WEBVTT - Part Two: The Con Artist Who Invented A Country 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:06.920 And it's another episode of a podcast that I do. 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:13.640 I have forgotten which one. Sophie, what is my job? You? 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:19.800 You you are a professional podcaster you hosted That does 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:21.959 not sound right. I know even when I said it, 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:26.119 I was like, yeah, you're Robert Evans, the host of 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:31.760 Behind the Bastards, a show about the work history and today. Oh, 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:34.440 I forgot it because of the head injuries. Um well, 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:36.680 then I guess I should read this script that someone 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.720 has handed me. Uh and the script says that my 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:45.120 guest today is Lacy. Mostly script is right. Oh, I 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:51.120 love a manufactured Jamaican air horn. It's my favorite. Yeah. Yeah, no, 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:53.320 there's no air horn like the one you pretend to 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:58.920 make with your mouth. So, Lacy, how's it going. Let's 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.760 say I assume because it's minutes after we recorded the 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:06.280 first episode, it's going good. It's nice to talk to people. 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:09.240 Like on days where I have lots of podcasts, I'm like, oh, 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:10.800 this is gonna be a long day. But then I'm like, oh, 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:15.160 it's just talking to people I like, so then it's great. Yeah, 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:22.000 you know, I uh. I don't have many social outlets 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:27.480 these days because of the plague and being an introvert. 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:30.000 So yes, I too, I too get all of my 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:33.600 social life by talking about con men with my friends 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:35.679 over the internet. So thank you for being my con 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:38.480 man friend. Yes, I love this. Wait were you doing 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:43.560 lots of socializing before COVID? I feel like you know. No, no, no, 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:47.680 I was mostly hiding in a fortified compact anyway. So 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.720 when Gregor McGregor traveled back to London in one he 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:53.000 brought back with him his wife in a scheme that 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:56.320 was on the surface very silly. The land that he 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:58.520 had been given was beautiful, but again worthless from a 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:00.920 financial perspective. It was a bad place to grow. It 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:04.800 was completely uncultivated, so discovering like whatever resources might be 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:07.000 there would take lifetime's worth of work. You'd have to 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:10.200 cut through miles of jungle to even do anything. There 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.560 were natives there, but none of the kind of cultivated 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:15.560 infrastructure that Europeans looked for in colonial prospects. Remember, the 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.880 most successful colonies that Europeans took were in places where 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.040 like locals had been doing ship for a while, like 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:25.640 food was growing, like ship was They kind of had 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:28.000 to just move in. And this is not that this 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:32.640 is like, this is actual uncultivated country. None of this 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:35.240 matter to Gregor, obviously, because he had no plan in 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.720 doing anything employer. His plan was to lie and pretend 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:41.480 it was an actual independent nation, filled with riches and 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:44.760 fertile land and friendly natives eager to learn from British 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.440 civil Friendly natives, you know, natives we love when when 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:50.720 the Brits come and take all our ship and give 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:55.240 us us They love it. Oh that doesn't sound like 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.160 the British name. More than forty times they did that. 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:01.959 Come all, we're here, we we love to see it. 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:06.520 So uh yeah. He his plan was to drum up 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:09.720 a media frenzy around his new country and Great Britain 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:12.280 and sell plots of land back to Global Rubes. And 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:14.280 then it wasn't really clear what he planned to do 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:15.960 after that, but it was like, if you've seen the 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.200 monorail episode of The Simpsons, that's kind of what he 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:22.240 was going for. It seems like. So as it happened, 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:24.960 Gregor landed in London during the best possible time to 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:27.600 sell a fake Latin American nation idiots. And I'm going 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:30.440 to explain how this scheme got off the ground, but 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:32.760 first I'm gonna have to walk you through how stock 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:34.720 trading worked in the eighteen twenties. And this is a 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.520 funner story than you might expect. So the idea of 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:40.320 trading stocks is still pretty new in the eighteen twenties. 