The Invention of Colonialism: Richard Hakluyt and Medieval Travel Writing

This Element argues that it was not just the application of medieval texts by Richard Hakluyt that made them relevant for England's budding colonial ideology; rather, it shows that these premodern texts already conveyed the essence of the expansionist mercantilism and colonialist imperialism that would characterise early English exceptionalism and the Elizabethan reach for the Americas. The upshot of the author's argument is threefold. First, Hakluyt and his contemporaries were much better ...