The Contest in America Between Great Britain and France - photo 1

The Contest in America Between Great Britain and France

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$ 10 080
Auction dateClassic
17.01.2024 11:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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USA, New York
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ID 1119144
Lot 47 | The Contest in America Between Great Britain and France
The Contest in America Between Great Britain and France

John Mitchell, 1757

[MITCHELL, John (d.1768).] The Contest in America Between Great Britain and France, with its Consequences and Importance ... By an Impartial Hand. London: A. Millar, 1757.



First edition of a key work articulating the extreme British position, despite the “impartial hand” referenced on the title. “A well-argued, factually rich assertion of the British claim in the Ohio country, based upon the existence of English settlements and trading posts in the great valley, years before the French invasion of it. The author prescribed for a boundary between the two colonial empires the natural barrier formed by the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, and believing that the great extent and varied and conflicting interest of the British colonies made impossible a union comprising all of them, he proposed a 'triple union'; that is, three administrative and defensive unions made up much as they are now the groups we call New England, the Middle States, and the Southern States" (Lawrence Wroth, American Bookshelf 1755, pp. 34-35). This book has alternatively been ascribed to Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, but Church asserts that the geographical knowledge, particularly along the west slope of the Alleghanies, makes it certain that Mitchell is the author. Church 1018; Dionne II-583; Howes M-676; Lande 636; Sabin 49693; Vail 520; Waldon, p.406.



Octavo (202 x 118mm). (Title toned at edges; blank corner torn from B3). Contemporary calf (abraded, stained russet-red, rebacked). Provenance: Washington Sewallis Earl Ferrers (armorial bookplate) – Ernest E. Keet (bookplate).

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