[WEST AFRICA] [SLAVERY] CORRY, Joseph

Observations Upon the Windward Coast of Africa, The Religion, Character, Customs, &c. Of the Natives; with a System Upon Which They May Be Civilized...

London: Printed for G. and W. Nicol, and James Asperne, by W. Bulmer and Co., 1807. First Edition. First printing. Quarto (28.5cm). Rebound in half black morocco with pink marbled paper over boards, gilt tooling to leather edges and to spine, top edge gilt; blue endpapers; [xvi],163,[1]pp; frontispiece, map, and 7 hand-colored folding aquatint plates. drawn by R. Cocking from sketches by Corry, and engraved by I. C. Stadler. Donnelley stamp to lower turn-in on front board. Leather, gilt-stamped bookplate of Neva and Guy Littell. Lightly rubbed, joints starting, marbled paper browning, hinges cracked but holding, internally clean, textblock foxed and browned but plates largely clean with one or two spots of foxing: Very Good.

Magnificently illustrated and seriously paternalistic. Corry saw himself as an abolitionist, but his account of what is now Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire includes proposals based on heavy racial and cultural prejudice. He suggested establishing a British colony in West Africa "with the intention of extending commercial prospects within Africa and converting Africans to Christianity." But rather than sending white missionaries to a climate he believed to be dangerous, he proposed that "through negotiation with African Leaders, children from states in the interior could be enslaved and brought to the coast, where they would be put to work on plantations there...These children would then receive a European education and by the time they reached adulthood, they would be free to return home, where Corry argued they would convert their communities to Christianity and teach them European ideas," eventually ending slavery within Africa. (Royal Collection Trust). LOWNDES p.527. ABBEY 278.

Price: $3,000.00

Go Back