The settlers who sailed to a capital city made of paper

About this episode

The episode explores the fraudulent creation of the fictional nation of Poyais by Gregor MacGregor and the disastrous consequences for Scottish settlers.

Gregor MacGregor invented a Central American nation called Poyais, printed a guidebook describing its capital city, and sold two hundred thousand pounds in bonds before two hundred Scottish settlers sailed to find it and discovered nothing but malarial jungle. The scheme worked because MacGregor built a document ecosystem that could survive the due diligence available at the time: a printed guidebook, physical currency, land certificates, and a real underlying land grant that anchored the entire fabrication. Charlie Cruz walks through the mechanism and the survivors who broke it.

People in this episode

Host: Charlie Cruz

Topics covered

• fraud
• colonization
• 19th century
• economic schemes
• settlers
• documentary

Keywords

• Gregor MacGregor
• Poyais
• fraud
• settlers
• malaria
• 19th century
• economic schemes

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Poyais, Central America, Scotland, malarial jungle

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