Author: [VOC]. THOU, Jacques Auguste du.
Title: Continuatie van klaghte van den ambassadeur van Vranckryck, ende hoe het daer mede gelegen is, volgens de respectieve advijsen van de admiraliteyt, ende van de bewinthebbers van de Oost-Indische Compagnie.[Copy imprint:] “Naer de Copye, 1660.” [1660 or shortly after]. 4to. With Du Thou’s complaint/request in the original French, a Dutch reaction from the admiralty and the VOC’s request to the States General to reject Du Thou’s request. Set in roman and textura types. Modern brown wrappers with a printed label on the front wrapper.
Description: [8] pp.Fifth known copy of the first and only edition known to survive of one in a group of pamphlets concerning a violent conflict with the States General and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) on one side and the French King Louis XIV and his ambassador in The Hague (Jacques Auguste du Thou) on the other, concerning the Frigate St. Louis in 1660-1661. On behalf of “some Frenchmen” (meaning French merchants who wanted to set up a company to trade with “China” with the consent of the French King), the Amsterdam merchant, director of the Surinam Company and early slave-trader Philips van Hulten (1627-1692) had commissioned an Amsterdam shipyard to build and equip (for a long journey and for war) a large frigate in 1660. The ship was in fact brought to the roads of Texel in December 1660, but it was shipwrecked in the night of 18/19 December, the result of severe faults made by an incompetent crew during a storm. It’s tempting to imagine that the VOC sabotaged the ship (the crew was Dutch, so someone could have easily found or slipped in a willing sabateur), but the ambassador appears to have made no such claim. He did blame the VOC, admiralty and States General for delaying the ship’s departure, resulting in storm damage, and demanded compensation, but he probably never received it.The present edition has a “copy imprint. We have located only four other copies of the present edition (at the Royal Library in The Hague, the UB Ghent, the HAB Wolfenbüttel and the University of Michigan: we thank Pablo Alvarez for an image of the title-page of the Michigan copy).The present book would then be the first and only edition. Du Thou’s French text is dated 16 November 1660, the admiralty’s Dutch reaction 18 November 1660 and the VOC’s request refers to the States General’s “missive” dated “den 20. deses” (the 20th of this month, which must mean November 1660, given the events of December 1660 noted above). The first edition was therefore almost certainly printed and published between 20 November and 18 December 1660. If the present edition is pirated, it was probably issued soon after.In good condition.l Knuttel 8350 (answer: Knuttel 8507); STCN (Knuttel copy only); Wulp 3789 (now UB Ghent); for the events: Aitzema, Saken van staet en oorlogh, IV (1669), pp. 698-699.

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