Les pescheries.
[N.p.]: [S.n.], M. DCC. LVII [1757]. First edition. Contemporary blue wrappers. [4] 146 p. Covers worn and professionally restored; internally clean and firm, in very good condition.
An exceptionally rare contemporary treatise advocating the strategic importance of fisheries to French commercial and naval power.
Far more than a treatise on fishing, the present work argues that fisheries formed the foundation of French commercial and naval power by creating experienced seamen for the merchant marine and the Royal Navy. Combining political economy with practical administration, it examines the organization and financing of the fisheries, vessel construction, taxation, and government policy, while surveying the fisheries of Normandy, the North Sea, Newfoundland, and Cape Breton. It concludes with an extensive analysis of the whale fishery, proposing measures to revive French whaling and comparing the organization, costs, and profitability of French and Dutch expeditions to Greenland and Davis Strait.
Although published anonymously, the work can be securely attributed to Pierre-André d’Héguerty (1700–1763), Comte de Magnières, a French-Irish colonial administrator and economist. Drawing on his experience in the administration of Île Bourbon (Réunion), he advocated the expansion of French commerce, fisheries, and the merchant marine in a series of influential economic works, notably Essai sur les intérêts du commerce maritime (1754) and Remarques sur plusieurs branches de commerce et de navigation (1757). Later active as a shipowner and naval contractor, he also participated in Jacobite efforts to weaken British power, a perspective reflected throughout his writings in their emphasis on challenging British and Dutch maritime supremacy.
Scarce work, no copies has been traced in RBH, while WorldCat records only a handful of institutional copies, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Harvard, the New York Public Library, the University of Minnesota, and the University of St Andrews. Remarques (1757) is similarly scarce, and copies in the trade include examples with notable political provenance, notably that of Nicolas-René Berryer, Secretary of State for the Marine. Together, this pattern suggests that O’Heguerty’s works circulated primarily among officials and others concerned with French commercial and naval policy.
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Price: €2,000.00