Description

Long before he declared himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, Joshua Norton was just another struggling colonist in a land that didn't want him. This is the wry, absurd, and surprisingly true story of his early years as one of the 1820 Settlers—Britain's hapless attempt to populate the Cape Colony with people who had no idea what they were doing.

Amid the chaos of the Eastern Cape frontier, where Dutch farmers, British bureaucrats, Xhosa warriors, and Khoi herders clashed over land, cattle, and survival, young Joshua grew up in a family that was spectacularly bad at colonialism. While history remembers him as the eccentric monarch of San Francisco, the real story—far stranger than any myth—begins here, in a war-torn corner of Africa where delusions were the only sane response to reality.

Told with dark humor and meticulous research, Forged on the Frontier is the first volume of the definitive (and only) biography of Norton I, the world's most accidentally profound monarch. It's a tale of failed farms, desperate schemes, and the kind of grandiose dreams that only a man who'd seen the worst of humanity could believe in. Because sometimes, the only way to cope with a brutal world is to reinvent it—preferably with yourself in charge.

History's greatest underdog. History's greatest punchline. This is where it all began.