An original typewritten document from 1802 recording the French constitutional referendum that made Napoleon Bonaparte first consul for life is now on display at the National Central Library in Taipei.
The document, held privately for nearly two centuries, was presented to the library for safekeeping by private collectors, who have said that they believe it to be the only one of its kind.
It was part of a larger collection of European books and documents from a Chinese family that settled in Taiwan, the library said.
Photo: CNA
Although the library has not yet confirmed whether it is the sole remaining document on Napoleon’s rise to emperor of the French, “in terms of such documents, normally there would not be more than one,” library editor Tu Li-chung (杜立中) said on Tuesday last week.
“The document was signed by the then-minister of the interior of France and mounted by Napoleon himself, therefore its cover carries the Napoleon family crest,” Jason Dou, whose family owns the collection, told the Chinese-language CommonWealth Magazine on Monday last week.
The “Cheng Ting Tang” (澄定堂) collection has presented the library with 49 volumes of antique European books — most of them first-edition prints — for safekeeping since 2018.
Photo: CNA
These include an 1843 edition of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, an 1871 copy of Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex and a 1620 copy of Sir Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum.
Other rare books in the collection include The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, published in 1762, and Rene Descartes’ Discourse on the Method, published in 1637, the library said.
It also includes the first edition of I quattro libri dell’architettura, a 1570 treatise on architecture by Italian architect Andrea Palladio with 218 wood carving illustrations that could be classified as an iconic print, the library added.
Library Director-General Tseng Shu-hsien (曾淑賢) said that the works would be scanned and made available online for researchers and the public.
The collection is not a direct donation, which means the family could request the collection be returned at any time, library official Lu Tzu-ling (呂姿玲) said, adding that the library was still able to display the works and allow academics to study them.
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