Oct 12, 2023 - Sale 2648
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Sale 2648 - Lot 101

Unsold
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
[Economics] Mirabeau, Victor Riquetti (1715-1789)
L'Ami des Hommes, ou Traité de la Population. Première [-Cinquième] Partie.

Avignon: [No Printer], 1756 [-1760].

First editions, five parts bound in three large quarto volumes; the set bound in matching full contemporary dappled calfskin (first two volumes likely done at the same time, third volume done in a similar style to match and bound later, as it was published later), gilt tooled spines, nicely preserved overall, with some rubbing, housed in a custom folding buckram case, 9 7/8 x 7 1/2 in. (3)

"The main thrust of L'Ami des Hommes was that France should tend to its population through agricultural development and free trade. In Mirabeau's view, it was particularly the French nobility's abandonment of their pastoral duties in the French countryside and the government's lack of interest in agriculture that needed redressing. As the title of the book indicated, these criticisms formed a part of Mirabeau's broader concern with social and economic prosperity for all mankind, particularly the poor. Not without a social bias, he encouraged his audience not to think of the poor as a lazy multitude, but to alleviate their suffering by elevating their standards of living through proper policing which would help civilize them." (Quoted from Pernille Røge's Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa, c.1750-1802, Cambridge University Press, 2019.)

Goldsmith's 9092; Kress 5543-5545.
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