The pro­tag­o­nist of Saul Bellow’s Hen­der­son the Rain King (1959) bawls out a man­ic refrain that serves as his cre­do: ​“I want, I want!” Hen­der­son, a rest­less mil­lion­aire, leaves his fam­i­ly behind to trav­el to an imag­i­nary African coun­try — a mash-up of East­ern, West­ern, and South­ern Africa. There he befriends the Euro­pean-edu­cat­ed King Dah­fu. After dis­play­ing his extra­or­di­nary phys­i­cal prowess, Hen­der­son finds him­self heir to Dahfu’s throne and ven­er­at­ed as the epony­mous Rain King. The wise Dah­fu attends to Henderson’s soul dur­ing wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tions that car­ry more than a whiff of dorm room bong-phi­los­o­phy. Many read­ers today find Bellow’s nov­el to be an enter­tain­ing, though at times offen­sive, bur­lesque of colo­nial­ism. But not so fast…what if some­one like Hen­der­son had actu­al­ly exist­ed? That some­one was nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Anglo-Jew­ish mer­chant and explor­er Nathaniel Isaacs.

Isaacs was born in 1808 in Can­ter­bury, Eng­land. After the death of his father, Isaacs’ impov­er­ished moth­er sent him to the island of Saint Hele­na, a British ter­ri­to­ry in the South Atlantic Ocean. There the teenaged Isaacs worked for his mater­nal uncle and learned the import-export busi­ness. His wealthy uncle, Saul Solomon, had once been a con­fi­dant of Napoleon Bona­parte dur­ing his exile on Saint Hele­na. Daz­zled by Solomon’s for­tune and impressed by tales of the late French Emper­or, Isaacs absorbed the lessons that gave him an insa­tiable appetite for mon­ey, pow­er, and adven­ture. Like Bellow’s Hen­der­son, Isaacs’ mot­to might as well have been ​“I want, I want!” 

On his first trad­ing voy­age to south­ern Africa, Isaacs was ship­wrecked. He and the oth­er sur­vivors found them­selves on the edges of the Zulu King­dom, then ruled by the indomitable King Sha­ka. Isaacs was drawn to Shaka’s charis­ma and fas­ci­nat­ed by Zulu mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline. Sha­ka treat­ed Isaacs and the oth­er Euro­peans who had washed up on his shores as vas­sals. And like his oth­er Zulu sub­jects, Sha­ka com­mand­ed the Euro­pean arrivals to fight for him against his many ene­mies. Isaacs vol­un­teered for one such skir­mish and was grave­ly injured in bat­tle. Yet thanks to an iron con­sti­tu­tion, Isaacs swift­ly recov­ered and was made a chief­tain by Sha­ka, who also grant­ed him ter­ri­to­ry in recog­ni­tion of his brav­ery. Isaacs lived among the Zulu for more than six years and dur­ing that time he became a trust­ed con­fi­dant of King Sha­ka. Upon his return to Eng­land, Isaacs pub­lished the first eye-wit­ness account of the Zulu peo­ple and their leg­endary king. His much-reviewed book, Trav­els and Adven­tures in East­ern Africa (1836), presents an ear­ly ethnog­ra­phy of the Zulu nation. Isaacs’ book also forms the basis of the mythol­o­gy of Sha­ka Zulu — a Black African icon — to this day.

The real-life Isaacs then went on to out­do even the prodi­gious exploits of Hen­der­son. He became a wealthy, pow­er­ful, and influ­en­tial mer­chant in West Africa, and was com­mis­sioned by the British gov­er­nor of Sier­ra Leone to nego­ti­ate treaties that put an end to stub­born slave-deal­ing in region­al king­doms. Isaacs even pur­chased a small island, Matakong, now con­trolled by Guinea. He ruled the island as his per­son­al fief­dom. There he built a mod­ern port, estab­lished a pri­vate mili­tia, and erect­ed a fortress. Eng­lish jour­nal­ists arrived in Matakong to won­der at Isaacs’ devel­op­ment of the island. Methodist mis­sion­ar­ies praised Isaacs for set­ting up a school. From dis­tant Lon­don, power­bro­kers mar­veled at the achieve­ments of ​“the Jew” Isaacs, whom they rec­og­nized as the ​“sole monarch” of Matakong. 

In my new book, The Jew Who Would Be King, I tell Isaacs’ remark­able sto­ry for the first time and reveal the dark secrets behind the glow­ing news­pa­per accounts and the lauda­to­ry mis­sion­ary reports. Isaacs, like Hen­der­son, dis­played phys­i­cal strength and sta­mi­na, brav­ery, and an end­less well­spring of chutz­pah. Also like Hen­der­son, Isaacs was volatile, pos­sessed by dark desires, and exhib­it­ed an over­ween­ing pride. Had Bel­low known of Isaacs, per­haps the one-time anthro­pol­o­gy stu­dent would have made Hen­der­son even more out­sized a char­ac­ter than he did. 

I spent years sourc­ing archival mate­r­i­al about Isaacs in Eng­land, South Africa, Saint Hele­na, and Sier­ra Leone. Just before COVID shut down trav­el, I ven­tured to Matakong. There I dis­cov­ered rem­nants of Isaacs’ for­mer rule: the foun­da­tions of his pier, the out­line of his com­pound, and even the grave­stone — carved in Hebrew — of his broth­er who died of dis­ease on the island.

Through­out my pur­suit of Isaacs’ sto­ry, a pri­vate cho­rus of ​“I want, I want!” echoed in my head and impelled me onward. My first night on Matakong, I learned what Hen­der­son and Isaacs had: inter­nal and unname­able voic­es can dri­ve you to the ends of the earth, and some­times to your peril.