Richard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is known for promoting the English colonization of North America through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582) and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation (1589-1600).
Background
Richard Hakluyt, the second of four sons, was born in Eyton in Herefordshire in 1553. Hakluyt's father, also named Richard Hakluyt, was a member of the Worshipful Company of Skinners whose members dealt in skins and furs. He died in 1557 when his son was aged about five years, and his wife Margery followed soon after. Hakluyt's cousin, also named Richard Hakluyt, of the Middle Temple, became his guardian.
Education
Richard Hakluyt was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford where he received a B. A. degree in 1574.
Career
Richard Hakluyt's interest in geography and travel had been aroused on a visit to the Middle Temple, one of the four English legal societies, while in his early teens. His imagination thus stirred, the schoolboy had thereupon resolved to "prosecute that knowledge and kinde of literature" at the university. Some time before 1580 he took holy orders, and, though he never shirked his religious duties, he spent considerable time reading whatever accounts he could find about contemporary voyages and discoveries.
Hakluyt also gave public lectures - he is regarded as the first professor of modern geography at Oxford. He made a point also of becoming acquainted with the most important sea captains, merchants, and sailors of England. He thus embarked upon his career as a “publicist and a counsellor for present and future national enterprises across the ocean.” His policy, constantly expounded, was the exploration of temperate North America in conjunction with the search for the Northwest Passage, the establishment of England’s claim to possession based on the discovery of North America by John and Sebastian Cabot, and the foundation of a “plantation” to foster national trade and national well-being. These views are first set out in the preface he wrote to John Florio’s translation of an account of Jacques Cartier’s voyage to Canada, which he induced Florio to undertake, and are further developed in his first important work, Divers voyages touching the discouerie of America (1582). In this he also pleaded for the establishment of a lectureship in navigation. In 1583 Walsingham, then one of the most important secretaries of state, sent Hakluyt to Paris as chaplain to Sir Edward Stafford, the English ambassador there. He served in Paris also as a kind of intelligence officer, collecting information on the fur trade of Canada and on overseas enterprises from French and exiled Portuguese pilots. In support of Walter Raleigh’s colonizing project in Virginia, he prepared a report, known briefly as The Discourse on the Western Planting (written in 1584), which set out very forcefully the political and economic benefits from such a colony and the necessity for state financial support of the project. This was presented to Queen Elizabeth I, who rewarded Hakluyt with a prebend (ecclesiastical post) at Bristol cathedral but took no steps to help Raleigh. The Discourse, a secret report, was not printed until 1877. In Paris, Hakluyt also edited an edition of the De Orbe Novo of Pietro Martire so that his countrymen might have knowledge of the early successes and failures of the Spaniards in the New World.
Hakluyt returned to London in 1588. The outbreak of war with Spain put an end to the effectiveness of overseas propaganda and the opportunity for further exploration so he began work on a project that he had had in mind for some time. This was The principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation which, by its scholarship and comprehensiveness, transcended all geographical literature to date.