*SOLD*
 
Art Militaire Des Chinois, Ou Recueil D'Anciens Traites Sur La Guerre(The Art of War) 
Sun Tzu, Jean Joseph Marie Amiot
1772, Paris
 
The first edition in any Western language(French) - virtually unknown in the West until this edition reached European readers. An English translation wouldn’t be seen for another 138 years. Translated by Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718-1793) –a Jesuit missionary to Beijing and close confidant/translator to the Chinese Emperor Hongli(1711-1799). Critically important to the course of world civilization, its reverberations are still felt today. The spirit of book collecting lives in the noble desire to grasp written works that influenced humanity and thereby the course of history. This work has the merit of direct and tangibly consequential impact. With many book descriptions touting the gravitas of this and that, it’s hard to filter through the hype. To be fair, there is generally some kernel of justifiable hype to them; many have resulted in deep intellectual and/or emotional awakenings that altered people’s behavior. However, this book directly affected the lives and deaths of millions of our forbears. How so? Conflict has steered the course of human history in brutal and consequential ways – shaping whole regions and swaths of people. See what’s happening in the Middle East right now and the cascading effect it’s having throughout the entire world as just one easy, present example. Many of history’s impactful military leaders - Napoleon, Mao Zedong, Pervez Musharraf, Ho Chi Minh, Colin Powell, and countless more - had their philosophies and/or field tactics informed by the knowledge in this book. You can draw pretty straight lines from their decisions and actions to our current world paradigm. On a less bloody note, Tzu has also influenced the world of business, sports, and academia. Religion is generally seen as having been the most influential non-biological driver of human events. The second tier of influence, if you will, belongs to science and philosophy – Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx just to name a few whose works truly resulted in tangible actions by those they reached. Tzu’s Art of War firmly belongs in this pantheon. This book checks all the boxes of collecting – historical weightiness, rarity, and aesthetic beauty. A complete copy with half-title and all 33 hand-colored engraved plates in a contemporary marbled sheep binding, with an attractively tooled spine and marbled endpapers/edges (4to, 252x195 mm). Aside from minor rubbing to the binding, it’s a gratifyingly nice Near Fine copy and the only one currently for sale - rare in such nice shape as the dozen or so copies housed behind institutional walls exist in various conditions. This copy was fittingly auctioned during the most destructive modern war, World War II. "Bought at the auction at Castle Nijenhuis (Heino) and given as a present to my brother-in-law W.E. van Hemert for his 50th birthday in 1944." A rather special gift acquired in the Nazi occupied Netherlands.