Home / Browse / Naval / A Voyage round the World; including an Embassy to Muscat and Siam, in 1835, 1836, and 1837.
RUSCHENBERGER, William Samual Waithman.
A Voyage round the World; including an Embassy to Muscat and Siam, in 1835, 1836, and 1837.
[together with;] ROBERTS, Edmund. Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat; in the U.S. Sloop of War Peacock, David Geisinger, Commander, during the Years 1832-3-4.
Publisher: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, & New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838 & 1837
Stock code: 71560
Price: £4,500 Currency Conversion
First editions. Individually uncommon, perhaps Ruschenberger the more so, and together here offering a very full record of important early American trade negotiations in the Middle and Far East. A naval surgeon, "Ruschenberger sailed… to the East for the purpose of obtaining information and negotiating and securing treaties of friendship and commerce with Eastern Powers. Rushcenberger describes his journey to the dominions of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, to Ceylon, India, Java. Siam, Cochin China, the Bonin Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, California, and Mexico" (Hill) The principal in the negotiations with these foreign powers was to be Edmund Roberts who had "formed an intimate acquaintance" with the Sultan of Oman when on a trading expedition to Zanzibar in 1827, and had persuaded his "kinsman through marriage, Senator Levi Woodbury … [Andrew] Jackson's secretary of the navy" to promote the embassy (DAB). Roberts was appointed as special agent of the United States to negotiate treaties with Muscat, Siam, Cochin China and Japan if practicable, "his mission, however, was to be secret, and he was given as 'ostensible employment' the position of clerk" to Commander Geisinger. Roberts successfully concluded treaties with Siam, and with Muscat, which treaty included a "most-favoured-nation" clause, and remained the basis of USA-Omani relations until 1958. He returned to the East to continue his work in Cochin China, China and Japan, but died of fever at Macau in 1837. Taken together these two volumes provide a very full account of this early American trade mission. Not noted in the title, but Roberts contains around 120 pages of close description of the culture and business practices of China; Ruschenberger has a 75-page section specifically on "The dominions of the Sultan of Muscat;" and is also an important Hawaiian source, some this material being omitted from the London edition of the same year, as also the "aspersions" of the British (noted by both Sabin and Howes). A superb matched set of these uncommon, complementary accounts, contemporary booklabels of P.C. Brooks, perhaps Peter Chardon Brooks, New England merchant and underwriter, who made his fortune in the East India trade.
2 volumes octavo (220 × 134 mm; 215 × 138 mm). Uniformly bound in black half morocco on marbled boards, title gilt to spine, flat bands sparingly tooled, edges sprinkled red, marbled endpapers matching the boards. Half-title bound in to the first-named. Very slight shelf-wear, both volumes with some foxing, but overall a very handsome pair.
