Geography

  8°, 29 pp., later marbled wrappers (slightly stained, otherwise in a good condition).  

An extremely rare Nazi report on the state of roads in Germany's former African colonies and the Belgian Congo, made early in World Wat II in preparation for plans for the Third Reich to regain its African empire either by diplomacy or force, being a printed copy of an original typescript labelled as 'Als Manuskript gedruckt' ('Printed as a manuscript'), issued…

  A rare, richly illustrated book in Ottoman script on Africa, North Pole, Australia and South America.

  A scarce, pioneering atlas of Africa with 18 colour plates featuring 50 maps designed by the leading Vienna map house of Freytag & Berndt, including some sophisticated works of thematic cartography and original maps showcasing the level of Western knowledge of the continent, made to capitalize upon the Africa-mania that swept the general public in the wake of the…

  A rare ephemeral Ottoman map of Africa was printed on the back cover of a notebook   8°. [48 pp.] manuscript in pencil on paper with printed stripes, stapled, original pink illustrated wrappers (front cover with light water-staining, tears, loss of image and recently repaired with scotch tape, map with soft folds and tiny tears in the margins, staples…

A complete set of the contemporary Ottoman translations of Schweinfurth’s influential travelogue to Africa. 8°: 911 pp. with black and white illustrations, folding map, coloured in outline, one toned lithograph with hand coloured details, contemporary Ottoman black calf with gilt and debossed decoration (remboîtage in a contemporary Ottoman binding) (minor age-toning and foxing, holes in the map on the crossings…

A foundational document of the establishment of the Estado Novo’s transformative colonial regime in Angola, being the secret typescript report on the state of the Portuguese colony written (and signed in mss.) by the military strongman and political heavyweight António Lopes Mateus, who had just been appointed as the Governor-General of Angola, submitted to the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar; in…

Very Rare – a remarkably astute treatise on cholera accompanied by an amazing 462 case studies of named patients written at the height of the Cholera Epidemic of 1833-4 in Portugal by the respected physician Emigdio Manoel da Victorio da Costa, who selflessly tended to infected persons on the front lines; the work remained in manuscript for many years, until…

  Official Note from the Consul Charged ad Interim of the General Consulate of France in Buenos-Aires, to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Argentine Confederation, reclaiming on the authority of international law, that the French, who notoriously and publicly have established themselves in the republic with the same enjoyments and civil liberties as the Argentine citizens, be not…

An elaborately made manuscript travelogue to Argentina in 1891 by a teenage boy Mariano de Bary, a son of a bank and transportation mogul Heinrich Albert de Bary and a descendant of a prominent Argentinian family Saavedra.   Large 4º, blank, illustrated title page, 130 pp., [1 pp.], manuscript in blue ink, 43 original black and white photographs mounted in…

  A very rare atlas made by the Berlin Missionary Society, one of the most important missionary organizations in Africa and China during the 19th and early 20th Centuries, featuring 16 original maps made by missionary cartographers, including important figures such as Alexander Merensky and Bernhard Struck, containing 14 maps of South and East Africa and 2 maps of China;…

  A fascinating, foundational work on the Brazil’s wild southern frontier during the generation following independence, being an account of Rio Grande do Sul written by Nicolào Dreys, a French merchant who lived in the province from 1818 to 1828, and published in Rio de Janeiro in 1839 during the height of the ‘Ragamuffin War’, a successionist struggle which gripped…

  A highly important and attractive work on the Eighth Xhosa War (1850-3), a critical conflict in which the British scored a crushing defeat upon the Xhosa, so securing permanent dominance over the Eastern Frontier regions of the Cape Colony, a victory secured by the ‘scorched earth’ offensive launched by Governor George Cathcart from the spring of 1852 to the…

[From the Travel through America. The City of Chicago]   An Ottoman translation of Baron Edmond de Mandat-Grancey’s description of Chicago, first published in 1898   8°, 37 pp., later marbled wrappers (slightly stained, otherwise in a good condition).

  A fine example of an important and beautifully produced national atlas of chile, featuring 39 maps predicated upon the best scientific sources, made by Enrique Espinoza, who is credited with revolutionizing the study of geography in Chile, published by the venerable Paris firm of Erhard Frères.   Small 4° (27 x 20.5 cm): 2 pp., 39 maps (5 folding;…

[Tercüme-i Tarih-i Nevâdir-i Çin-i Maçin / Translation of the Stories of History of China and the Greater China]   8°, 70 pp. lithograph, first two pages with gilt margins, later blue cloth boards with brown cloth spine, grey printed endpapers (minor staining overall in a good condition).  

Adolf HAUPT (fl. 1900 – 1933). Tsingdao [Qingdao]: Printed at the Catholic Mission Press, 1927. 8° (19 x 11.5 cm): [13 pp. advertisements, title, preliminaries], 1-48 pp., [16 pp. advertisements on coloured paper], 49-156 pp. (with 82 photographic images imbedded within text), [2 pp.], plus 2 large folding colour lithographed maps on thick paper, bound in original printed boards with…

  A stellar moment of African cartography and inland hydrography, being the first atlas, or accurate, complete large-scale map, of the 1,724 km-long navigable route of the Upper Congo River from Léopoldville (Kinshasa) to Stanleyville, the only natural passage into the heart of Africa, made during World War I for the use of steamer captains by the specialist Belgian colonial…

  8°, 96 pp., advertisement, original illustrated wrappers (slightly stained, a tiny loss of image on the rear wrappers, but otherwise in a good condition).  

  A travelogue to the Holy Land through Egypt by a Croatian professor Krsto Krile, published on the eve of WWI.   8°, XI, 231 pp., interleaved photographs, two folding plates, and three folding maps (Jerusalem, Croatia, the Holy Land), original boards with decoration and lettering, original cloth spine with lettering (hardly noticeable foxing, very light wear to the corners,…

Very Rare – the first broadly accurate and detailed map of the course of the lower Danube River, that flowed 1,400 km from Belgrade to the Black Sea; a colossal 7-sheet work (bound in atlas form) that would measure a course approximately 420 cm (almost 14 feet!) long if joined, based on the first serious attempt to map this vital…

  8°, 184 pp. with black and white illustrations, original illustrated wrappers, later spine (small tears in margins, small patches with loss of text due to glue on three pages replaced with manuscript in pencil, otherwise in a good condition).  

  A very rare and important Arabic language school atlas of Egypt, commissioned by the country’s Education Ministry and Ministry of Finance, emblematic of the country’s emerging national awakening whereby Egyptians gradually regained control over their country’s economy and institutions from the British quasi-colonial regime; in this vein, such cartographic works in the Arabic language, made for the use of…