Financing sovereignty

by Damian Clavel

ISBN: 9781503643215

Published: 2025-08-12

Financing Sovereignty rewrites the story of one of the great financial frauds of the nineteenth century: Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish mercenary and self-proclaimed cacique of Poyais, borrowed massive sums on the City of London's burgeoning South American sovereign debt market by selling bonds of the State of Poyais. The only problem--Poyais did not exist. At least, that is what MacGregor was quickly accused of by the press and public opinion of the time. From then on, MacGregor has embodied the figure of the swindler par excellence, the con artist behind the most audacious financial fraud in history. In Damian Clavel's deeply researched retelling of the Poyais scandal, MacGregor is less an unscrupulous adventurer aiming to defraud English investors, than a luckless intermediary between Indigenous Miskitu elites and British financiers. From the coasts of Moskitia to the trading floors of London, Clavel traces the genesis, development, and downfall of the Poyais project, detailing...