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:42.760 People have not been doing it in like a kind 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:45.880 of recognizable modern way for a long time. The whole 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:49.040 concept had arisen in London during the time of Queen Elizabeth, 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:51.960 the first out of what was called merchant banking, the 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:55.560 selling and trading of various commodities. Now this took off 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:58.160 in the Aisles because the continent of Europe's but basically 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:00.720 the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds fighting a bunch of 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:03.800 horribly bloody wars, and the men who profited from those 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:06.480 wars did all of their financial gambling in London because 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:09.240 London was safe. Right, people aren't getting over to England 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.840 into when they're fighting. Um, so it's a pretty good 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:14.200 place to do your trading. Uh So. It was an 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:16.919 English bank that managed the fifteen million dollar loan that 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:19.719 let the US by Louisiana, And it was Rothschild's bank 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:21.839 that loaned Britain and her allies more than a hundred 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:27.080 million pounds during the Napoleonic wars. Now, when those wars ended, 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:29.040 the situations kind of like it was for the US 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:31.680 and World War Two, where everyone else is devastated and 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:34.160 the British are doing all right, um, and they kind 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.600 of like wind up holding everybody's money at the end 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.200 of that war. Uh. And so with the fighting over, 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:41.080 you had all these rich guys who had more money 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:43.400 than ever and they wanted to make even more money 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:45.320 with that, because that's the only thing rich guys do 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:48.000 with huge piles of money. So they want to do, yeah, 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:49.880 their hoarders, and they want to like make more money 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.279 and they so they want to like gamble on something. 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.880 And the Royal Exchange had for decades kind of handled 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.960 that gambling. But by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.760 there's way too much money for this tiny little exchange 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:04.720 to handle and there was no like real regulation and 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:07.560 this this had started to become a problem. They were 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:11.200 all these frauds and conman and uh, yeah, people were 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.080 worried that the entire economy was going to collapse under 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:16.680 like a whole bunch of giant grifts. And this had 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.560 happened before, and it kind of happened repeatedly. As soon 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:23.280 as people started trading stocks. UH. In seventeen twenty, there 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:25.680 was something called the south Sea Bubble. This started when 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.640 the south Sea Company bribed the British government with millions 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.200 of dollars in exchange for monopoly and South American trade. UH. 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:34.640 The government needed that money for a different war with France, 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:37.000 so they passed a bill to make this legal um 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.159 and suddenly all like the south Sea Company stock rises 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:42.520 to ten times its value, and all these Englishmen see 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:45.000 like it's like with bitcoin, suddenly like oh my god, 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.040 that got worth so much more overnight. Something else has 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:49.520 got to be like that. What if I invest in 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:51.320 something else and then I can get rich too, And 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:54.640 so there's like anyway, speculation starts running wild and people 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:57.080 start investing in some really stupid ship. And I'm gonna 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:00.520 quote from a write up in Historic UK here speculation 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:02.839 ran wild, and all sorts of companies, some lunatics, some 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.520 fraudulent or just optimistic, were launched. For example, one company 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:09.159 floated was to buy the Irish bogs. Another was to 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:13.080 manage manufacture a gun to fire square cannon balls, and 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:16.760 most ludicrous at all quote this was an investment at 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:20.160 the time for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:23.560 but no one to know what it is. Yes, that's 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:25.800 not how to scam silicon. Then they're like, if we 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:28.040 tail you, then somebody's most steal it. But just give 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:30.479 us money for the thing that would make it. Yeah, 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.080 And of course the bubble burst and the entire economy 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:35.560 collapsed and the government had to resign. So like that 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.440 had happened about a century before, and people saw the 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:40.400 same stuff starting to happen again and they got like 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:44.000 really worried. Um, So the more level headed citizens in 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:46.880 England decided to make a system of rules and regulations 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:50.320 to govern the selling of stocks so the country wouldn't 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:53.000 be destroyed completely by reckless greed. And this is kind 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:55.400 of how the London Stock Exchange came about. And like 0:06:55.440 --> 0:06:57.360 there's there's a lot more to the history than that, 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:59.560 but that's more or less the anyway. So you get 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.960 this stock exchanged by the eighteen hundreds and it regulates 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:06.200 trading and only approved entities could list commodities for sale 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.160 or sell commercial stock, so fraud was kept to a minimum, 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:12.520 which was good for the economy but bad for people 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:16.960 who want to get rich quick, bad for fraud, Bad 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:20.120 for fraud uh, So the London Stock Exchange worked for 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.360 a while to keep fraud in check. But then Napoleon 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.160 loses his war and British, the British wind up with 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:27.480 all of the money in the world, and that kind 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:31.120 of makes people reckless, so they start looking for schemes 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:34.400 that they can't find on the London Stock Exchange because 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.320 it's vaguely legitimate. And I'm gonna quote from the economist 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:41.160 here to explain what happened next. The economy was expanding steadily, 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:43.760 driven on by manufacturing. The cost of living was falling, 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:47.120 with industrial workers wages rising, Interest rates drifted down with 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:49.680 the government borrowing more and more cheaply. The country was 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.160 in an upbeat mood. The downside to all this was 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:54.840 that investing in government debt, a staple place to park 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:57.880 spare funds, had become boring. The market rate on the 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:01.720 most popular British government bond else steadily between eighteen hundred 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:04.200 and eighteen twenty five. The government made the most of this, 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:06.640 swapping its existing debt for new bonds that paid rates 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.600 as low as three percent. All this gave British investors 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:13.160 the incentive and the confidence to look for more exciting opportunities. 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.720 One option was to lend money to governments that paid 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:18.800 higher interest rates. Russia, Prussia, and Denmark all had good 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:21.560 credit records but offered a five percent return. So this 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:23.800 is what how it happens at first, as they start 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.920 investing in foreign companies that offer more of a return 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:29.880 than the government, and foreign bonds weren't traded in the 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.200 stock exchange, so there's no regulation. Now this is okay 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:35.720 when you're investing in like Denmark, because Denmark is a 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:37.880 real country and like, you know that your investment is 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:40.319 not going to just like fly away. Right Prussia is 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:42.520 not going to default on all of its debt. But 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:46.360 right at this time, like this, this is it's kind 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.400 of an open place where a scammer could establish themselves 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:52.280 and it's not a scam is maybe the wrong way 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:56.760 to put it. But less less set, less safe bets 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:00.640 start start being possible. Yeah, it's so all of these 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:03.640 South American colonies that we've been talking about had been 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.679 in the process of fighting wars against their colonial oppressures 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.520 and winning them. And you start wanding, you start having 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:13.440 independent South American states at this point, uh and and 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:16.760 these are very new countries and they just finished fighting 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:18.760 these horrible wars, so they had a need for a 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.800 bunch of cash. And all these people in Great Britain 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:24.280 are both obsessed with South America and they have too 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:27.480 much money. So you get this kind of like perfect storm. 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.400 And it starts with Colombia, which is the first new 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:32.640 nation that comes to the people of Great Britain asking 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:37.040 for a loan. They wanted two million pounds and this 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:39.560 is uh they offer, and like they're willing to offer 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:42.360 a six percent return rate, which was actually illegal in 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.400 Britain at the time because it's too high. Because it's 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:48.360 too high, and the government's like any any anything with 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.679 the return that high has to be somehow what's sketchy. Um. 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.120 But people fall for this and they like, they love it, 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:57.679 and they invest a shipload of money in Colombia. And 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:00.679 the way that Columbia has to like the country to 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:03.040 do this is Columbia. So they kind of go to 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:06.080 an effort to convince people that they're legitimate, that like 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:07.920 they'll be able to pay this back. So they print 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:10.800 up all these brochures with lists of like the revenues 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:13.199 they expect to make and how good their tobacco market's 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:15.200 going to be. And how much gold and silver they're 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:17.480 going to be mining as soon as the economy gets 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:20.760 off the ground. Uh. So it seems like a stable investment. 