SOURCE: "Imperialist Beginnings: Richard Hakluyt and the Construction of Africa," in Criticism, Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, Fall, 1992, pp. 517-38.

In the following essay, Bartels provides a close textual analysis of the accounts of voyages to Africa in The Principal Navigations. With particular reference to descriptions of Moors and Negroes, Bartels detects and discusses an implicit "strategy of representation" in the narratives and in Hakluyt's editorial policy.

In 1589, when Richard Hakluyt produced his first edition of the Principal Navigations, England was a long way from securing an empire or articulating an imperialist policy. Despite some forty years of cross-cultural exploration and trade, its efforts paled in comparison to those particularly of the Spanish, French, and Portuguese, who dominated the trade in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. While the state patented such companies as the Muscovy (1552) and Levant (1581), which staked claims to trading rights in specific regions and along certain routes...