Imperialist Beginnings: Richard Hakluyt and the Construction of Africa

Abstract

In 1589, when Richard Hakluyt produced his first edition of the Principal Navigations, England was a long way from securing an em pire or articulating an imperialist policy.1 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 domi nated the trade in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. While the state pat ented such companies as the Muscovy (1552) and Levant (1581), which staked claims to trading rights in specific regions and along certain routes, these enterprises and other, colonialist projects such as Ralegh's Virginia settlement were financed primarily by enterprising merchants and entrepreneurial nobles. Only in Ireland, whose restless population was pressing all too closely upon the borders, did Elizabeth support settlement, and then only to a limited degree.2 As Kenneth Andrews has argued, a major impediment to the de velopment of empire was, ironically, what prompted that develop ment in the first place—the pressing need for economic capital. Faced with a serious depression in the 1550s, England began to look to overseas markets for immediate profit. Though later these markets would be pursued as a means of long-term relief (of developing an expanded cloth trade, for example, or providing jobs for emigrants abroad and the unemployed at home), initially they provided a source, literally and figuratively, of gold.3 While money was neces sary for empire-building, the preoccupation with profit took preced ence over and attention from other endeavors critical for that project, such as the enhancement of sea power, foreign settlement and gover nance, and the development of a unified imperialist agenda. Result ingly, as Andrews has suggested, England's expansionism was disun ified and divided. In the West, where other European powers had

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