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Series:   Elements in Travel Writing

The Invention of Colonialism

Richard Hakluyt and Medieval Travel Writing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2025

Sebastian Sobecki
Sebastian Sobecki
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Summary

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 and closer readers of medieval travel texts than we give them credit for; second, the ideology behind English colonialism was shaped in the late medieval period, not in Elizabethan England; and third, another facet of periodisation, with its epistemological emphasis on rupture rather than continuity, comes under pressure.
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Keywords

colonialism in the AmericasBritish Empiremedieval literaturetravel writingRichard Hakluy

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Series: Elements in Travel Writing
Online ISBN: 9781009338486
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 24 July 2025

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