In recent decades, it seems that scammers and con-artists of all kinds are becoming more and more common – they have become a part of our everyday lives, though spam calls and Trojan horse attacks. However, it is of my opinion that despite becoming more prevalent, the art of scamming has entered a dark age compared to the scope and grandiosity of past swindlers.
Don’t believe me?
Let me introduce the subject of today’s discussion – that time when a guy made up a whole country.
The Venezuelan War of Independence, a bloody affair lasting a mighty 13 years, featured some of the most well-known characters in South American history: Simón Bolívar, Cristóbal Mendoza, and José Antonio Páez. However, it also featured the main character of our story today – Gregor MacGregor, a Scotchman born in 1786, in Stirlingshire. Joining the army at the tender age of 16, and retiring from service seven years later, he would come to fight in the Venezuelan War of Independence after being fascinated by the revolutions ongoing in the area. Arriving Venuezuela, on his own, he proclaimed himself “Sir Gregor”, supposedly as a part of the Order of Jesus, despite having no relation with the order.
Having achieved moderate success during the war, even attempting to declare his own “Republic of the Floridas” (a sign of things to come), he returned to Britain in 1821, where he would term himself “Cazique of Poyais”, “Cazique” being a term to described a native chieftain, and Poyais being 8,000,000 acres of uninhabitable land granted to him by King George Frederic Augustus of the Mosquito Coast.
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| Alleged location of Poyais in Central America. |
He then proceeded to begin advertising his land, making it open for settlers. He forged official looking documents and maps, hired publicists to write a 355-page pamphlet about the temperateness of Poyais, even created sketches of his supposed kingdom, the capital of which was “St. Joseph”, containing a cathedral, an opera house, and even a bank.
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| View of the port of Black River in the Territory of Poyais. |
To further add credence to his story, he even wrote fictional ballads for Poyais, an selection of which I have included below:
THE POYAIS EMIGRANT
…
CHORUS.
We'll a' gang to Poyais thegither, We'll a' gang ower the seas thegither, To fairer lands and brighter skies. Nor sigh again for Hieland heather.
Through smiling vales, 'neath lofty hills, Through citron groves we'll stray thegither,
Our star o' life will sweetly set, When blest wi' wealth and ane anither. We'll a' gang to Poyais, &c.
Wi' jeAvels rare I'll busk your hair, The fairest flowers for you I'll gather ;
The rose's bloom, its rich perfume, Are sweet as ony Hieland heather. We'll a' gang to Poyais, &c.
…
Through this blatant ploy, Macgregor tried to get unsuspecting aristocrats to buy into his offer – and it worked. By selling plots of land as large as 540 acres apiece, MacGregor made what accounted to over £200,000, or £3.6 billion today.
What happened then, when the colonists travelled to this barren piece of jungle, halfway across the world? Well, upon reaching the supposed inhabited and prosperous land of Poyais, the settlers constructed temporary shelters, convinced that they had been set off at the wrong location, patiently await the arrival of another British ship. By the time they were rescued, over ¾ of the original settlers had perished of malaria and yellow fever.
As Alfred Hasbrouck describes, “... disease seized upon them and spread rapidly. Lack of proper food and water, and failure to take the requisite sanitary precautions, brought on intermittent fever and dysentery. ... Whole families were ill. Most of the sufferers lay on the ground without other protection from the sun and rain than a few leaves and branches thrown across some sticks. Many were so weak as to be unable to crawl to the woods for the common offices of nature. The stench arising from the filth they were in was unendurable.”
And yet, even upon returning to Britain, they still refused to cast blame upon MacGregor, perhaps refusing to entertain the idea that they had been duped, and that Poyais, existed in fact, only in their minds.
Realizing that he was being given the golden opportunity to flee before he is caught, MacGregor high tailed it out of Britain, and after a brief stint, attempting to convince even more of the wondrous, enchanting land of Poyais (and almost being sentenced for it), MacGregor would finally move to Venezuela, living our the rest of his life in peace.
Sources
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