Tableau statistique, administratif et commercial de la France.

Paris, Belin-Leprieur, printed by Imprimerie de Jules Didot aîné, June 1824.

Plano (69x100 cm.). Letterpress text, engraved title and illustrated with an engraved ornamental border on thick paper without watermark. 

Impressively large and very rare French broadside table providing a detailed overview of the statistics on population, geography, and economy of the 57 départements of France for the year 1824. It does so in an extremely structured manner. Of each administrative region, the precise geographic and topographic values are given, after which the specialization in natural or industrial productivity of these regions is described. For example, the département Calvados has 'excellent horses, bestieux fat, grains, cider, cider brandy, flax, hemp,' etc.

According to a contemporary review in Revue encyclopédique (1825), this table was considered especially useful to understand the importance of each of the départements and to make it possible to compare the départements with one another. 'This is an advantage compared to the geography dictionaries in which everything pertaining to the statistics of France is fragmented and separated, so that, to know the whole, it is necessary to engage in long and painful research. Put next to a map of France, this table becomes a great help for the study of the particular geography of the kingdom.' The Napoleonic era was characterized by an enormous urge for the administrative organization of the country, and this was continued during the Bourbon Restoration as can be clearly seen in the broadside table presented here. It is a great rarity: WorldCat lists only 1 copy, in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

Condition: collector's stamp from Louis Laurent and Charles Meynard (active Paris 1823-1827) (Lugt 5062) in lower left margin. Fold along the center. Repaired tear in the left side. Slightly frayed along the edges. Minor stain in the text. Otherwise in good, clean condition.

Reference:

Revue encyclopédique: ou Analyse raisonnée des productions les plus remarquables dans la littérature, les sciences et les arts, 1825, vol. 26, pp. 823-826.

Helmut Goetz, Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris, 1775-1848: l'évolution spirituelle d'un révolutionnaire. Contribution à l'histoire de précurseurs des organisations internationales du XXe siècle, Institut Pedagogique National, 1962, no. 310.

WorldCat: 1 copy.