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Almost Lore

Too strange to forget.
Too true to be folklore.

The Poyais working file

The essay Poyais: the country that existed on paper stays free. This is the separate file: a printable dossier for someone who wants the loan mechanics and the figures the essay refuses to flatten.

Price, when checkout is open: $9 USD, once. Not a subscription. You get an HTML file you can open or print: a reading aid, not a transcript pulled from the archive itself.

What is in the file

  • A dated sequence from the 1820 grant through the 1823 repudiation.
  • The 23 October 1822 loan terms as reconstructed by Damien Clavel: nominal amount, bond count, discount, instalments, and the commissions he marks as approximate.
  • The four ships he names, and an explicit list of passenger and death figures this file will not adopt.
  • His correction on Thomas Strangeways: often called MacGregor’s alias, identified in that paper as a former officer commissioned to write the guide.
  • A short set of reading-group questions and the citations to open next.

The file marks which claims come from Clavel’s published reconstruction and which newspaper or shelfmark he cites, so you can follow each one to the shelf yourself.

Beyond the file

  • The essay. It stays free and does not change if you pay.
  • One agreed death toll. The file names the competing figures rather than picking one.
  • A subscription, an account, or a newsletter. None comes with it.

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Refunds: 14 days, via the support form, if the file is not the dossier described on this page or the download fails after a successful charge. The terms are the whole policy. Privacy names Stripe and the support store.