DARTHÉ, Charles Joseph [MAURITIUS IMPRINT]

Le Préfet Apostolique, aux Colons de l'Isle de France. [The Apostolic Prefect, to the Settlers of the Isle of France]

Au Port-Louis, Isle de France: Imprimerie Royale, Rue de l'Hôpital. Printed by François Nicolas Bolle (b. 1741), December 19, 1788. Folio. (12 3/4 x 8 inches). 2 pp. letterpress broadsheet printed on recto and verso on a blue laid paper with watermark and attractive printer's ornaments; a list of 12 steps numbered I-XII for establishing an Apostolic Bureau of Charity under a new governmental administration.

Early Mauritius imprint, printed at the dawn of the French Revolution, from when the island was the French colony of Isle de France; this letterpress broadside, a "fine specimen of the typographic art," announces the creation of an Apostolic Bureau of Charity. [Toussaint]

Early and unrecorded imprint from the colonial press at the French colony of Mauritius, then known as the Isle de France. Isle de France was a French colony in the Indian Ocean from 1715 to 1810, comprising the African country in the Mascarene Islands now known as Mauritius and its dependent territories. It was governed by the French East India Company and formed part of the French colonial empire. Under the French, the island witnessed major changes, including the importation of enslaved people and the undertaking of vast infrastructural works that transformed the capital Port-Louis into a major center of international shipping, warehousing, and commerce. The present text contains twelve articles for establishing a Bureau de Charité for the island. The Bureau was announced by the Apostolic Prefect Charles Joseph Darthé who had been appointed by the Pope. Apostolic Prefects were Ecclesiastics representing the Holy See at the head of a territorial constituency in a mission country, here being the Isle de France. Often when printing was introduced into a new land, such as here, clergy would be the only people with access to printing presses besides government officials. However, Mauritius is something of an exception to this rule: "priests had little to do with printing . . . there is practically nothing worth recording in the way of religious publications." [Toussaint] The charitable plan laid out by the Prefect, not unlike current-day means-tested social programs, is almost absurdly complex in its bureaucratic levers and requirements. Pierre Saunois (b. 1730) brought the first printing press to Mauritius in 1767. The first known imprint was a short poem by Saunois dedicated to the Dauphine of France, Marie Josèphe de Saxe, in 1768. The first newspaper and the first book, a French-Malagasy phrase-book for missionaries, appeared in 1773. During the French colonial period, until the island's annexation by Britain in 1810, the output of Isle de France's early presses included, besides a number of official publications, several books of literary or scientific interest, some of which were important enough to be commended by the Académie des Sciences, an especially erudite series of almanacs, written by Laurent Masson-Abraham from 1769 to 1794, and newspapers, the earliest of which was issued in 1773. But also included were "quite a number of books and pamphlets representative of every branch of intellectual activity: scientific, literary, religious, and political." [Toussaint] If one considers the small size of this island (710 square miles), its isolated position, and that its European population was barely 10,000 strong in 1810, "its achievement in this field appears all the more remarkable." [Toussaint] About 400 imprints are extant of those that were produced in the Isle de France from 1768-1810; they are scattered in repositiories in Mauritius, France, and England, the most important collection of which is the Mauritius Archives. All are rare. No copies of this broadside are located in OCLC, and it was not recorded by Toussaint any of his bibliographies of Mauritius imprints. The Dutch were the first Europeans to become interested in the island, taking possession in 1598. After exploiting the island's dense forests for a century and introducing the cultivation of sugar cane and cotton, the Dutch abandoned the colony in 1710. The French soon claimed it as "Isle de France," and the island remained under the control of the French East India Company until 1767. During the long war between France and England at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Mauritius proved to be an important strategic naval base, and as a result the British took the island in 1810. The Treaty of Paris confirmed official British possession in 1814. It remained an important sugar producing colony, and in the twentieth century its agricultural production expanded to include tea, rice, and other crops.

Bonnefoy, Table General Alphabetqiue et Analytique, p. 135. Daruty de Grandpré, "L'Imprimerie aux Mascareignes et à Madagascar," Nouvelle Revue Historique et Littéraire de l'île Mauice, No. 45 (1902): pp. 455-456 and No. 46 (1902): pp. 461-470. Toussaint, Early Printing in the Mascarene Islands, 1767-1810, passim; Early Printing in Mauritius, Réunion, Madagascar, and the Seychelles, pp. 11-34. Toussaint and Adolphe, Bibliography of Mauritius (1502-1954), passim.

Item #28431

Price: $2,500.00