RAYNAL (Guillaume-Thomas). HISTOIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE ET POLITIQ - Lot 98

RAYNAL (Guillaume-Thomas). HISTOIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE ET POLITIQUE, DES ÉTABLISSEMENS & DU COMMERCE DES EUROPÉENS DANS LES DEUX INDES. Genève, Pellet, 1780. Five volumes in-4, porphyry calf, boards decorated with a triple frame of gilt fillet and gilt fleurons in the corners, five-ribbed spines, garnet and ivy-green morocco title-pieces, marbled edges (period binding). Small leather loss at the tail of volume I, small leather loss at a section of the atlas, a few corners worn away, small wormholes without affecting the text in the margins of the last ff. (pages 603 to 629) of volume III. THIRD EDITION, THE BEST AND MOST BEAUTIFUL, of ONE OF THE KEY WORKS of the Ancien Régime crisis. It is illustrated with 5 engravings, including a PORTRAIT of the author drawn by Cochin and engraved by N. de Launay, and 4 views by MOREAU le jeune. The ATLAS contains 50 engraved MAPS numbered 1 to 49 (one plate 17 bis), most of them double-page (Gulf of Mexico, South America, North America, Indian Ocean and South Sea with the Philippines and New Holland, etc.) and 23 TABLES, most of them fold-outs. Abbé Raynal's "Histoire des deux Indes", a work in which DIDEROT played a major role alongside Holbach, Naigeon and many other philosophical and scientific figures, was blacklisted as soon as it was first published in 1770. This work is both a history of European explorations and commercial settlements around the world, and a sometimes violent denunciation of slavery and the exploitation of the colonies by the metropoles. Borrowings from administrative memoirs and earlier treatises alternate with pieces of revolutionary eloquence, often from the pen of Diderot. Also attacking religious institutions, monarchical despotism and intolerance, "Histoire des deux Indes" is a TRUE PHILOSOPHICAL BURLOT. A BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLE in decorated contemporary calf, remarkably fresh and complete with all the required parts. ¶ Michel Delon, "En français dans le texte", 166 - Sabin, 68081 - Cohen, 854: "Belle édition".