‘World enough, and time’: Richard Hakluyt and the Renaissance Discovery of the World
England’s pioneering promoter of overseas exploration, commerce and expansion, Richard Hakluyt, assembled the largest selection of English travel accounts of the era, covering every area of activity around the globe. His book The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation is an astounding compilation of English voyages and discoveries up to his time and marks what we might call the beginnings of the great British historical adventure. It first appeared in one large c.600,000-word volume in 1589, and then in a much-expanded and updated edition in three volumes between 1598 and 1600. The second edition extended to more than 1.76 million words, containing over 600 individual accounts [...]
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2017 Hakluyt Society Essay Prize winner: Neither “Middle Ground” nor “Native Ground”: Reading the Life of Goggey, an Aboriginal Man on the Fringes of Early Colonial Sydney
The Hakluyt Society is pleased to announce that its 2017 Essay Prize has been awarded to Annemarie McLaren, a doctoral candidate at the Australian National University, Canberra. As runner-up in this year's competition, an Honourable Mention is awarded to Cameron B. Strang (University of Nevada, Reno, USA), for his essay: "Coacoochee's Borderlands. A Native American Explorer in Nineteenth-Century North America". Annemarie McLaren will be awarded a cash prize of £750 for her winning essay. Both the winner and runner-up will also receive one-year free membership of the Society. In this blog post, McLaren reflects upon the research that went into her prize-winning essay, "Neither 'Middle Ground' nor 'Native Ground': Reading the life of Goggey, [...]
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The Armada of the Strait: James P.R. Lyell and the Relación of Pedro de Rada
By Anthony Payne A source of great satisfaction for an antiquarian bookseller is to discover a rarity and to see a major work of scholarship result from its acquisition by a research library. One such instance for me was the Hakluyt Society’s publication in December 2016 of The Struggle for the South Atlantic: The Armada of the Strait, 1581–1584, splendidly translated and edited by Carla Rahn Phillips from the Spanish manuscript Relación of Pedro de Rada, now in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California (MS HM 59416). The Huntington purchased this from the antiquarian booksellers Bernard Quaritch Ltd. in 1999, when I was one of the company’s directors. We had [...]
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The Armada of the Strait, 1581-1584: Disastrous beginnings of an ill-fated enterprise
Tuesday, the 3rd of October [1581], the eve of San Francisco, when we had sailed about 35 leagues from San Lucar, there began to be such strong wind from the south and south-west, with much shifting of the cargo, and things looked bad, so that it was indispensable that the armada take down its sails and heave to, until Friday, the 6th of the aforesaid, when the weather had such force that the galeaza capitana had to jettison some things, which was done. And the weather worsened so much on this day that eight navios from the armada could not be seen. And the next day, Saturday the 7th, we [...]
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Personal conflict in the Armada of the Strait: Sarmiento versus Flores
An interview with Professor Carla Rahn Phillips, editor and translator of the Hakluyt Society's 2016 volume The Struggle for the South Atlantic: The Armada of the Strait, 1581-84. To start, could you say something about the personal conflict at the heart of the Armada of the Strait? CRP: Like any large enterprise, the Armada of the Strait was bound to have a range of personalities and a certain amount of disagreement and friction among its participants. Nonetheless, one ongoing clash all but defined the Armada of the Strait: the enmity between Pedro Sarmiento, governor-designate of the colony to be planted at the Strait, and Don Diego Flores de Valdés, captain general [...]
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2016 Hakluyt Society Volume: The Struggle for the South Atlantic: The Armada of the Strait, 1581-84
In this first of three blog posts, Professor Phillips introduces The Struggle for the South Atlantic . The Armada of the Strait under Don Diego Flores de Valdés in 1581–4 came at a crucial juncture in global politics. Philip II of Spain had assumed the crown of Portugal and its overseas empire, and Francis Drake’s daring peacetime raids had challenged the dominance of Spain and Portugal in the Americas. Drake’s attacks had demonstrated the vulnerability of both Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and intelligence reports indicated that other English adventurers hoped to replicate Drake’s successful melding of trade and plunder. It was clear to Philip and his councillors that something had to [...]
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Looking back on Hakluyt@400
The geographer and clergyman Richard Hakluyt died in good company: 1616 also marked the death of two internationally-renowned writers, William Shakespeare and the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Shakespeare's iambic pentameter and Cervantes's re-working of chivalric romance have continued to grace school curricula and playhouses around the globe; by comparison, Hakluyt's impact is less immediately apparent. The Hakluyt Society, in conjunction with the Bodleian Library, Museum for the History of Science and Museum for the History of Science in Oxford, held a two-day conference in November 2016 to examine Hakluyt's legacy at the four-hundredth anniversary of his death. His two editions of The Principal Navigations, Traffiques, and Voiages of the [...]
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‘Hakluyt and the Renaissance Discovery of the World’ – Conference Programme
Programme 24th November, the Bodleian Library 9.30AM–10.30AM arrival & coffee WESTON LIBRARY CONCOURSE SESSION 1: 10.30AM–12.15PM WESTON LIBRARY, LECTURE THEATRE Hakluyt, Oxford, & centres of power Chair: Dr Sarah Tyacke (Hakluyt Society) Prof. Sebastian Sobecki (University of Groningen): ‘Hakluyt and the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye’ Prof. David Harris Sacks (Reed College): ‘Learning to Know: The Educations of Richard Hakluyt and Thomas Harriot’. Anthony Payne (Hakluyt Society): ‘Hakluyt and Aristotle at Oxford’ 12.15PM-1.15PM lunch WESTON LIBRARY CONCOURSE SESSION 2: 1.15PM–3.00PM WESTON LIBRARY, LECTURE THEATRE Chair: Dr Will Poole (Oxford) ‘the three corners of the world’ (William Shakespeare, King John) Prof. Nandini Das (University of Liverpool): ‘Hakluyt and India’ Dr Felicity Stout [...]
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Richard Hakluyt, Jacques le Moyne, and Theodore de Bry’s 1591 Engravings of Florida Timucua Indians (Part 2): The Florida Book
In his The Representation of the Overseas World in the De Bry Collection of Voyages (1590-1634), Michiel van Groesen points out that the 1591 Florida volume, among all the volumes, is peculiar for several reasons. First, the text is the only one of the 50 narratives that does not have a version published elsewhere. The narrative instead combines portions of René de Laudonnière’s account, previously published by Richard Hakluyt, with other sources, perhaps including information provided by Jacques le Moyne. The title pages of both the Latin and German editions mention Le Moyne and Laudonnière while the German edition that was translated from the Latin edition also lists Jean Ribault [...]
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Theodore de Bry, Richard Hakluyt, and the Business of Books (Part 1): De Bry’s 1591 Engravings of Florida Timucua Indians
In his 1946 book The New World, the First Pictures of America Stefan Lorant reprinted Theodore de Bry’s engravings of Florida Timucua Indians first published in 1591. Lorant included an English translation of the narrative that had accompanied the engravings in 1591. Lorant maintained that the images were based on paintings done by Jacques le Moyne, a member of a French colony on the St. Johns River in Northeast Florida in 1564-1565. He also attributed the narrative to Le Moyne. Since 1946 scholars, museum exhibition designers, and others have treated the engravings as accurate renderings of the Timucua Indians and their material culture. More than one person has referred erroneously [...]
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