The rise and fall of a nation that existed only on paper, and the man who convinced thousands it was real.
If you were to look upon Gregor MacGregor’s 19th-century map of Poyais, with its turquoise coastline shimmering like a travel brochure and its lush interior forests promising both shade and prosperity, you might feel a brief flicker of wanderlust. Here lay a Caribbean kingdom, tucked neatly between Nicaragua and Honduras, poised on the Mosquito Coast like a pearl waiting to be discovered.
There’s just one small complication: Poyais never existed. But that didn’t stop hundreds of people from buying land in it.
It also didn’t stop Gregor MacGregor – Scottish war veteran, charismatic charlatan, and all-round overachiever in the category “crimes requiring incredible confidence” – from building one of the most ambitious frauds in human history. His scheme involved everything from fabricated currencies to fake guidebooks to seven shiploads of settlers who genuinely believed they were sailing toward a life of prosperity, not a damp, mosquito-ridden jungle with no potable water and no MacGregorian monarchy waiting to greet them.
If this all sounds too preposterous to be true, allow me to introduce the man behind the mirage.
A family tradition of bad financial decisions
To understand why Gregor MacGregor attempted to sell a fictional country, it helps to know that he came from a line of men who made spectacularly poor financial choices.
His grandfather – also Gregor MacGregor – was among the many unfortunate souls wiped out by the South Sea Bubble of 1720 (sound familiar? I wrote about that one last week). That bubble, in its own infamous way, was the prototype for every future speculative fiasco: dazzling promises, mounting hype, national hysteria, and the inevitable financial face-plant. The elder MacGregor lost his fortune, his dignity, and presumably any capacity to hear the phrase “once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity” without breaking into hives.
The younger Gregor appears to have learned exactly one lesson from this family tragedy: if you can’t beat a scam, be the scam.
And so, at sixteen, he sailed off to the Americas with the British Army, apparently convinced that the most efficient way to escape a financially cursed lineage was to collect new enemies on a new continent.
Soldier of fortune (and questionable judgement)
MacGregor spent his youth building a résumé that would make both a colonial administrator and a modern HR department break into a cold sweat.
He fought for Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan revolutionary hero known as El Libertador. Along the way, MacGregor did the sorts of things young men do when they’re drunk on idealism and proximity to political icons: he left his wife, courted Bolívar’s famously beautiful cousin Josefa Antonia Andrea Aristeguieta y Lovera, and – naturally – invaded Spanish Florida.
His conquest of Amelia Island in 1817 remains one of history’s most baffling military operations. He arrived with a few hundred armed men, discovered almost nobody was there to oppose him, and immediately… invented a country. Instead of fortifying the island or preparing for Spanish retaliation, MacGregor spent his time designing flags, printing stamps, and issuing currency that worked entirely on the honour system. The Spanish, unamused by this new micro-nation emerging on their real estate, removed him promptly and without much effort.
But Amelia Island lit a spark in MacGregor’s imagination. If he could create a country accidentally, what might happen if he tried on purpose?
Welcome to Poyais. Population: zero
In London, MacGregor unveiled his magnum opus: Poyais, a Central American paradise so seductive it was almost plausible. Almost.
He claimed to be the “Cazique” – a title that sounded delightfully exotic to British ears – of an 8-million-acre kingdom blessed with gold-flecked rivers, fertile land, natural harbours, and Indigenous inhabitants who (very conveniently) adored British colonists and would gladly assist in their settlement.
MacGregor produced maps. He produced uniforms. He produced certificates of nobility. He produced Poyais dollars, which legitimate prospective settlers could purchase with their very real British pounds. He even wrote an entire guidebook under the pseudonym Thomas Strangeway, describing everything from the architecture of government buildings to the local climate.
His attention to detail was staggering. It also served an important psychological purpose: when someone lies to you with this much effort, you don’t question their sincerity – you question your own sanity. And so, in 1822, travelers boarded ships in Scotland clutching their Poyais guidebooks like golden tickets to a new life. One ship alone (the Edinburgh Castle) carried 250 immigrants. Most would never come home.
