ABSTRACT

The contents of the two editions of Principal navigations reflect changes during Richard Hakluyt's lifetime in the character of English activity in the Spanish-dominated region of the West Indies, South and Central America. Both editions supplemented contemporary public knowledge of Latin America with lively and often up-to-date, if not comprehensive, observation, though not all the contributors saw the point. In 1600 Hakluyt trebled the space devoted to Latin America, reporting many more voyages, but the war which occasioned most of these also stopped the flow of English reportage on the Iberian-occupied areas. John Sparke gave a much more detailed and interesting description of the second voyage, but Hakluyt obtained nothing on John Lovell's venture, while the reports of the third voyage said little about the Caribbean. Hakluyt's record of contemporary English voyages to the southerly coasts of South America thus began with Drake's circumnavigation.