Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique-centrale, durant les siècles antérieurs à Christophe Colomb, écrite sur des documents originaux et entièrement inédits, puisés aux anciennes archives des indigènes

First edition, illustrated with a map of the Mexican states at the time of the Conquest in 1521, by Malte-Brun (see Sabin 7429, Leclerc 1079, Brasseur de Bourbourg, Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatémalienne, p. 27, Numa Broc, Amérique, pp. 45-47).

Originally engraved by Erhard Schieble, this map is presented here as an early facsimile, likely produced by the publisher to complete his copies.

Bound in half havana shagreen, spines with four raised bands decorated with gilt tooling and gilt panels and fillets, orange shagreen title labels, minor rubbing to spines, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, twentieth-century bindings.

Waterstains, mainly affecting volumes III and IV.

This foundational work on the history of Mexico is divided as follows: I: Heroic Times and History of the Toltec Empire. – II: History of Yucatan and Guatemala; with that of Anahuac during the Aztec Middle Ages, up to the establishment of the monarchy in Mexico. – III: History of the States of Michoacan and Oaxaca, and of the Anahuac Empire up to the arrival of the Spanish. Astronomy, religion, sciences, and arts of the Aztecs, etc. – IV: Conquest of the Mexican and Guatemalan States, etc. Establishment of Spanish government and the Catholic Church. Ruin of idolatry, decline and subjugation of the indigenous race.

A former professor at the Quebec Seminary and later Vicar General in Boston, Abbé Étienne Charles Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814–1874) traveled as a missionary to Mexico and Central America. He developed a keen interest in vanished civilizations and was appointed official archaeologist of the French expedition to Mexico in 1864.

"By turns archaeologist, ethnologist, historian, and linguist, Brasseur de Bourbourg, alongside Désiré Charnay, was one of the founders of Americanist studies in France in the mid-nineteenth century" (Numa Broc).