The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa

Author/Contributor(s):	Rovner, Adam Laurence
Publisher:	University of California Press
Date:	04/15/2025
Binding:	Hardcover
Condition:	NEW

"The Jew Who Would Be King tells the improbable story of one of the nineteenth-century's most intrepid and controversial explorers, Nathaniel Isaacs, a British Jew who helped the legendary King Shaka establish the Zulu nation, but who later became a ruthless warlord and slave holder in Sierra Leone. Isaacs was an English merchant, adventurer, and author who published a celebrated account of his shipwreck and survival among the Zulu in Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa (1836). His desperate scramble for fame, wealth, power, and love opens a new vista on to the way individuals experienced the upheavals of early globalization and the rise of Empire. The Jew Who Would Be King weaves together private lives and public history to offer a nuanced perspective on the mechanics of colonialism"--