The Invention of Colonialism : Richard Hakluyt and Medieval Travel Writing (Elements in Travel Writing)

Sobecki, Sebastian

Cambridge University Press（2025/07発売）

Cambridge University Press（2025/07発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 78 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781009338479
• DDC分類 910.92

Full Description

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.

Contents

Introduction: England's Sphere of Influence; 1. Mandeville's Hegemonic Gaze and Hakluyt's Multi-text; 2. A Blueprint for Colonialism: The Discourse Concerning Western Planting (1584) and The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye (1436); 3. Edgar's Archipelago Revisited: Hakluyt, John Dee, and the Four Seas of Britain; Afterword: The Ends of Edgar's Archipelago; References.