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Description
HENRICY (Casimir).
The Customs and Costumes of All Peoples, based on the most reliable documents, the most recent travels and unpublished material.
Paris: Librairie Ethnographique, 1847. — 2 volumes in one large 8vo volume, 259 x 164: (2 ff.), 384 pp., (2 ff.), 35 plates; (2 ff.), 112 pp., (2 ff.), 20 plates. Red half-shagreen with corner pieces, gilt fillets, decorated faux-ribbed spine, marbled edges (contemporary binding).
Colas, 1427.
First edition compiled by Casimir Henricy (1814–1900) and published under the supervision of the geographer Frédéric Lacroix (18–1864).
This volume comprises the first two parts – the only ones ever published – of an ambitious history of the customs and traditions of all the peoples of the world. They deal exclusively with Africa and Oceania and are illustrated with a total of 55 colour plates and 134 woodcuts within the text.
The foreword, strikingly harsh in its language, reveals a mindset deeply marked by 19th-century scientific racism and Eurocentrism: ‘Africa and Oceania open this survey of the customs and traditional dress of all the peoples of the world. It is not without reason that the author begins in this way. These two parts of the world are home to the most backward populations and those lowest on the scale of human creation. The inhabitant of Van Diemen’s Land, with his spindly and feeble limbs, and his hideous features, which make him resemble an ape; the Negro, with his woolly hair, flat nose, thick and protruding lips, and low forehead, represent the most disgraced races of nature, the most poorly endowed, both morally and physically. It seems that these two types were, in the hands of the Creator of all things, nothing more than experiments, shapeless rough drafts intended to serve as models for more perfect beings. Thus civilisation has forgotten these outcasts of our species. Devoid of initiative and creative genius, these dispossessed peoples still languish in the barbarism of primitive times.’
This extract illustrates a colonial mindset, in which white superiority is presented as a given, thereby legitimising European domination over these regions.
Scuffs, wear to the cover, and stains on the binding. Dulled corners; two missing sections on the back cover. Foxing and some browned plates.
Provenance:
Maurice Pereire, with bookplate.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
About the sale
Claude Mozis Library – Black Africa and the African diaspora
Auction location
Auction time
10/21/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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