MILNER, Thomas - MUIRHEAD, William (trans.).

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Eikoku-shi (The History of England). First Japanese edition, released during a period of rampant anti-foreign sentiment that would eventually result in the fall of the shogunate. Milner's history from Julius Caesar through to the reign of Queen Victoria was translated by the Protestant missionary William Muirhead of the London Missionary Society while he was based in Shanghai.After Muirhead published his Chinese translation in 1856, permission to print the volumes in Japan was sought by the physician assigned to the Choshu domain, Aoki Shusuke (1803-1864). The project was later taken up by the samurai and official Shishido Tamaki (1829-1901). In the 1860s Choshu, along with Satsuma, were at the heart of political tensions. Attacks on foreigners were rife following the forced opening of Japanese trading ports, and the lords of Choshu domain were particularly forceful in implementing Emperor Komei's 1863 order to "expel the barbarians". Printing a work like Eikoku-shi, one of the first comprehensive histories of Britain to be released in Japan, can be viewed as an early effort to understand the foreign threat.There are two known variants of this work, with the volumes either bound in eight or in five. The variant bound in eight, as in this copy, has a red publisher's stamp on the second page of Volume 1. There is at least one copy known with an additional 14-page introduction, but no precedence has been established. The two maps translated by Muirhead are of the Norman Conquest

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.