James Harden-Hickey, Prince of Trinidad

Born in San Francisco, California, in 1854 to an Irish and French family, Harden-Hickey grew up in Paris, where he married the Countess de Saint-Pery in 1878. A royalist, journalist, and prolific writer, he founded Le Triboulet, a fervently monarchist periodical, and was made a Baron of the Papal Nobility. After the closure of Le Triboulet, he divorced, converted to Theosophy, and set out to India. 

En route, the Astoria stopped at the small, uninhabited South Atlantic island of Trinidad, which Harden-Hickey, believing it terra nullius, claimed. He married American heiress Anna H. Flagler in 1891 in New York City, where they settled. Financed by his wealthy father-in-law, Harden-Hickey began publicizing his plans, and in 1893 scored a front-page story in the New York Tribune.

After proclaiming himself James I, Prince of Trinidad in 1894, he began reifying his new country. A crown was commissioned; a national flag and a princely coat of arms designed; postage stamps issued; an order of chivalry, The Cross of Trinidad, founded; and government bonds sold. James I opened a chancellery in Manhattan, and appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs his friend the Count de la Boissière, who claimed that “several powers have recognized the new Principality.” A Charge d’Affaires was designated in Canada. To transport colonists and supplies to the island, a schooner was purchased and 40 Chinese workers were sent to construct a lighthouse, a coaling station, houses, and wharves. 

The project was thwarted in 1895 when the Royal Navy invaded the island to use it as a cable station and expelled its occupants, then acquiesced to Brazil, the current owner of the island. The deposed monarch, despondent and depressed, committed suicide in 1898.