DIAS AND HIS SUCCESSORS (1988) - limited edition

Publisher's large quarto hardcover binding with illustrated dust jacket.

Contributions by Eric Axelson, Charles Boxer, Graham Bell-Cross & Colin Martin.

The editor of this book, Eric Axelson, was a professor of history and assistant principal at the University of Cape Town. He was the authority on Bartholomeu Dias, the Portuguese explorer who discovered the Cape in 1488. In 1938 Axelson found fragments of a stone cross raised by Bartholomeu Dias at Kwaaihoek, and in 1953 recovered further fragments from one raised by Dias at Luderitz.

159pp. + text illustrations + 32 colour & monochrome reproductions of the oldest maps of southern Africa with accompanying descriptive text.

This copy is number 625 of an unspecified limited edition.

'Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 rounded Africa and entered the Indian Ocean, with vital consequences for both Europe and Asia. The voyage was epoch-making.

This volume, published on the fifth centenary of the voyage, contains information about the Dias voyage and subsequent Portuguese maritime activities in south African waters; it includes a section on the development of Portuguese nautical science, especially of maritime cartography, during the period of the Discoveries and into the seventeenth century.' - Editor's note

A fine copy in a fine dust jacket.