Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America - Hardcover

Mancall, Peter C

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300110545 ISBN 13: 9780300110548

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Richard Hakluyt the younger, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, advocated the creation of English colonies in the New World at a time when the advantages of this idea were far from self-evident. This book describes in detail the life and times of Hakluyt, a trained minister who became an editor of travel accounts. "Hakluyt's Promise" demonstrates his prominent role in the establishment of English America as well as his interests in English opportunities in the East Indies. The volume presents nearly 50 illustrations - many unpublished since the sixteenth century - and offers a fresh view of Hakluyt's milieu and the central concerns of the Elizabethan age. Though he never travelled farther than Paris, young Hakluyt spent much of the 1580s recording information about the western hemisphere and became an international authority on overseas exploration. The book traces his rise to prominence as a source of information and inspiration for England's policy makers, including the queen, and his advocacy for colonies in Roanoke and Jamestown. Hakluyt's thought was shaped by debates that stretched across Europe, and his interests ranged just as widely, encompassing such topics as peaceful coexistence with Native Americans, the New World as a Protestant Holy Land, and in, his later life, trade with the Spice Islands.

About this title

Review:

'Beautifully written and illustrated'
-- BBC History Magazine, April, 2007

'Mancall uses Hakluyt's scholarly turn of mind to his advantage. He becomes Hakluyt's student, reading that titles that Hakluyt read. What might have been narrow work thus becomes an impressive intellectual history of how Elizabethans attempted to explain a new world.' -- Times Literary Supplement, September 28, 2007

Hakluyt's texts are full of his quirky writing saturated by his
jingoism and typical Tudor prejudice, informed by a truly exceptional
imagination that, in some way grasped the global future without travelling
beyond Paris. Peter Mancall has taken those texts and, against considerable
odds, crafted an innovative, rewarding book. -- History Today, July 2007

`... Mancall is comprehensive and convincing.'
-- Catherine Armstrong, Journal of the Printed Historical Society, Winter 2008

About the Author:

Peter C. Mancall is professor of history, University of Southern California, and director, USC - Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0300110545
• ISBN 13: 9780300110548
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400