An Elizabethan chronicler of exploration.
Trained as an Anglican priest at Westminster and Oxford, Richard Hakluyt is better known as the most important chronicler of English exploration, trade, and colonization during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. He was inspired to pursue his studies of navigation when just a boy by his older cousin and namesake. Richard Hakluyt the elder was a lawyer in London who collected maps and globes that showed the latest discoveries of the Spanish, French, and Portuguese. The younger Hakluyt soon went far beyond his cousin by collecting letters, government documents, business reports, logs of ship captains, and eyewitness accounts of explorers and seamen. He titled his collection The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation and published the first edition in 1589 and the second edition between 1598 and 1600.
Nearly one-tenth of the first edition of Hakluyt’s Voyages was dedicated to medieval accounts of exploration before Christopher Columbus. The largest part of this section covered the legendary trip of Sir John Mandeville to the Far East. The remainder of the work dealt with eyewitness accounts of English voyages, including those undertaken by traders with Russia and the attempts of John Davis to find the Northwest Passage. The efforts of Sir John Hawkins to establish a triangle trade between England, Africa, and the West Indies along with accounts of Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe were also included.
The second edition of Hakluyt’s Voyages clearly showed how much England had changed in only one decade. The small island nation just learning about the wider world beyond its shores was now a rising imperial power. Legendary ac counts of exploration were removed, while a greater emphasis was placed on trade with Russia and Scandinavia along with the colonization of the New World. The efforts of both Sir Walter Raleigh and his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert to found colonies in North America were included. Eyewitness accounts of important naval battles between England and Spain in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific were added, along with detailed information about the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
While Hakluyt was not an official member of the English government, he worked closely with Queen Elizabeth’s top advisors. Lord Burghley, Sir Robert Cecil, and Francis Walsingham relied on the documents he had collected when determining the economic and foreign policy of the nation. He also provided valuable information to traders and explorers on the best routes to take to the New World and beyond. Since maps were hard to come by in the late sixteenth century, his Voyages often provided the only directions available on sailing. He included “ruttiers,” or sailing instructions that outlined specific routes to take on the high seas, along with descriptions of the land and people who would be met along the way. Hakluyt also participated in trade and colonization himself. He helped to organize the British East India Company in 1599 and the Second Virginia Company in 1609. He died a hero to his nation and was buried in Westminster.
Mary Stockwell
See also: Discovery and Exploration.
Blacker, Irwin R., ed. Hakluyt’s Voyages. New York: Viking, 1965.