125 - [UNITED STATES] MANDRILLON, Joseph. *The American Spectator, or General Remarks on North America and the Republic of the Thirteen United States*; followed by *Philosophical Researches on 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 Researches on the Discovery of the New World*. Amsterdam, and available in Brussels, published by Emmanuel Flon, 1785. In-8, full speckled brown calfskin, ribbed spine, panels decorated with gilded floral medallions, author’s and title labels in red morocco, blind-stamped fillet framing the covers, gilded fillet along the edges. 1 f.n.ch. (half-title page), XX and 519 pp., map, and two fold-out charts. Binding slightly rubbed; half-title and title pages reattached. Restored tear and brown stains on the map; minimal foxing. Second edition, expanded to include extensive statistical data and an alphabetical index. It offers one of the most comprehensive and rigorous overviews of the young American republic immediately following the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Joseph Mandrillon (1743–1794), a merchant from Lyon based in Amsterdam, provides a valuable technical analysis of transatlantic trade, supported by a large fold-out map delineating the borders of the Thirteen Rebel States, engraved after a design by Henry Klockchoff, as well as by two important fold-out synoptic tables detailing the overall balance of Anglo-American trade and a freight account for tobacco from Charleston. *Philosophical Investigations into the Discovery of America* sheds significant moral light on the subject. Mandrillon discusses the massacre of indigenous peoples and the depopulation of the West Indies, directly caused by the greed and corruption of the Old World, thereby demonstrating just how disastrous the encounter with Europe proved to be for the American continent. A committed activist of his time, Mandrillon met a tragic fate closely tied to the upheavals of the Revolution, dying by guillotine in Paris in 1794. Handwritten ex-libris on the title page, dated 1787. A fine copy, in a contemporary binding, virtually free of foxing.