Memoria Estatistica sobre os Dominios Portuguezes na Africa Oriental Botelho, Sebastião Xavier

An Early Monograph on Portuguese East Africa, and its Trade with Brazil Botelho, Sebastião Xavier. Memoria Estatistica sobre os Dominios Portuguezes na Africa Oriental. 1835. Lisbon. José Baptista Morando. Large 8vo, (202 x 133 mm). (1) ff., 400 pp., (4), plus 5 large lithographed folding maps and 1 architectural view. Title-page and dedication leaf also lithographed. Bound in slightly later quarter calf over blind-stamped maroon cloth, with gilt titles on spine. An excellent copy, with only minor foxing to plates, clean and fresh. Sole edition of this privately-printed description of the commercial importance of Portuguese East Africa, especially in regard to its relations with the newly-independent Brazil. The British abolition of the slave trade in 1807 focused its efforts mainly on the trade from the West Coast of Africa, and Portuguese merchants were quick to pivot their attention to the longer routes from Mozambique, which exported nearly a million slaves during the 19th century. Sebastião Xavier Botelho (1768-1840) had previously served in Brazil as the 'Desembargador da Casa da Suplicação do Rio de Janeiro', and throughout the text he discusses the close relationship of Portugal's African colonies with that economic powerhouse. Here he laments the loss of Brazil following its independence (pp. 27-28) but expresses the hope that Mozambique will fill some of the commercial gaps left by the American colony. Botelho describes products in terms of their Brazilian common names (for different types of tobacco, peanuts, cotton, etc.), and a detailed discussion of the commercial trade between Rio de Janeiro and Mozambique is given on pp. 366-369, describing the logistics of the exchange of slaves for "sugar, wine, cachaça, other liquors, butter, oil, ham, meat, rolls of silk, silverware and gold, canvas, rope, tar, pitch, iron and steel goods, clocks, medicines, and all kinds of trinkets". "Sebastião Xavier Botelho was governor of Mozambique from 1825 to 1829, and in his book of 1835, the major primary source for the period, he exposed and denounced the slave trade out of Mozambique. Botelho attributes the poverty of Quelimane by the 1830s to slavetrading, as compared to its prosperity before the slave trade increased there in about 1810. He readily acknowledges that 14 to 18 ships a year arrived in the northern Mozambique ports from Rio de Janeiro to transport slaves beginning in 1810." (Lamphear, African Military History, p. 256). Innocéncio gives an interesting entry on Botelho (1768-1840), which is worth quoting in full: "It seems that the Memoria was printed in a small number of copies, which the author had intended to present to his friends, and that none were offered for sale to the public. These circumstances, which only serve to increase the intrinsic value of the work, make it more sought-after; and for this reason, even worn copies, which occasionally appear in the trade have prices much higher than ordinary books in that state. I saw a few years ago a copy sell for 1600 reis, nicely bound (also missing its second part), and I believe that the price of the most recent complete copies has not dropped below 2250 reis, except for when the ignorance of the bookseller makes him content with a lesser figure." (Diccionario bibliographico portuguez, VII, p. 225). Despite this, the book is surprisingly well-represented in institutional libraries. A reply to his critics was published two years later as a 'Segunda Parte', but the two volumes are rarely found as a set. Provenance: discreet ownership inscription of the celebrated botanist active in Angola, Friedrich Welwitsch (1806-1872) on title-page Innocéncio VII, 225; Mendelssohn I, p. 252; Welsh 5246; Pinto de Mattos p. 389; Mário Costa, Bibliografia geral de Moçambique, p. 163; Darch, Historical Dictionary of Mozambique, p. 66.