The Selected Works Of Mao Tse-Toung
photo: rr auction
Extremely rare signed book: Oeuvres Choisies de Mao Tse-Toung. Tome IV [Selected Works by Mao Tse-Toung. Volume IV]. First French edition. Beijing: Editions en Langues Etrangeres, 1962. Brown leatherette hardcover with original slipcase, 6.5 x 9.5, 488 pages. Prominently signed on an opening page in black ink Mao Zedong, brush-written in 1965 shortly before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, with an extremely rare calligraphic inscription to foreign diplomat Charles Meyer; printed line to top of page reads (translated): "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" Autographic condition: fine. Book condition: NF/None in a VG slipcase, with light sunning to the slipcase.
French diplomat Charles Meyer (1923-2004) spent 25 years in Indochina, including a period of 15 in Cambodia during the 1950s and 1960s, serving King (and later Head of State) Norodom Sihanouk as his media and public affairs advisor. In this position he formed part of the Sangkum government’s inner power circle and served as the author and editor of many official government publications. Meyer wrote several books on Cambodia, including the historical accounts ‘Behind the Khmer Smile’ (Plon, 1971) and ‘The French in Indochina: 1860-1910’ (Hachette, 1996). He left the country in 1970 in the wake of the coup d’état and the advent of the Khmer Republic. In the early 1960s, when Prince Sihanouk recognized revolutionary China as Cambodia’s most valuable ally, Meyer took part in several high-level meetings in Beijing and on the Yangtze River, summits held with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Chairman Liu Shaoqi. He was present at the 1964 talks with Zhou Enlai to promote Khmero-Chinese friendship and he served as a member of the Cambodian delegations in 1964 and 1965. It was during one of these diplomatic missions that Mao Zedong honored Meyer with this exceptionally rare token of his esteem.
Accompanying the book is an extensive archive from the collection of Charles Meyer, which contains over 140 multilingual (mainly French and Khmer) documents, letters, and telegrams that offer a unique and exclusive glimpse into King Sihanouk’s politics between the years 1958 and 1970, a period when Southeast Asia was increasingly the ‘point de conflit’ between the superpowers of China, the USSR, and the United States.
Following its independence from France in 1953, Cambodia became vulnerable to being pressed between rival interests and ideologies and, as a recourse, strengthened its relations with China in those pivotal first years; this archive contains an array of documents that shed light on their mutual state visits. During these meetings, leaders Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Mao Zedong, and Sihanouk weighed upon numerous issues such as arms production, resource extraction and processing, energy and fertilizer production, infrastructure expansion, food supply, education and health care, territorial integrity, and American imperialism.
Meyer's archive is divided into three parts, the first of which focuses on the neighborly relations with China in the course of the cultural revolution, and contains 44 documents with over 200 total sheets concerning meetings, negotiations, audiences, minutes, delegation lists, draft trade agreements and speeches, with some bearing handwritten notes on the political and diplomatic progress between Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Sihanouk in the years 1963-65 in Beijing. One document in particular features a resolution on the relationship between the Khmer Rouge and China, and, also of note, is an analytical summary of the dialogues held on board a boat transporting the Cambodian delegation on the Yangtze. Sihanouk’s declaration to the Chinese people, with deletions and annotations: "Pour nous, Cambodgiens, la Chine est bien notre amie numéro un…” [“For us, Cambodians, China is assuredly our best friend...”) Also included are a group of five original photographs, matte-finish and glossy, with four dated to October 1965 and offering unique images of the critical Cambodia-China meetings in Beijing.
The second section focuses on the private, close relationship between Meyer and King Sihanouk, and contains 67 items, including 13 ALSs from King Sihanouk, amounting to over 100 total sheets that illustrate their direct collaboration, as well as Meyer’s career, with an assortment of documents, telegrams, newspaper articles, and letters from figures such as Queen Norodom Monineath, Ambassador Philip D. Sprouse, and authors Winston H. Burchett and Han Suyin; the latter’s TLS from December 14, 1960, concerns a group of students who wanted to travel to Cambodia in 1961 and a newspaper article published by her that had displeased the Americans in Hong Kong. Of the letters from Sihanouk, one in particular relates to the politics of French President Charles de Gaulle, (translated): "M. Messmer has informed me this minute of the very substantial gifts of France to our National Education and our National Defense (tanks, aircraft, GMC, etc....) of an extremely ‘satisfying’ quantity...").
The third and final section comprises external relations and official communications, and contains 33 items with over 80 total sheets that include documents, interventions, summaries, newspaper articles, reports, press releases, and telegrams, with the majority featuring handwritten notes and corrections. Included is a draft typescript headed a “Lettre ouverte aux milieux imperialists” (“Open letter to the imperialist world”), with initialed note (translated): “You have learned about the humiliating failure and the weakness of your policy in Asian countries who are your vassal states, this is a globally recognized fact...”).
