[MARINE] Etat général de la marine et des colonies. 10 février 1844

État général de la Marine et des Colonies, published in Paris by the Imprimerie royale in 1844.  First edition. The sections devoted to the colonies occupy pp. 199-224: Martinique, pp. 199-203; Guadeloupe and dependencies, pp. 204-209; French Guiana, pp. 210-212; Bourbon, pp. 216-220; and the French establishments in Oceania, pp. 223-224.

Sumptuous contemporary binding in full cherry-red morocco. Smooth spine decorated with gilt Romantic typographical ornaments, gilt rolls to the headcaps, and boards framed with double gilt rules and interlaced ornament with corner fleurons. Crowned AO monogram gilt at the centre of both boards. Gilt garland framing the pastedowns, azure-blue moiré silk endleaves and pastedowns, gilt rules to the board edges, all edges gilt. Trace of a removed bookplate on one pastedown. A very fine copy, handsomely bound.

Copy of Antoine-Marie-Philippe d’Orléans, Duke of Montpensier (1824-1890), the youngest of Louis-Philippe’s five sons, bound with his crowned monogram. In 1844 the prince was still a young artillery captain; that same year he served in Algeria, before later becoming an Infante of Spain through his marriage to Infanta Luisa Fernanda de Borbón.

The volume appeared during the ministry of Baron de Mackau, at a time when the French colonial administration was engaged in reforming the regime of slavery. The bill presented in 1844 led the following year to the so-called Mackau laws, intended to modify the conditions of slavery in the French colonies, three years before abolition in 1848.

Thus bound for a son of Louis-Philippe, this official survey of the Navy and Colonies takes on an altogether different character. An administrative instrument intended to record personnel, services and maritime possessions, it becomes here an object of courtly presentation, richly dressed in morocco, moiré silk and gold for one of the princes of the July Monarchy.