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:23.880 People go fucking wild for Colombian bonds and the bonds 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.720 run out almost immediately. Uh, and so people start like, yeah, 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:30.680 people are very hungry for another opportunity like that. And 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:32.920 so Chile comes up, and Chile is like, well, we 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:36.040 like alone too, and then Peru comes up next. And 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:38.640 by the time Peru starts offering investments, they're not even 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.679 telling people what natural resources they have to guarantee they're 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.240 they're they're just being like, hey, we're fucking Peru. You 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:46.920 guys want some of this ship And they guess correctly 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:49.079 that like London was, no one was going to factory 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:52.120 like we just like Colombia were just like know everything. 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:55.600 They said, that's what we're doing too in Peru. Just 0:10:55.640 --> 0:10:58.800 give us the money. Yeah, we'll which of course we 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:02.920 probably have gold probably you don't know, soil, very rich 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:10.240 soil the other day. Anyway, give us. Now, these were 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:12.679 not necessary, These were not all great investments. Obviously, all 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:15.360 these countries do have natural resources, but Latin America was 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:17.520 still fighting a whole bunch of civil wars. All of 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:20.160 these countries were still fighting, like none of their governments 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:23.040 were actually really all that settled at this point. They 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.000 had no credit history, and nothing was known about the 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:28.520 resources of these places or when they would start being 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:30.960 the kind of seeing the kind of profits that all 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.400 these British people were going to expect. And it wasn't 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:35.960 even possible to truly vet that all the men claiming 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:39.880 to represent these governments were who they said they were, 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.520 So it's like, who, Yeah, none of these nations are 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:47.320 even recognized by the British governments. Now. I don't think 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:51.800 that's the only path to being legitimate is being recognized colonizers. However, 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:54.200 I do think it's fun that it's like, yeah, we 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:56.280 don't know who's going to be in charge tomorrow. We 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:59.800 are definitely yeah. And if you are a British and 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.600 vest and your country doesn't recognize this as a country, 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:05.960 that might be a sign that like, okay, this maybe 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:10.479 I should be a little bit more. I don't know. Yeah, 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:12.960 they invested a bunch of money in these places, um, 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.000 and this is the London that Gregor McGregor, the Prince 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:19.400 of Poier, walks into in eighty two. And the only 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:21.679 disadvantage he had when he was trying because he he 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:23.480 wants to do the same thing with Poier. He wants 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.480 to put it up for a bond issue and like 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:28.400 get a bunch of money from people who are expecting 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:31.080 it to be paid back. Uh. And the only disadvantage 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:33.000 he has in doing this is that Spain had never 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:36.080 owned his country. Um. So one reason British folks were 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:38.360 willing to invest in like Columbia or Peru is that 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.359 the Spanish had fought like hell to hold onto these places. 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.040 So even though they didn't know exactly what resources these 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:46.160 countries had, they figured if the Spanish are willing to 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:49.960 fight hard for them, there's gotta be yeah, exactly now. 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:53.080 So Poier didn't have that, but it had an advantage 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:55.640 that none of the Latin American countries issuing bonds in 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.240 Great Britain had, which is that its head of state 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:00.080 was in London, and its head of state is of 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:04.280 course Gregor McGregor. Yeah. So he immediately goes to the 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:06.880 press like that's his first thing, and he starts talking 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.840 about how like basically talking at Poier, is this like 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:14.000 utopia with with undiscovered riches and stuff? Uh, and he 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:16.120 he has. He hires a bunch of assistants to write 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.880 newspaper ads and leaflets and ballads to be broadcast by 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:22.839 like street singers in London and Edinburgh and Glasgow to 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:31.800 try to convince thing. Yeah yeah every day that rhymes 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:35.040 we bopping bottles and poier every day. Yeah yeah it 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:39.360 is ship yeah funk. That's good. So we have some 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:41.200 examples of some of the ads that he hired. This 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:43.959 one was published in the Glasgow Sentinel Sentinel and I'm 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:47.320 gonna read it now. The climate is remarkably healthy and 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:51.160 agrees admirably ably with the constitution of Europeans, many of whom, 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:53.760 having become much stabilitated by a long residence in the 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.079 West Indies, have been completely restored to health by a 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.800 removal for a short period to the Bay of Honduras. 