Bound with the Genevan Bookseller Bassompierre's catalogue waste - "Etat présent des Indes hollandaises" - Batavia [but Amsterdam]

A Contemporary Critique of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)

"Etat présent des Indes hollandaises, contenant une peinture vraie et fidelle du gouvernement, de l'administration, et de la conduite des Hollandais dans les Indes-Orientales ; le tableau de leurs forces de terre et de mer, de leur commerce languissant, de leur navigation, &c"

- Printed in Batavia [ But Amsterdam], c.1780.

- Octavo format. 96pp.

- Bound in old printer’s catalogue binding waste.

-Retaining the contemporary bookseller’s ticket: “Se vend chez Bassompierre imprimeur-libraire, à Genève.”

-Very Good condition - a few minor stains to pages and creases. Upper front board starting. Untrimmed ("Broché")

This is a fascinating contemporary critique of the Dutch colonial empire in Southeast Asia, published at the beginning of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784). Attributed to the colonial physician and writer Philippe Fermin (1720–1790), the work examines the administration of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The author argues that Dutch possessions in the East Indies were poorly governed and highly vulnerable to attack by Britain and France. The work survives in French, English and Dutch versions, although the language of the original publication is unknown.

This copy is particularly interesting in that it retains a contemporary bookseller’s ticket of [Jean Francois] Bassompierre, an enlightenment printer-bookseller of Geneva. Bassompierre was an important figure in the late eighteenth-century Genevan book trade and associated with the Société Typographique de Genève.

The book is bound in an old bookseller's catalogue, probably Bassompierre's. The bookseller's catalogue lists works on history, politics, education and jurisprudence, with publishing dates up until 1781.

OCLC states 15 institutional holdings including 1 in the UK (British Library), 1 in Australia (Queensland), and 4 in US (Uni Cal, Uni Indiana, Uni Minnesota, Uni Penn).