Le commerce de l'Amérique par Marseille, ou explication des Lettres-Patentes du Roi, portant Reglement pour le Commerce qui se fait de Marseille aux Isles Françoises de l'Amérique, données au mois de Février 1719. Et des Lettres-Patentes du Roi, pour la liberté du Commerce à la Côte de Guinée, données à Paris au mois de Janvier 1716. Avec les reglemens que ledit commerce a occasionnés, par un Citadin

First edition of this highly important work, presenting the full text of all decrees and ordinances relating to trade with the Americas, primarily the West Indies (cf. Sabin 11812. Leclerc 113. Barbier I, 649 c. Ined 1038, 1783 edition).

Illustrated with two engraved frontispiece titles and ten maps (nine folding), depicting South America, North America (repeated in vol. 2), Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint-Domingue (2), Cayenne and its surroundings, Louisiana, the Guinea coast, as well as twelve engraved plates showing botanical specimens (sugarcane, cotton, tobacco, cocoa), genre scenes (a Black king dispensing justice, a slave market, turtle fishing), various tools and objects (ventilator, suction pump), industrial activities (plantation layout, sugar mill, indigo workshop), etc.

Bound in modern pastiche bindings: half mottled tan sheep over marbled boards, spine with five raised bands adorned with gilt garlands, double gilt panels, red edges.

Minor black ink stains to the edges of volume one, a pleasant copy overall.

Contains highly detailed information on the production and exploitation of various French colonial goods in the Americas: the cultivation of cotton, cocoa, coffee, sugarcane, tobacco, as well as indigo, annatto, ginger, etc., primarily in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne. One chapter is devoted to tortoiseshell, another to the history of sugar trade in the British colonies. Most of the second volume concerns the slave trade along the Guinea coast. The work ends with a chronological table of official texts relating to colonial trade. The author served as a royal tax collector in Marseille. "An important work for the colonial history of America, containing all the French laws, ordonances, etc., for the colonial and slave trade" (Sabin). A valuable source for the history of colonial commerce