Gaming empire: Confidence tricksters and the reinvention of self in the 1930s

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cyril von Baumann was an imposter. Throughout the 1920s, he pretended to be a medical doctor in the United States. As his deception was increasingly uncovered, Baumann reinvented himself as a ‘noted explorer’ of South America. Returning to the U.S. from various expeditions in the 1930s, Baumann plied the national media with fantastic tales of adventure and discovery. This paper explores Baumann’s life history across this process of self-reinvention. I situate Baumann’s career in relation to other confidence tricksters from this period, focusing on how the turn to exploration offered greater flexibility to create a new persona and the possibility of legitimacy. I also compare Baumann’s storytelling with the representational practices of other U.S. based explorers. Baumann’s history shows how the imagined geographies of South America were less about the projection of U.S. power, but a means of self-fashioning that challenges the prevailing ways we conceptualize the cultural practices associated of twentieth century U.S. empire.