THE DUTCH IN AFRICA AND THE EAST
STAVORINUS, Johan Splinter.
Voyages to the East-Indies … Translated from the original Dutch, by Samuel Hull Wilcocke. With notes and additions by the translator. The whole comprising a full and accurate account of the present and late possessions of the Dutch in India, and at the Cape of Good Hope …
London, for G.G. and J. Robinson, 1798.
3 vols, 8vo, pp. vi, 572, with 2 folding maps, without ‘Directions to the binder’ leaf; [2], 512, with 1 folding chart; [2], 598, with 1 folding map; some worming to endpapers touching the margins of the first and last few leaves of each vol., occasional light marks; overall very good in contemporary half calf, paste paper sides, spines filleted, lettered and numbered in gilt; joints split but holding, worming and small losses to spine ends, some wear to corners and edges; marginal ink stamps ‘Bibliothecae Coll. Nov. Edinensis’ and ‘Sale duplicate’ to titles and foot of p. 41 of each vol.
Added to your basket:
Voyages to the East-Indies … Translated from the original Dutch, by Samuel Hull Wilcocke. With notes and additions by the translator. The whole comprising a full and accurate account of the present and late possessions of the Dutch in India, and at the Cape of Good Hope …
First edition in English of a first-hand account of two VOC voyages: the first, 1768–71, to Batavia, Bantam and Bengal; the second, 1774–78, to Samarang, Macassar, Amboyna, Surat, and the Malabar Coast.
Originally published in Dutch at Leiden in 1793, this English edition was translated and prepared by Wilcocke, who was ‘acquainted with the family, though not with the person, of the author’ (I, p. iv). ‘Through this connection and other resources, he was able to correct many mistakes that were due to the negligence of the original editor. Wilcocke also added a large and informative appendix, comprised of regulations and orders in the colonies, tables of imports, lists of ships, stockholdings, an abstract of an herbal by Henry Oldeland, and a biographical sketch of Reinier de Klerk, governor-general for the Dutch East India Company’ (Hill). ‘This work affords an accurate and valuable account of the Cape in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, with an interesting description of Cape Town and its inhabitants’ (Mendelssohn). The attractive maps depict the Ganges, bays near the Cape of Good Hope, and Java.
ESTC T100434; Hill 1632; Landwehr 300; Mendelssohn II, p. 426.