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.800 The soil is extreme, the rich and fertile, bearing three 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.320 crops of Indian corn in the year, and produces not 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:06.760 only all the necessities of life and profusion, but is 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.720 well adapted for the cultivation of all those valuable commodities 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:13.880 which have rendered the West Indies so important, especially coffee, sugar, cotton, tobacco, 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:18.319 coco etcetera. So everything valuable grows here, and the climate 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:21.920 makes you healthier if you're Europeans, right, and everyone's coming 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:24.920 here to the island. Here, the land heals the sick. 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:29.720 Basically is what you said, Beautiful snake oil heels sick 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:32.840 white people, only white people. Don't worry, We'll only heals 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:34.960 sick white people. Well, you know, it's it's kind of 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:37.400 a thing. After this period, all the places where Europeans 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:39.520 are making all of their money by selling and mining 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:43.440 commodities kill Europeans and huge quantities because you know, they're 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:45.320 giving smallpox to the names, but like they don't have 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:48.680 immunity to like any of the local diseases either. So 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:52.480 uh yeah, there's a lot of reasonable questions that responsible 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:56.760 men asked about this investment scheme. For example, Gregor, how 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:58.960 do you pan to plan to repay this loan? And 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:01.360 Gregor answered that he had a lot of gold, and 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:03.320 it had all sorts of animals that could be hunted, 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:05.240 and it had great soil and soon there'd be a 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.520 bunch of stuff for sale. And so when he said this, 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.280 people were like, hey, Gregor, if Poyer has all this ship, 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.040 why has no one ever traded with it before, and 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:15.360 Gregor's like, well, the locals were too scared of getting 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:17.840 the Spanish attention and then Spain would colonize them, and 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:21.280 like they didn't want that, and so then they were like, well, well, 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:24.520 why why didn't Spain conquered Point, like they were right there. 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:26.320 And he was like, well, there's mountains too. There's all 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:28.440 these big mountains, huge, biggest mountain you've ever seen. No 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:31.000 one could get into it, and a really deep lake, 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:36.080 like the deepest lake, and honest, lots of lake currents, sharks, 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.560 lake sharks, tons of sharks, sky sharks too. Nobody could 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:43.880 get it. So these, again are all pretty transparent lies. 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:46.320 But nobody was checking him out because people just have 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:48.320 money to burn and they want to get in on 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.560 South America. So the loan that Gregor wound up seeking 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:53.840 on behalf of Poer was two hundred thousand pounds, just 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.560 a fraction of what larger nations had asked for, but 0:15:56.720 --> 0:15:58.480 enough to make him very rich. It's the equivalent of 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:02.360 about like eleven million dollars or elevenillion pounds I guess today. Yeah, 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:04.440 it's a lot of money. So if Gregor had been 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:06.480 an ordinary con man, he would have focused on just 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:09.360 this grift. But by eighteen twenty two, Gregor had gotten 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:11.600 good at being a con man and the loan was 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:15.040 just his side grift. His real plan was to convince 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:18.359 hundreds and hundreds and eventually thousands of English and scotsmen 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:22.400 to sell their property by land from him and immigrate 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:25.440 to Poier to help civilize it. Now, I should note 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:27.440 here that there's some debate about whether or not he 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:30.160 actually intended to try to settle and govern a new nation. 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:33.800 There's some evidence that, like he did on emilya Amelia Island, 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:35.720 he wanted to move all these people out there so 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:38.960 they could form the core of a private country. Um. 