Guillaume-Thomas RAYNAL

Third and final edition with some parts in first edition, the best and most complete as regards the text, bringing the number of volumes to 10 against the 7 published until then. The work appeared in a luxurious version, quarto (certain octavo printings have thicker and higher quality paper and do not have the same collation, as is the case with ours) and in a more modest version. Ten superb frontispieces by Moreau Le jeune illustrating colonialism including the portrait of Raynal in volume 1 by Cochin re-engraved by Lardy.
Contemporary full marbled and speckled blonde calf binding. Smooth spine decorated with 4 compartmented fleurons (daisy flower). Red morocco title label, green moro

Third and final edition, the best and most complete in terms of text, bringing the number of volumes to 10 from the 7 published previously, here with a relay title dated 1781; copies are indeed found with title pages bearing both dates of 1780 and 1781. The work appeared in a luxurious version, in quarto, and in this octavo version. The illustration includes a portrait of Raynal by Cochin (with the inscription: Le défenseur de la liberté, de la vérité...) as frontispiece to volume I and 9 fine figures as frontispieces to the other volumes, by Moreau le Jeune and engraved by De Launay, Delignon and Simonet. The quarto atlas was published separately and could be joined to the edition according

Autograph manuscript insert by Abbot Raynal, in revision of his famous Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements des Européens dans les deux Indes [History of the two Indies], one of the basic texts for the humanitarian movement and a keystone in the canon of Enlightenment thinking. Half a page in black ink on one leaf, a few words crossed out. Marginal foxing, numbered insert label stuck to the margin.
The manuscript is an important addition by Raynal to the third edition of the 1780 text - censored in France - in order to update his History following the Treaty of Paris (1783) b