An Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo.

1797. London, John Stockdale, 1797. 4to. Contemporary tree calf, sometime neatly rebacked, contrasting lettering piece; pp. [vi], xxiii, [i], 247; one large folding map, pasted to front endpapers; minor scuffs, map torn across but neatly repaired and supplied from a later edition, small paper flaw on 2H1 affecting one word on both pages, minor finger-soiling, otherwise a good, wide-margined copy. First edition. Edwards, himself a West Indies merchant and planter, here offers much information on the island of Santo Domingo. His book was published shortly after the 1791 slave revolt in Santo Domingo, and indeed Edwards levels much criticism at the French for their treatment of the slaves and their rejection of help from English concerns in the West Indies. Edwards argued in his other published works for free trade between the colonies and America, and this sentiment informs some of his analyses in the present work. Sabin 21894; Cundall 430.