This article revisits the story of one the greatest financial frauds in history: Poyais. In the 1820s, Gregor MacGregor issued bonds for this alleged fictitious Central American state on the London capital market. Putting together scattered evidence reveals a complex, multifaceted experiment undertaken by a private adventurer hoping to politically and economically position himself in a changing world. Poyais was a failed project to establish a settlement on a territory granted by an Indigenous leader and financed through British capital markets. Studying a financial failure provides nuanced insights into the political and legal frameworks defining origination processes of early nineteenth-century foreign loans. Following MacGregor’s actions entails drawing a story with contours that extend well beyond the City of London, revealing a rich set of transatlantic actors and spaces not known to be traditionally linked to the London-based capital market. The story of Poyais constitutes a window into the early financial dynamics of private colonialism and how these contributed to British imperial expansion. The Poyais loan appears as constituting a financial endeavor born from the encounter of different “worlds,” with MacGregor mediating these together but ultimately failing to legally and politically guarantee their lasting encounter.

本文回顾了历史上最大的金融欺诈案之一：Poyais。在1820年代，格雷戈尔·麦格雷戈（Gregor MacGregor）在伦敦资本市场上为这个所谓的虚构的中美洲国家发行了债券。收集零散的证据可以发现，一个私人冒险家进行了一个复杂，多方面的实验，希望从政治和经济角度将自己置于变化的世界中。Poyais是一个失败的项目，无法在由土著领导人授予的领土上建立定居点，并通过英国资本市场提供资金。对财务失败的研究提供了对定义19世纪初期外国贷款的发起过程的政治和法律框架的精妙见解。麦格雷戈（MacGregor）采取的行动需要画出轮廓远超过伦敦市的故事，揭示了丰富的跨大西洋参与者和空间，这些区域在传统上与总部位于伦敦的资本市场没有联系。Poyais的故事为了解私人殖民主义的早期金融动态以及它们如何促进英帝国扩张提供了一个窗口。Poyais贷款似乎是由于遇到不同的“世界”而产生的财务努力，MacGregor将它们调和在一起，但最终未能从法律和政治上保证他们的持久遭遇。