered northwestern Argentina.
The Spanish Empire conquered the Inca in 1533, 41 years after Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas. One year after, Spain established governorates under the jurisdiction of the Crown of Castile in South America.
Spain settled Buenos Aires, the present capital of Argentina, in 1536. However, this initial settlement of Buenos Aires was destroyed just five years later by the Indigenous Diuihet people. Its residents were relocated to the city of Asunción, now the capital of Paraguay, to the north.
When Buenos Aires was re-established in 1580, it proved to be permanent. The city sits on the estuary known as the Río de la Plata: meaning “the river of silver,” it was named for a legend about a mountain of silver (the Sierra de la Plata) nearby. The name Argentina also means “of silver” in Italian.
Ironically, though Argentina did have silver, its supply was lacking compared to other Spanish colonies like Mexico. Argentina developed an agricultural economy instead, based on introduced livestock like cattle and local produce like maize and potatoes. Indigenous labor was exploited.
Missionary settlements known as reductions or reducciones, established by the Catholic Church, were an important component of colonial society. Indigenous populations were often forcibly relocated to these reductions, where Jesuits would attempt to convert them to Catholicism.
Paradoxically, the Jesuit reductions also acted as havens for Indigenous peoples, as they were protected from enslavement and forced labor. These communities remained isolated from the rest of colonial society until 1767, when the Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish Empire.
The political center of Spanish South America lied in Peru, but a few Argentine cities still rose to prominence. San Miguel de Tucumán acted as the locus of trade between Argentina and Peru, Córdoba led in scholarship through the University of Córdoba, and Buenos Aires was the gateway to the Atlantic.
Buenos Aires rose to political significance when it was chosen as the capital of the new Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. An Argentine national identity began to develop, solidified by the successful repulsion of two British invasions and the brief toppling of the Spanish monarchy by Napoleon.
Argentina gained independence in 1810 as the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. After a civil war between centralists and federalists, Argentina became a loose association of provinces, with no single leader but the governor of Buenos Aires representing them internationally.
This arrangement continued into the Argentine Confederation, formed in 1831. After the departure of Buenos Aires, the nation was reunified in 1861 under the federal Argentine Republic, with a stronger central government. Argentina then proved its mettle by winning the deadly Paraguayan War.
Argentina’s national identity fully came into being in the 1880s. It was enriched by trade, and the population continued to grow, supplemented by European immigration, especially from Italy. At the end of the 19th century, Argentina waged the Conquest of the Desert against Indigenous peoples.
Following the Panic of 1890, during which Argentina suffered from inflation, the country experienced decades of political and economic instability. 1930, shortly after the start of the Great Depression, saw the beginning of the Infamous Decade, during which Argentine democracy was significantly eroded.
Another coup in 1943 ultimately led to the rise of Juan Perón, who cultivated an export-oriented economy and was popular among workers. His ideology of Peronism eventually led to extreme inflation, and he was overthrown in 1955; the next few decades saw more coups.
Perón returned to power from exile in 1973 and attempted to stabilize the country, but died the following year and was succeeded by his wife Isabel. The world’s first republican female head of state, she was overthrown in 1974. After a brutal dictatorship, democracy was finally restored in 1983.
Despite these troubles, Argentina remains the second-most democratic country in South America, second only to Chile, according to the Democracy Index. It is also the second-wealthiest country by GDP on the continent, following Brazil, and scores high on the Human Development Index (HDI).