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...

Third and definitive version published during Raynal's lifetime of the Histoire philosophique et politique des établissemens et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, issued in Geneva by Jean-Léonard Pellet. The text appeared in 1780 simultaneously in four quarto volumes and ten octavo volumes; the present copy belongs to the octavo issue reissued with cancel titles dated 1781. Substantially enlarged from the versions of 1770 and 1774, this is the fullest form of the text published during Raynal's lifetime.

 

10 volumes, octavo. The first volume opens with a portrait of Raynal designed by...

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)...