First edition of the journal of the Dutch warship Spiegel, which served as the flagship of Michiel de Ruyter (1607-1676) during an expedition to the coast of Africa, the Caribbean and Newfoundland. At the head of a squadron of twelve ships, the Spiegel had officially been sent to the Mediterranean as a martial exercise against the Barbary pirates. However, its real destination was the coast of West Africa, where the Dutch West India Company (WIC) and the English Company of Royal Adventures were fighting to control the trade in gold and ivory. In an expedition that was secretly planned by anti-English members of the States General, De Ruyter was to recapture the lost African possessions. After a diversion along the Spanish coast, the Dutch set sail to Africa where, aided by local soldiers in service of the WIC, De Ruyter retook all lost possessions. For the next mission, he was ordered to recapture Nieuw-Nederland (the New Netherlands: parts of modern New York, New Jersey and Delaware), which had recently been captured by the English. The squadron sailed to the Caribbean, where they captured sixteen English merchant ships. They abandoned plans to conquer the New Netherlands, perhaps for fear that it might be defended by a powerful English fleet, so after damaging the English fishery near Newfoundland, De Ruyter triumphantly returned home to the Netherlands.
With a description from a French-language bookseller's catalogue mounted on the inside of the cover. A good copy. Knuttel, Pamfletten 9100; Tiele, Pamfletten 5262; cf. Koelmans, De reis van Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter in 1664-1665.