RAYNAL, Guillaume Thomas François.

£2,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Établissemens et du Commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes. Third edition of this popular and controversial work describing European commerce and activities around the globe. This edition, of which a significant portion was supposedly written by Diderot and others, was the most radical and the first to be published not under a pseudonym. It was condemned by the Parlement of Paris, censored, and burned by the public executioner.This work was one of the first global histories, and one that was fiercely anticlerical, pro-insurrection, and anti-colonial. It was "very comprehensive in its scope: it relates to trade in the Persian Gulf and with Arabia and India; the conquests of the Portuguese and Dutch in the East Indies and Asia; Spanish conquests in the Americas and the West Indies; the Portuguese conquest of Brazil; and the English and French colonies in North America" (Hill). In particular Raynal strongly opposed slavery and monopolies in the colonies, as well as the seizure of land from native populations. In one issue of the 1780 edition (not the present copy), the frontispiece engraving of his portrait was subtitled with the words "Au défenseur de l'humanité, de la vérité, de la liberté", and it was these sentiments that made Histoire one of the foundations of the anti-colonial movement. Other famous Enlightenment thinkers of the day were involved in the work's production; roughly a third was supposedly written by Diderot, while B

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