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:41.920 But he never actually tried to do this. Uh, And 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:44.560 whether or not he intended to try and start a settlement, 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:46.720 the plan was a con from the beginning, and evidence 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:48.920 of this comes from the propaganda booklet he wrote to 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:53.400 entice colonists to immigrate. It was titled Poier Sketch of 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:56.920 the Mosquito Shore including the Territory of Poier, descriptive of 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.360 the country with some information as to its productions. Now, 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:03.680 he credited the writing of the book to Thomas Strange Ways, 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:06.359 a man who did not exist, but was supposedly a 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.679 captain in the Poie in military, which also did not exist. 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:14.840 That was his fake friend's name, Yeah, Johnny, fake name, 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:26.880 my good friend, Jesus. The booklet was a pretty good 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:29.800 piece of con art. It opened with an apology that 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.800 the contents were very dry and serious and wouldn't be 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:36.600 entertaining to ordinary readers, because he knew that the intelligent 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.119 and like serious men who would agree to invest in 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.119 Poier wanted only the best information. They didn't want it 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.720 to be flowery and interesting. They wanted serious facts, and 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:47.480 that's all he was going to give you. So, like, 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:49.959 first off, he's he's being like, oh, if you're not 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:53.080 really if if you're expecting like like a lurid read like, 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:55.880 this is for serious people. So like, clearly, if you're 0:17:55.920 --> 0:18:01.080 into this, you're serious person. Book. Yeah, not for poland 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.960 dumb people, just the very smart. Yeah. So the book 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.160 was a bunch of included a bunch of like plagiarized 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:10.520 descriptions of different plants and like lies about the growing season, 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:13.960 and also these very elaborate calculations for how much farms 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:17.399 of different sizes and plantations of different sizes could expect 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.160 to earn and all of this was lies, but he 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:21.800 he did all like all of the math was laid 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:23.800 out in a way that like, oh wow, this has 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.200 to be legitimate. He did a bunch of math. There 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.760 are numbers in this leaflet. Yeah, and these calculations went 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:32.640 next to like things that were a lot less reasonable, 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.200 like claiming that like it had more fresh water than 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:37.720 anywhere else, and all of the freshwater rivers were also 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:39.679 just filled with hunks of gold that you could pick up, 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:43.600 and like it's this mix of like, yeah, it's very fun, 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:48.640 very fun. One question this point because he did inherit 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:52.520 land that wasn't there's real land. But there's real land. 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:59.120 That Poier is the location of the land that he inherited. Yeah, yeah, 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:04.760 you know what isn't fake land? Kind of grifted from 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:11.840 I don't know, Sophie, I don't know anymore. Let's just 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:20.800 roll the ads. Don't be sad, Robert. So we're back. 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:24.160 I missed the ads already, but we get to talk 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:29.000 more about Gregor McGregor. So. Thomas's guidebook included lengthy descriptions 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:31.919 of the local natives, the local poi Aians or the 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:37.200 poi Aians Poiasians. I think, Yeah, Poiaisians, I think is 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:40.920 the correct way. In his description, the Poisians basically had 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.359 no real culture of their own. Their culture was that 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:54.560 they loved the British. Yeah he knew, he knew how 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:57.000 to sell this ship. Like he's not dumb, he knows 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:03.320 his people. Uh. He wrote, quote you yeah, they love 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:08.040 they love you. Yeah, he wrote A tradition has long 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:11.440 prevailed among them that the gray eyed people, meaning the English, 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:15.320 have been particularly appointed to protect them from oppression and bondage. 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:22.359 That's his good grift. All the women are young and 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.400 the breasts are right underneath the chin, and all they 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:29.360 wanted to was marry an old, decrepit British men. Yeah. 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.640 The women won't very young men. They won't anyone under seventy. 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:39.680 So yeah, he tells them that, like, these people are 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:43.240 probably descendants of the Aztecs, so they're formerly civilized people 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:47.520 who needed English help to rescue them from barbarism. Oh god, 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:49.760 he was like, look, they were colonized once and they 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:52.959 loved it. They were like colonization chef's kiss and they 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:58.000 really wanted you guys to come back. Yeah. So um yeah, 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:01.920 he wrote quote they have repeatedly june An anxious desire 0:21:02.000 --> 0:21:04.639 to acquire the arts of Europe as is manifest by 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:08.080 their repeated invitations to the English to form settlements among them, 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:10.440 as well as by their former offers to seed a 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:12.959