Rare first and only edition of one of the earliest and most substantial nineteenth-century publications devoted specifically to Portuguese East Africa, largely corresponding to present-day Mozambique.

Based on official sources and the author’s own administrative experience as Captain-General and Governor of Mozambique, it offers an exceptionally detailed account of the colony’s geography, population, commerce, natural resources, and strategic importance, with particular emphasis on trade networks linking Africa and Brazil. Notably, the work provides an insightful analysis of the slave trade’s impact on the region’s economy and demography, describing how intensified slave exports in the early nineteenth century impoverished ports such as Quelimane and detailing the commercial exchange of captives for Brazilian goods. It also discusses the activities of other European powers in the region, including Dutch, English, and French interests.

Physical:
Botelho, Sebastião Xavier. Memoria Estatistica sobre os Dominios Portuguezes na Africa Oriental. Lisboa: José Baptista Morando, 1835.

Sole edition, printed in limited numbers and reportedly intended primarily for private distribution, contributing to the work’s scarcity on the antiquarian market.

Large 8vo, [2], 400, [4] pp., with six folding lithographed plates and maps depicting, among others, Maputo, Inhambane, Quelimane, and Mocambo—some based on surveys by the British Captain William Fitzwilliam Owen.

Attractively bound in full red leather, spine gilt-lettered, covers with a gilt-engraved coat of arms of the Province of Mozambique; top edge dyed red. Inner cover with ex-libris “Joaquim Pessoa.” Spine with minor wear at head. Text occasionally foxed and browned owing to paper quality; one leaf with small marginal loss.

Notes:
Sebastião Xavier Botelho (1768–1840) was a distinguished Portuguese statesman, administrator, politician, and geographer, regarded as one of the foremost writers on the Portuguese colonies. He held numerous senior judicial, administrative, and colonial posts in Portugal, Brazil, Madeira, and Mozambique, including Governor of Mozambique (1825–1829) and member of the Regency of Brazil (1822).

Memória Estatística achieved significance beyond Portugal and entered contemporary international debate, attracting critical attention in England, where it was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review (No. 130, January 1837), one of the most influential British journals of the period. In response to this criticism, Botelho published a Second Part in 1837.

Subjects: Mozambique history; Portuguese East Africa; Sebastião Xavier Botelho; antique maps of Africa; colonial East Africa; Cape Town; Portuguese Africa; Captain Owen; slave trade; Africa–Brazil trade networks; nineteenth-century slavery; Dutch, English, and French colonial history.