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

This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power

The Jew Who Would Be King tells the story of Nathaniel Isaacs--a nineteenth-century British Jew who helped establish the Zulu kingdom only to become a ruthless warlord and slaveholder. Isaacs’ thrilling journey begins with his shipwreck on the shores of Zululand and proceeds to ports across West Africa, including Freetown, Sierra Leone. There, tasked by the colonial governor to end the local slave trade, Isaacs brokered deals that reinforced his own power.

Adam Rovner’s meticulous archival research in England, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and St. Helena, coupled with his own travels to the remnants of Isaacs’ island stronghold in Guinea, brings this complex figure to life. Through Isaacs’ story, Rovner exposes the entangled forces of Jewish emancipation and antisemitism, slavery and abolition, the stark dichotomies of civilization and ＂savagery,＂ and the creation of whiteness versus Blackness.

Adam Rovner is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. He is author of the acclaimed In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel.