SOURCE: "Richard Hakluyt," in Richard Hakluyt & His Successors: A Volume Issued to Commemorate the Centenary of the Hakluyt Society, edited by Edward Lynam, The Hakluyt Society, 1946, pp. 9-46.

In the following excerpt, Williamson describes the conditions that prompted English maritime expansion and considers Hakluyt's role as a publicist and "master mind" behind Elizabethan colonial enterprise.

That Hakluyt was consciously a publicist and a historian as well as a geographer may be seen from his own words. In his dedication of a publication to Raleigh in 1587 he remarks that 'geography is the eye of history', in a context which leaves no doubt that history is the primary motive and geography the accessory. Eleven years later he repeats the idea in his preface to the first volume of the enlarged Principal Navigations. Having spoken of his labour to bring to light the ancient deeds and to preserve the recent exploits...