GRANDPRÉ (Louis-Marie-Joseph O'Hier de). Voyage à la côte occidentale d'Afrique, Fait dans les années 1786 et 1787. Paris: Dentu, An IX - 1801. - 2 volumes in-8, 194 x 121 : map, (2 ff.), 32, XXVIII, 226 pp. 7 plates ; (2 ff.), 320 pp. 3 plates. Mottled tan calf, gilt roulette framing the boards, smooth spine decorated, mottled yellow edges (period binding). First edition of the account of the Voyage sur la côte occidentale d'Afrique, recounting the pioneering expedition led in 1786-1787 by Louis-Marie-Joseph O'Hier de Grandpré (1761-1846), shipowner and naval officer, along the west coast of Africa. This ethnographic, political and economic account provides a vivid snapshot of African and colonial realities at a pivotal time, just before the upheavals of the French Revolution. The book contains an in-depth description of the Congo states visited by Europeans. Grandpré provides a detailed analysis of local customs, habits, laws, government structures and commercial practices. But it is above all his précis on the black slave trade that stands out: in it, he describes, in no uncertain terms, the organisation, mechanisms and stakes of this trade in human beings as it was practised before 1789, thus providing a first-hand account of one of the darkest pages in colonial history. The story concludes with a second section devoted to the Cape of Good Hope, in which the author provides a military and strategic description of this colony, then an essential crossroads for trade routes between Europe, Asia and Africa. The illustrations consist of a "flat map of the coast of Angola", two plans (Cape of Good Hope and its surroundings, and the Cape citadel), and 8 plates of scenes of customs and portraits of natives, engraved after the author's drawings. A fine copy in contemporary binding. Small loss at the head of the second volume. Antique label of a public library, stuck on the top of the spines.