The jungle, the horror, and the terrible realisation
When the settlers arrived on the Mosquito Coast, they discovered the sort of scene that really should have tipped someone off during the planning phase: no port. No town. No Cazique. No currency. No anything.
The “nation” of Poyais turned out to be a swampy wilderness inhabited only by bewildered locals who had never heard of Gregor MacGregor, much less pledged allegiance to him.
The settlers tried to survive on whatever they could, but inevitably disease spread and supply ships failed to arrive. The lush forests MacGregor had rhapsodised about turned out to be impenetrable, wet, and filled with things that bite. Over two years, most of the colonists that attempted to find the mystical land of Poyais died.
In one of history’s most astonishing demonstrations of psychological loyalty, nearly forty survivors returned to Britain and defended MacGregor in court, insisting that they must have simply landed in the wrong place or misinterpreted their guidebooks.
The power of branding, ladies and gentlemen.
When London gets suspicious, try Paris
By late 1823, even the British (who were by then veterans of multiple financial catastrophes) began to suspect something was amiss. Questions were raised, documents were examined, and investors frowned in unison.
MacGregor did what any self-respecting con artist does under scrutiny: he took his act on tour. In Paris, he raised nearly £300,000 promoting Poyais as the next great investment destination. The French, perhaps feeling competitive after missing out on the Mississippi Bubble a century earlier, swallowed his story enthusiastically. But even Paris has limits. In 1826, French authorities attempted to convict him of fraud. MacGregor, slippery as ever, wiggled free and promptly boomeranged back to London. What’s that adage about try, try and trying again?
Here, the reception was a little chillier than it had been the first time around, and the Poyais scheme eventually sputtered out. As public enthusiasm waned, the imaginary kingdom faded from polite conversation. Not that it mattered to MacGregor. By then, he had decamped to Caracas, where he lived comfortably – wealthily, even – until his death at 58.
The man who got away with it
Despite engineering one of the most audacious cons in world history, Gregor MacGregor was never properly brought to justice.
The blame landed not on the charismatic fraudster with the impeccable tailoring and exotic title, but on the middlemen, organisers, and unlucky captains of those doomed voyages. People simply could not bring themselves to believe that MacGregor – the hero of Bolívar, the Cazique of Poyais, the dignified gentleman who spoke of civic plans and national infrastructure – had fabricated an entire country.
The victims preferred the story where they were unlucky, misled, or geographically confused instead of facing the truth: they had been duped by a man whose greatest skill was confidence.
That map of Poyais, recently acquired by rare-book dealer Daniel Crouch, is part historical curiosity and part monument to human credulity. A beautifully drawn example of how a lie, told with enough conviction, can take on the weight and shape of reality.
The echoes of Poyais
Modern readers may wonder how anyone could fall for such an absurd fabrication. But the truth is embarrassingly simple: people have always been seduced by the promise of a fresh start, a guaranteed return, a better life just beyond the horizon. Whether it’s a bubble, a memecoin on the blockchain, a revolutionary technology, or (on the rarest and most spectacular occasions) a country that does not physically exist, the pattern repeats.
The only real difference between Poyais and the speculative frenzies of today is that the survivors of the modern manias rarely return home insisting the CEO was a misunderstood visionary who simply misplaced the product. Also, we now have the internet, which makes it harder for the MacGregors of this world to get away with it.
Then again, we did have the Fyre Festival…
About the author: Dominique Olivier
Dominique Olivier is the founder of human.writer, where she uses her love of storytelling and ideation to help brands solve problems.
She is a weekly columnist in Ghost Mail and collaborates with The Finance Ghost on Ghost Mail Weekender, a Sunday publication designed to help you be more interesting. She now also writes a regular column for Daily Maverick.
Dominique can be reached on LinkedIn here.
