Descripción
Second, enlarged edition of one of the great voyage collections, originally issued by the brothers Awnsham and John Churchill in four volumes in 1704 with the advice and encouragement of the philosopher John Locke. Hill describes it as "a very valuable collection, both for its range of coverage and for the fact that it gives the original accounts". The list of subscribers runs to some 102 names, headed by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Perhaps the most notable addition here, not present in the 1704 edition, is the account of West Africa (1678-82) by the French Huguenot slave trader Jean Barbot (1655-1712), A Description of the Coasts of North and South-Guinea, which includes a chapter on "Mahomet and his Alcoran. the cities of Medina and Mecca, and Mahomet's tomb; and of the Arabs" (vol. V, pp. 63-72). This is the first appearance of Barbot's narrative as he had failed to find a publisher in France - he fled to England in 1685, following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes - and was working on an English version at his death in 1712; "it was this version that was eventually published - probably as Barbot had left it but possibly with some editorial revision - by the Churchill brothers of London in 1732" (Law). Volume II opens with a fine portrait of the Dutch adventurer Johan Nieuhof (1618-1672), who served as an official of the Dutch West India Company in Brazil and East India Company (VOC) in China and India. His narrative of the East Indies includes a section devoted to the Arabian Gulf (pages 193-209), including such principal locations as Bahrain (Baharen), Sharjah (Sarba), Dubai (Dibei), Ras Al-Khaimah (Rasaelchimes), Muscat (Muskate), and a virtual track chart of locations along the coasts of Oman and the UAE. Among the most important of the many accounts printed here are those of Martin von Baumgarten on Egypt, Arabia, Palestine and Syria, including his important description of the ruins at Baalbek, all undertaken at the beginning of the 16th century; the Dutch missionary Philippus Baldaeus on Sri Lanka (1656-65); Giovanni Franceso Gemelli Careri on Turkey, Persia and India (1683-98); Thomas Roe on India and Turkey (1615-19); Captain Thomas Phillips of the Royal African Company, who in 1693-94 commanded the company ship Hannibal to Guinea, "on a trading voyage. for elephants teeth, gold, and Negro slaves" (cited in Conrad, p.12); Domingo Fernandez Navarrete's account of the Empire of China during his work as a missionary from 1646-1673; Brawern and Herckemann's voyage to Chile in 1642 and 1643; Captain John Monck's voyage in 1619 and 1620 to Hudson Bay, to discover a passage between Greenland and America; and Michele Angelo Guattini's "curious and exact" account of his travels to the Congo (1666-67). Provenance: gilt stamp of the Northern Light Board to head compartment of spines, showing a lighthouse surmounted by a banderole bearing the company motto "in salutem omnium" (for the safety of all); established in 1786 with headquarters at Edinburgh, the Northern Lighthouse Board was formed to oversee the construction and operation of four lighthouses around the coastline of Scotland. Borba de Moraes, pp. 181-5; Conrad, Robert Edgar, In the Hands of Strangers: Readings on Foreign and Domestic Slave Trading and the Crisis of the Union, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001; Hilmy I p. 135; Hill 295; Robin Law, "Jean Barbot as a Source for the Slave Coast of West Africa", History in Africa (Vol. 9, 1982, pp. 155-73); NMM 33; Sabin 13016. 6 vols, folio (351 x 216 mm). Engraved arms of 28 named subscribers in vol. I (the list of which runs to some 102 names headed by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty), portrait frontispieces of Johan Nieuhof and Philippus Baldaeus, engraved titles to vols. II and III, 164 plates and maps, vignettes and woodcuts throughout; printed in double columns. Contemporary mottled calf skilfully rebacked in the early 19th century, spines with six raised bands, decoratively gilt t. N° de ref. del artículo 50373
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