West Indies - MOREAU DE SAINT-MÉRY (Médéric-Louis-Elie). Des - Lot 72

West Indies - MOREAU DE SAINT-MÉRY (Médéric-Louis-Elie). Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l'Isle Saint-Domingue. [...] Accompanied by the details most likely to show the state of this colony at the time of October 18, 1789. And a new map of the entire isle. I. Contenant, outre les objets généraux, la description des vingt & une paroisses de la partie du Nord & de l'Isle la Tortue. - II. Comprenant la description des dix-sept paroisses de la partie de l'Ouest & de l'Isle la Gonave & des quatorze paroisses de la partie du Sud & de l'Isle à Vache. Philadelphia, chez l'auteur, Paris, Dupont [de Nemours], Hambourg, chez les principaux libraires, 1797-1798. 2 strong vol. in-4 of xx-788 pp. ; viij-856 pp. with two folding plates (a large map of the island in volume I ; an itinerary in the form of a table in volume II), scraped calf, ornamented ribbed spines, red and havana title and tomass, speckled tr. (Minor damage to headpieces, some rubbing or spotting). Very rare first edition of this monumental work, which remains the most complete and accurate picture of the former colony of Saint-Domingue. The atlas announced at the end of the introductory parts of the first volume appears to have been published only with the 1875 reprint. Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750-1819), born in Fort-de-France, had moved to Cap-Français in 1776 and served on the Conseil supérieur de Saint-Domingue, before moving to Paris in 1785, where he worked tirelessly on behalf of the colonial lobby. At the Constituante, he was behind most of the motions and resolutions opposing abolition and civil equality for free people of color. A refugee in the United States, during the Revolution he was one of the figures of the French refugees from Saint-Domingue in America; it was during this forced leisure that he wrote the two Descriptions (he also did a comparable work for the Spanish part of Saint-Domingue). A theorist of the racial question in the West Indies, he systematized an arithmetical theory of epidermis in the colonies, ranking the one hundred and twenty-eight possible combinations of black-white miscegenation according to nine categories (the sacatra, the griffe, the marabout, the mulatto, the quarteron, the métis, the mamelouk, the quarteronné, the sang-melé)!... Freckles, more pronounced in the second volume, otherwise a fine copy. (Sabin 50 571. Leclerc 1397.)