4to, (190 x 132 mm). 535 pp. (verso with colophon and printers device), 18 ff. Later calf, spine with red morocco title labels lettered in gilt; edges stained blue, lightly rubbed. Marginal restoration to fore edge of title and first few preliminary leaves, pp. 35-38 with some loss of text due to staining, top corner of pp. 197-8 with old restoration and missing text supplied in manuscript, fore-edge of first three quires frayed, causing loss of external margin to first four leaves, restored top edges closely trimmed with resultant loss of a few page numbers and shoulder notes, pale water stain to fore-edge margins of the last 100 or so pages.

“His work opened the eyes of the rest of Europe to the great wealth that Spain was drawing from America” (Hill).

“The Jesuit Acosta's account of Peru and Mexico… was the most convincing, detailed and reliable account of the riches and new things in America” (Streeter I:32 [English ed.]).

A “remarkable book. It was both a more thoughtful and a more thorough account of the Indian world than anything then available. Its novelty, of which Acosta was justly proud, is apparent even from the title. The idea of a ‘moral history’, a history, that is, of mores – of customs – was an unusual one in the sixteenth century. No one, as Acosta was at pains to point out, had ever attempted to write a true “history” of the Indians, though there had been accounts of the origin and growth of the Spanish colonies which included a (usually cursory) glance at the indigenes... Of all the vast literature on the Indies during this period Acosta’s Historia was perhaps the only work which contemporaries recognised as having broken new ground” (Pagden, The fall of natural man: the American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology, pp. 149–57).

The author, a Spanish Jesuit missionary, spent seventeen years in American missions in Mexico and Peru between 1569 and 1588. While in Peru, he was instrumental in founding the printing press, and was also the first to formulate a systemic theory of anthropology, suggesting a classification of different peoples into different types. He was obliged by his duties to “personally investigate a very extensive range of territory, providing him with a practical knowledge of the province, and its aboriginal inhabitants” (Hogwego).

His reputation gained him praise from Alexander von Humboldt, who called him a Founder of Physical Geography, he considered Acosta’s work as an early attempt to systematize scientifically the geography and natural history of the New World; Acosta was one of the first to hypothesize that the indigenous populations migrated to the New World from Asia via a land bridge.

Provenance: front pastedown with 19th century bookplate of the Museo del Montino (i.e. the library of Cuban writer Domingo del Monte, 1804-1853), verso of front free-endpaper with del Monte’s neat ownership inscription dated at Madrid, 1848, and later owner’s bibliographical notes in pencil.

Sabin 121; Palau I, 1980; Hill p.3: Church 328; Alden & Landis 604/1; Hogwego A7.