Recherches Historiques et Politiques sur les Etats-Unis de l'Amérique Septentrionale où l'on traite des établissements des treize colonies & de leurs dissensions avec la Grande Bretagne, de leurs gouvernements avant et après la révolution, &c. Par un Citoyen de Virginie. Avec quatre Lettres d'un Bourgeois de New-Heaven (sic) sur l'unité de la législation.

MAZZEI Filippo & TURGOT Anne Robert Jacques & CONDORCET Nicolas
Recherches Historiques et Politiques sur les états-Unis de l'Amérique Septentrionale où l'on traite des établissements des treize colonies & de leurs dissensions avec la Grande Bretagne, de leurs gouvernements avant et après la révolution, &c. Par un Citoyen de Virginie. Avec quatre Lettres d'un Bourgeois de New-Heaven (sic) sur l'unité de la législation.
Froullé, Colle (Toscane) & Paris 1788, in-8 (13 x 20 cm), (4) xvi 384 pp., (4) 259 pp (1), (4) 292 pp., (4) 366 pp., 4 volumes, later sheep
First edition.
Fawn Empire-style marbled sheep. Spine richly gilt with Greek key motifs, roulettes and numerous horn-shaped tools. Title- and volume- labels in lighter sheep. Covers with frame of roulettes. A few corners rubbed. Tear to headpiece of volume III.
This work was originally conceived as a response to Raynal's Political and Philosophical History and therefore a number of its pages are devoted to picking over and critiquing that work. The present work is undoubtedly one of the most important on the history of the young United States, and discusses the War of Independence, the history of the Colonies, law, the Quakers, the climate, labor conditions, slavery, and son on.
Filippo Mazzei was an Italian doctor and horticulturalist who came to Virginia in 1773 in order to introduce the cultivation of orchards (olives, vines, fruit) to America. A neighbor of Thomas Jefferson's, the two became friends and the help and advice he gave Mazzei played no small role in the compilation of this work. Mazzei was a supporter of independence and was tasked with raising funds in Europe to help Virginia. He later left the United States to work in Eastern Europe.
The work also includes, among others, the Reflexions rédigées à l'occasion du Mémoire sur la manière dont la France l'Espagne doivent envisager les suites de la querelle entre la Grande-Bretagne et ses Colonies [Certain gleanings from Memory on the way in which France and Spain should consider the repercussions of the quarrel between Great Britain and her Colonies] (volume 3, pages 217-282), which appeared here for the first time, and in which Turgot predicted the independence of the colonies. The Lettres d'un bourgeois [Letters of a citizen] are by Condorcet.