Noticias Secretas de America
JUAN, Don Jorge y Don Antonio de Ulloa
Londres: en la imprenta R.Taylor.. 1826.
Description:
Simon Bolivar's copy. First edition. 4to. 294x197mm. pp. [2], xiii [ibl], [2], 707 [1]. Two parts in one volume, paginates continuously. Two frontispiece portraits in each part. Half title (bound after, rather than before the prologue) is signed by Simon Bolivar, using only his surname and in his distinctive hand. Contemporary calf, gilt roll border, spine decorated in gilt, green morocco label lettered in gilt. Some scuffing and marking to boards, corners a little worn and slight cracking to hinge with upper cover. Internally very good with some foxing and marking (on p.657). Contemporary ink annotations on pp313 and 320 and twentieth century pencil annotation on pp541/2. Front pastedown has seller's ticket of Francisco J. Torres. This copy was also in the collection of the great Oxford historian of South America, Malcolm Deas. An excellent copy with a superb provenance.
Few works have been so influential in highlighting the ills of colonialism as the report written in 1749 by two Spanish naval officers, diplomats, scientists and all-round intellectuals, Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa. They had been sent to South America in 1735 as part of the Spanish-French Geodesic Mission to establish the Earth's radius. Their scientific work was constantly hampered by the Spanish colonial authorities and indeed they were arrested and threatened with the death penalty. These encounters with Spanish rule undoubtedly fed into their confidential report, prepared for their patron the Marquess of Ensenada, on the administrative chaos, corruption and incompetence of the empire in South America. So damning was this report (particularly in its accounts of the treatment of the indigenous population) that it remained confidential until 1826 when it was published in London (after it "mysteriously fell into the hands of a shadowy Englishman named David Barry") as Noticias Secretas de America.
As soon as the book appeared, it was widely read and circulated. For those South Americans who had suffered under, and had fought for independence from, Spanish imperial rule, it would have confirmed everything that they already knew and had spent decades struggling against. In 1826, Bolivar had only four more years to live. But his great work of liberation in Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia had been achieved and although he ultimately felt that the new South American states were developing in unsatisfactory directions (and indeed, in 1830, he resigned his presidency of Bolivia and planned to go into exile in Europe), he must surely have read this copy of Noticias Secretas and felt that his struggle had not been entirely in vain.
Description:
Simon Bolivar's copy. First edition. 4to. 294x197mm. pp. [2], xiii [ibl], [2], 707 [1]. Two parts in one volume, paginates continuously. Two frontispiece portraits in each part. Half title (bound after, rather than before the prologue) is signed by Simon Bolivar, using only his surname and in his distinctive hand. Contemporary calf, gilt roll border, spine decorated in gilt, green morocco label lettered in gilt. Some scuffing and marking to boards, corners a little worn and slight cracking to hinge with upper cover. Internally very good with some foxing and marking (on p.657). Contemporary ink annotations on pp313 and 320 and twentieth century pencil annotation on pp541/2. Front pastedown has seller's ticket of Francisco J. Torres. This copy was also in the collection of the great Oxford historian of South America, Malcolm Deas. An excellent copy with a superb provenance.
Few works have been so influential in highlighting the ills of colonialism as the report written in 1749 by two Spanish naval officers, diplomats, scientists and all-round intellectuals, Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa. They had been sent to South America in 1735 as part of the Spanish-French Geodesic Mission to establish the Earth's radius. Their scientific work was constantly hampered by the Spanish colonial authorities and indeed they were arrested and threatened with the death penalty. These encounters with Spanish rule undoubtedly fed into their confidential report, prepared for their patron the Marquess of Ensenada, on the administrative chaos, corruption and incompetence of the empire in South America. So damning was this report (particularly in its accounts of the treatment of the indigenous population) that it remained confidential until 1826 when it was published in London (after it "mysteriously fell into the hands of a shadowy Englishman named David Barry") as Noticias Secretas de America.
As soon as the book appeared, it was widely read and circulated. For those South Americans who had suffered under, and had fought for independence from, Spanish imperial rule, it would have confirmed everything that they already knew and had spent decades struggling against. In 1826, Bolivar had only four more years to live. But his great work of liberation in Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia had been achieved and although he ultimately felt that the new South American states were developing in unsatisfactory directions (and indeed, in 1830, he resigned his presidency of Bolivia and planned to go into exile in Europe), he must surely have read this copy of Noticias Secretas and felt that his struggle had not been entirely in vain.