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

by Adam Laurence Rovner

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

The Jew Who Would Be King tells the improbable true story of Nathaniel Isaacs—a nineteenth-century British Jew who helped establish the Zulu kingdom only to later 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. The Jew Who Would Be King is a masterful narrative that intertwines Isaacs’ personal ambition with the epic machinations of early globalization. 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Africa

344 pages, Hardcover

Published April 15, 2025

Reviews

[Brian]

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/boo...

[Vic Lauterbach]

This is a great adventure story, but it's also a fascinating look at how the general perception of adventure has changed for American writers like Mr. Rovner. A sense of guilt hangs over him like a shadow as if writing about something evil somehow makes him responsible for it. Mr. Rovner is a good writer, but he feels the need to constantly equivocate and apologize. I understand that he's worried about offending readers, but the very clear statement he makes in his Introduction (page 35) is enough. He allows the people in his story to speak for themselves. That's clear and they do. If the words of a person long dead offend you, I feel sorry for you. Don't read the book. The past is immutable. We can learn from it, but we can't "improve" it, nor should we try. Feeling superior to those who came before us is a conceit. The descendants of today's easily offended groups may view them with the same horror and disdain that the easily offended folks feel for their ancestors. We should all learn and move on. Mr. Rovner does his best to help us do that. On page 212, he offers a stern warning against modern condescension. One of the best aspects of this book is the light it shines on our futile efforts to categorize people using the invented concept of race. In Isaacs day, Jews were considered a race (as were Irish, Romany and many other people). Such beliefs now seem inexplicable. On pp. 540-571, Mr. Rovner explains Isaacs' part in how slavery persisted in Sierra Leone among both African and European settlers twenty years after its de jure abolition in 1833. Residents camouflaged it as "Mohamedan [sic] domestic servitude," a practice that persists today throughout West Africa and is studiously ignored by social justice warriors. Isaacs' adventures ended with a whimper which robs this story of a fitting climax. He escaped prosecution for slave trading and "retired" in England. By the time he died in Egmont near Liverpool, he was forgotten. His writings remain the subject of scholarly controversy, but Mr. Rovner's book helps put Isaacs back in the historical record and provide suitable context. How much or how little of his autobiographical exploits were true will never known with certainty, but it makes great reading.

[Rachel]

Rudyard Kipling’s short story “The Man Who Would Be King” told the tale of two British adventurers in India who managed to become kings in a remote part of Afghanistan, although later events left one dead and the other impoverished and, perhaps, mad. Adam Rovner offers a riff on Kipling’s title in his “The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa” (University of California Press), which tells the story of Jewish Nathaniel Isaacs’ African adventures. While it is pushing it a bit to claim that Isaacs became a king, his story does read like an adventure novel: A poor Jewish boy from England becomes a merchant in Africa before ingratiating himself with the chief of the Zulus and then creates his own not-quite kingdom on a small island off the coast of Africa. Adventurous and clever, Isaacs managed to outwit his enemies, some of whom would have killed him and others who would have seen him thrown in jail for his excesses.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...

[K]

The Jew Who Would Be King is a detailed and interesting account of the life of Nathaniel Isaacs, who created his own "kingdom" in Africa in the 19th century, and by exploiting its population and resources, amassed a fortune and power. The author does a nice job of describing his life, but tends to get mired down in musings on the legacies of colonialism, racism, and "civilization".

[Steven]

topic appeared more interesting than it was portrayed in the book

[Dennis Henn]

The title is the best part of the book. The history that Rovner details and imagines may be fine; his story telling is not. A very dull read.

[Fixie Nice]

Really fascinating person in history, could make an interesting mini series, a really wild story with several ship wrecks, a little slow in parts with the details but fascinating