LINSCHOTEN, Jan Huygen van (1562/3-1611)

Histoire de la Navigation de Jean Hugues de Linscot hollandais et de son voyage es Indes Orientales ... avec annotations de Bernard Paludanus Docteur en Medicine, specialement sur la matiere des plantes & espiceries ... a quoy sont adioustees quelques autres descriptions tant du pays de Guinee, & autres costes d'Ethiopie, que des navigations des Hollandois vers le Nord au Vaygat & en la nouvelle Zembla ... nouvellement traduict en François

"Amstelredam" [Amsterdam]: Théodore Pierre, 1610. Folio. (12 x 7 3/4 inches). [4], 275 pp. 6 engraved maps on 8 sheets (2 double-page, 2 folding, 2 on two folding sheets), 58 engraved in-text illustrations. (Five illustrations shaved touching image area).

Expertly bound to style in old vellum. Black morocco backed folding box.

Very rare first edition in French of the great classic of travel literature.

"When Linschoten returned from Goa to his home in the Netherlands, he did so at a time when the people of northern Europe and particularly his countrymen were especially interested in what he had to report concerning the trading activities of the Portuguese in the East. He had lived in Goa for six years from 1583, and while he never ventured far from the Portuguese capital, he did have an 'avaricious thirst for knowledge which enabled him to get detailed information of land and sea as far afield as the Spice Islands and China'" (Boies Penrose). But his most important and far-reaching observations concerned the gradual decline of Portguese power in the East and her ability to protect her trade routes and monopolies. This, together with the trading possibilities he detailed, encouraged a series of Dutch, French and English fleets to set sail for the Spice Islands and beyond to China and Japan. An important work that served not only as a valuable record but also as a catalyst for change in the balance of power amongst European trading nations in the east. This first edition in French is translated from the first edition in Dutch published in 1596. There are two issues of the first edition in French published in 1610: one by H. Laurenszoon, and one by Pierre (as here). It is generally accepted that this edition was actually printed in Frankfurt rather than Amsterdam, perhaps by the same printer who printed de Bry's work (see Tiele 685).

Ernst van den Boogaart Jan Huygen van Linschoten and the moral map of Asia p.??; cf. Borba de Moraes I,p.489; European Americana 610/69; JCB (3)II:71; Sabin 41369; Tiele-Muller 95(f).

Item #18154

Price: $65,000.00