Justin Croft Antiquarian Books - Rare and Antiquarian Books and Manuscripts

First edition in French of Enquiries touching the diversity of languages, and religions through the cheife parts of the world (London, 1614). This is a translation of the most important of Brerewood’s many works, an enterprising early study of linguistics and ethnology. It is known especially for Brerewood’s thesis that America had been peopled principally from Asia and thus that the native Americans were in fact of Asian descent. It evidently attained some currency in France and there are several seventeenth-century editions in French. The author’s intention was to classify the cultures of the known world according to a fourfold division (Christians, Muslims, idolaters and Jews) and to understand the historical origins of Christianity. Reflecting the author’s profession as mathematician and professor of astronomy at Gresham College, the work is an interesting exercise in quantifying proportionally the relative influence over the globe of each of the dominant cultures. He concludes that if the known regions of the earth are divided into “30 equall parts” the Christian part was five, the Muslim six, the idolators’ nineteen, with Judaism dispersed among them all.