Memoria sobre las negociaciones entre España y los Estados-Unidos de América, que dieron motivo al tratado de 1819, con una noticia sobre la estadistice de aquel pais. Acompaña un Apéndice que contiene documentos importantes para mayor ilustracion del asunto. Por D. Luys de Onys, Ministro plenipotenciario que fué cerca de aquella república y actual Embajador de S. M. C. en la córte de Nápoles
FIRST MEXICAN EDITION OF THE NEGOTIATIONS
LEADING TO THE ADAMS-ONÍS TREATY OF 1819
Mexico (City): C. Martin Rivera, 1826. First Mexican edition.
Octavo (8 1/16” x 5 1/16”, 205mm x 128mm): 2 binder’s blanks, 18 2-88 94 102, 2 binder’s blanks [$1 signed.] 70 leaves, pp. [6] (title, blank, 4pp. prologue), 1-60, [2] (appendix fly-title, blank), 21-72.
Bound in red morocco by Zaehnsdorf (signed at the lower edge of the front turn-in) with a gilt fillet border. On the spine, two raised bands. Title, author and date gilt to the spine. Gilt fillet to the edges of the boards. Gilt inside dentelles. The contemporary yellow-glazed wrappers bound in at the rear.
A little bowed, with some rubbing at the head and tail. The odd spot of foxing, but altogether a fresh example.
The 1819 “Adams-Onís Treaty” or “Transcontinental Treaty” saw the beginning of the realization of Manifest Destiny: a United States spanning from Atlantic to Pacific (if only in the northwest). As Mexico was struggling against Spain for independence, Florida became a lost cause for Spain; they had neither the human resources for nor the benefit of holding the territory. Spain contested the terms of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, since they had retroceded the territory to France only three years prior. Spain ceded Florida in order to settle the Sabine River (still the boundary between Louisiana and Texas, then Coahuila y Tejas) as the U.S.-New Spain border, and settled 42° N latitude as the beginning of American territory up to Canada (49° N), granting Oregon country to the U.S. and its first expanse from “sea to shining sea.”
Widely viewed as a major achievement of American diplomacy, the final treaty — concluded 22 February 1819 between John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State under James Monroe and Luis de Onís as the minister plenipotentiary (i.e., empowered to negotiate with executive authority) for Ferdinand VII — was the product of considerable wrangling. So sensitive were the negotiations and their ramifications on geopolitics that the treaty’s ratification was postponed for some two years. The present work, which is the first Mexican publication of Onís’s account of the negotiations, Mexico having achieved statehood in 1821. It is in this way a reclamation of international law by a successor to the original negotiators.
Palau 201566; Sabin 57355.
Item #JLR0683
Price: $5,750