Gregor MacGregor Invented a Country. 250 People Sailed There.

Gregor MacGregor sold London a fake country called Poyais, and about 250 people sailed off to live there. History's Greatest Cons #1. In 1822, a Scottish soldier who called himself "Sir Gregor" and "Cazique of Poyais" sold investors a whole nation: a bank, an army, government bonds, banknotes, and a 355-page guidebook describing a capital with paved boulevards, an opera house and rivers full of gold. A respected London bank even issued a £200,000 Poyais government loan. The land on the Mosquito Coast of today's Honduras was real. The country was not. When the settler ships reached the Black River, there was only rainforest and old ruins, and most of the people who sailed never came home. And the strangest part is how MacGregor's own story ends. CHAPTERS 0:00 The country that didn't exist 0:23 Part 1 · The Résumé 1:02 Part 2 · Inventing Poyais 2:01 Part 3 · Selling a Country 2:47 Part 4 · Welcome to Poyais 3:42 Part 5 · The Twist 4:22 Final tally: liar or bankers? Who deserves more blame: MacGregor, or the London bankers who sold his bonds? Comment LIAR or BANKERS. Death and survivor figures are historians' estimates (mainly David Sinclair's count); contemporary sources disagree on exact numbers. SOURCES David Sinclair, "The Land That Never Was: Sir Gregor MacGregor and the Most Audacious Fraud in History" (2003/2004) Tamar Frankel, "The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle: A History and Analysis of Con Artists and Victims" (Oxford University Press, 2012) Alfred Hasbrouck, "Gregor McGregor and the Colonization of Poyais, between 1820 and 1824", Hispanic American Historical Review 7 (1927) Thomas Strangeways [probably MacGregor], "Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, Including the Territory of Poyais" (Edinburgh, 1822) Michael Rafter, "Memoirs of Gregor M'Gregor" (London, 1820) Contemporary reports: proceedings of the Belize inquiry into the Poyais emigrants (ed. Edward Codd, London, 1824); survivors' accounts and London newspaper coverage, 1823 "The King of Con-Men", The Economist, 22 December 2012 IMAGE CREDITS (all public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) Portrait of Gregor MacGregor, c.1804, George Watson (National Galleries of Scotland) Sir Gregor MacGregor, mezzotint by Samuel William Reynolds, c.1820 (National Portrait Gallery, London) "View of the port of Black River in the Territory of Poyais", frontispiece of Sketch of the Mosquito Shore, 1822 (John Carter Brown Library) Bank of Poyais one-dollar note, 1820s (National Museum of American History) Poyais stock certificate, 2 July 1827 The Stock Exchange, Rowlandson & Pugin, The Microcosm of London, 1810 Courtyard of La Force prison, after Theodor Josef Hubert Hoffbauer (Brown University Library) View of Caracas, Joseph Thomas, 1839 Maps: Natural Earth (public domain); modern borders shown for reference Animation, characters, script, music and sound effects are original Empire of Oops work. Narration voice is synthetic (text-to-speech). #Poyais #GregorMacGregor #HistoryFacts #History #EmpireOfOops