124 - [UNITED STATES - MANDRILLON, Joseph]. The American Spectator, or General Remarks on North America and the Republic of the Thirteen United States. Followed by: Philosophical Inquiries into the Discovery of the New World.

[UNITED STATES - MANDRILLON, Joseph]. The American Spectator, or General Remarks on North America and the Republic of the Thirteen United States. Followed by: Philosophical Inquiries into the Discovery of the New World. A sought-after first edition of one of the earliest political analyses of the United States following its independence. A complete copy, including the beautiful fold-out map and table, well preserved in a fine later binding. Amsterdam: published by the heirs of E. Van Harrevelt, 1784. In-8 (140 x 220 mm), brown half-shagreen with corners, spine with raised bands embossed with the title and author’s name in gold lettering. XVI, 128, 307 pp., 2 unnumbered folios, 91 pp. and 2 unnumbered folios (table), 1 large engraved folding map, 1 folding table as a separate insert, numerous engraved tailpieces. Minor scuffing on the binding and a tiny tear on the spine; scattered light foxing; a stain in the lower margin of page 70; a small tear, reinforced, in the margin of the map. A sought-after first edition, featuring a fold-out map of the 13 United States and the independent states of North America, engraved by Klockhoff, as well as a fold-out table showing the overall balance of trade of England and its colonies on the American continent from 1697 to 1773. [Leclerc, Bibliotheca Americana, no. 947]. Joseph Mandrillon (1743–1794), a merchant, man of letters, and traveler, provides a comprehensive overview of North America (geography, customs, institutions, economy, and reflections on the viability and future of the new federal and republican system) based on observations gathered during a lengthy stay across the Atlantic. The first part offers a detailed and critical analysis of the drivers of prosperity in the 13 American states, one year after their independence, while the second part questions the legitimacy of colonization by highlighting the massacre that followed the discovery of the New World and the slavery upon which its prosperity is based. The work also contains a glowing portrait of George Washington, to whom Mandrillon sent a copy in 1788 as part of a friendly correspondence that lasted several years. In the *Philosophical Essays* published subsequently, Mandrillon responds in a lengthy discourse to the question “Has the discovery of America been beneficial or harmful to humankind?” posed by the Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts of Lyon. He concludes with these highly visionary words: “It will be the New World, once our slave, that will in turn come to shackle us. Its industry, strength, and power will increase as ours diminish; the Old World will be subjugated by the New.” Upon returning to France after settling in Holland, where he published his political writings, Joseph Mandrillon became associated with the constitutional royalists opposed to the Reign of Terror, before being imprisoned as a royalist correspondent for the Duke of Brunswick and then guillotined by the Revolutionaries in 1794. A fine copy preserved in a delicate later binding.