VILLAULT DE BELLEFOND, Nicolas - Lot 161

VILLAULT DE BELLEFOND, Nicolas Relation des costes d'Afrique, appelées Guinée ; avec la description du Pays, moeurs & manières de vivre des Habitans, des productions de la terre ; & des marchandises qu'on en apporte, avec les Remarques Historiques sur ces Costes. The whole noticed by the Sieur Villault, Escuyer sieur de Bellefond, in the voyage which he made in 1666 and 1667. Paris, Denys Thierry, 1669. In-12 (155 x 87 mm) with a title leaf, 455 pp. Brown calf, spine ribbed, compartments decorated with fleurons and corner irons, roulette on the edges, edges speckled with red. Gay, 2827; Chadenat, 5148; Cioranescu, 66619. First edition, very rare. One of the first and most important relations of Guinea. In the 17th century, European nations were expanding and consolidating their presence on the coasts of Africa, which provided a large number of raw materials (gold, gum, ivory...) and represented, thanks to the slave trade, a source of labor to be sent to the American colonies. The Dutch were in Goree, on the Gold Coast and at the Cape of Good Hope; the English were famous in Guinea; France concentrated on Senegal. It is therefore not surprising that the best accounts published at this time were written by merchants such as Nicolas Villault de Bellefond, a merchant and agent of Colbert who embarked on a vessel chartered by the Compagnie des Indes and explored all the coastal localities from Cape Verde to the Gold Coast. The book is full of precious information on the "kingdoms" visited, the colonial settlements, the villages, the customs and beliefs of the populations, the life of the missionaries, the geography, the flora and fauna, the commercial activities of the Europeans, the agricultural and mining resources, the diseases and remedies, etc. Villault's narration, very lively, records the incidents of the voyage (house of an Englishman razed by cannon, capture of a ship loaded "with 400 negroes", meeting of a Breton ship commanded "by a privateer zelandois"...), and includes digressions on the French presence in Africa (the Dieppe navigators, origin of the ivory factories, establishment of the French in Elmina at the end of the 14th century, discovery of the island of Saint Thomé and of Benin, struggles with the Portuguese, etc.). Bound copy without the 2 ff. of dedication to Colbert; old restorations to the headpieces, jaws partially split.