Description
Madrid, En la Oficina de Joachin Ibarra, 1762.. FIRST EDITION. 8°, full mottled sheep, smooth spine richly gilt with crimson morocco lettering piece (minor wear), gilt short title, marbled endleaves, text block edges rouged. Double-ruled border on every page. Typographical vignette on title page. Scattered very light foxing. Overall in very good condition. Early inscriptions on front flyleaf: "Del uso de Fr. Ferndo. Lopez" and "Librería de PPs. Franc. Cal. de Logroño." (10 ll.), 226 pp., (1 integral blank l.). *** FIRST EDITION; a second was printed by Ibarra's daughter in 1808. The Prologo (7 ll.) offers a short history of Portugal, notes on its geography, and a brief dicussion of available maps. Each of the six chapters includes an introduction on the history of the region and its major points of interest, followed by distances between towns. They are Entre Minho e Douro, Tras-os-montes, Beira, Estremadura, Alentejo, and Algarve. The section's title is printed vertically outside the double borders of the page. Information is also given for Spanish cities and towns near the frontier with Portugal. One of the intended uses for this book was to aid in sending correspondence and perhaps shipments of goods by post. The work is dedicated to Ricardo Wall (Richard Wall, 1694-1777), son of Irish Jacobite refugees living in Nantes, who entered Spanish naval service in 1716 and rose to the rank of field marshal by 1744. After being wounded he turned to a diplomatic career, serving as ambassador to the Court of St. James and then foreign minister under Fernando VI and Carlos III. Pedro Rodriguez Campomanes (1723-1803), Conde de Campomanes, "probably influenced Spanish economic thought of his time more than any other writer" (La Force, p. 156). There is little information concerning his biography. Even though one branch of his family were hidalgos, they were not wealthy. He rose by force of his brilliance, revealed at an early age, and staunch character. The author's contemporary Sempere y Guarinos praised the Discurso acerca do modo de fomentar a industria do povo highly: "Apenas se encontrará obra alguna, que en tan corto volumen comprenda tanto numero de principios y máximas, las mas importantes para el adelantamiento de la industria nacional, y de la felicidad pública" (II, 80). Campomanes advocated household industry - mainly textiles - so that people would not have to move from small towns and farms. In order to spread the knowledge that would make such industry possible, he strongly advocated the formation of local economic societies. When the Discurso was first printed in Madrid, 1774, the King ordered copies sent to all local governing officials and bodies of Spain, and to bishops for distribution among the clergy. The Conde de Campomanes was a leading minister of D. Carlos III; hence his economic philosophy, of the liberal, mercantilist school, had an enormous impact on Spain's economy. Among his reforms were free trade with America, tax exemptions for many raw materials, duties on more imports, and the creation of a national bank. Campomanes also wrote on a wide range of political, legal and historical matters. His achievements were widely recognized abroad: for instance, Benjamin Franklin welcomed him as a member of the American Philosophical Society merely on the basis of what had been printed about him in newspapers. He was created Conde de Campomanes in 1780. *** Ruiz Lasala 109: attributing it to Jacobo Cantelli; without collation. Duarte de Sousa I, 580. Palau 193564; 273667. Aguilar Piñal VII, 1571. Whitehead, BL Eighteenth-Century Spanish STC, R129. Whitehead, "Joaquin Ibarra … Holdings in … British Library" in The British Library Journal, VI, 2 (Autumn 1980), p. 209. For eight other titles by the Conde de Campomanes, see Colmeiro Penido, Biblioteca de los economistas españoles de los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII, 131 (the present work not listed). CCPBE locates twenty-three copies in Spanish Libraries. Rebiun gives six locations. Porbase locates two copies, both in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (one of which is the Duarte de Sousa copy). Jisc repeats the British Library and adds Oxford University.
