Early news pamphlet: the first German account of European colonisation in India

(Manuel I, King of Portugal / Malheiro, Pedro Alfonso [ed.]). Geschichte kurtzlich durch die von Portugalien in India, Morenland, und andern erdtrich.

€ 125,000.00

First German-language printing of the curial newsletter containing the first account of European colonisation in India, documenting Portuguese conquests in East Africa and India as well as the first arrival of Europeans in Sri Lanka. Produced for a Central European audience shortly after the Roman issue of November 1506, it summarizes Portugal's key military actions in 1505 undertaken by Francisco de Almeida (1450-1510), the first viceroy of Portuguese India, during whose administration the Portuguese discovered Ceylon, the Maldives, and Madagascar. The mission's goal was to secure control of the spice trade and build forts and trading posts on the east coast of Africa and in India, to forge alliances with local lords. The account covers the sacking of Mombasa, and acts of both construction and destruction all down the west coast of India, most notably in Anjediva, Honnavar, Kannur, and Kochi. Framed as a Christianizing enterprise, the text names Pedro Alfonso Malheiro, chaplain to the Cardinal-Bishop of Porto, as responsible for preparing the account, aligning it with the papal news network that disseminated reports on the Estado da Índia.

The title bears a striking woodcut of two indigenous figures flanking the arms of Portugal; in this copy the cut shows early hand-colouring, with later modest retouching to the female figure - a vivid visual programme of royal authority and overseas dominion. Among the earliest printed German responses to events on the Malabar coast, the pamphlet reflects Nuremberg’s role as a continental hub for news of the spice trade and Portuguese oceanic expansion.

Extremely rare: VD16 indicates five copies, of which only two (in Frankfurt and Dresden) can still be located: those in Nuremberg and Strasbourg are no longer confirmed in the online catalogues, and the incomplete BSB copy (lacking the central two leaves) is officially lost, the digitization being from a photocopy. KVK adds one record in Leipzig, and OCLC an imperfect one at the New York Public Library (apparently that formerly in Munich), bringing the census to four specimens in research libraries internationally. Trade records list only two other copies: one in simple boards, sold by William Schab in 1951, and the cloth-backed Kreuzenstein copy, sold at Sotheby's in 1971.

An uncommon survival of early discovery news-print in German, here in a very appealing copy with notable provenance.