ABSTRACT
By temperament and training Richard Hakluyt was a man of practical ability and industry rather than one drawn to what Dr Johnson described in a famous sally as the 'exercise of invention'. Economic assumptions are fundamental to his colonial theories, but they are simply the assumptions of orthodoxy. England was seemingly feeble – no army to speak of, inadequate revenues – her enemies and neighbours apparently populous and wealthy. To the natural concern of a capable ruler for the economic well-being of the country there was added – not always with the happiest results – the less disinterested influence the merchant community was able to exercise. Hence the constant endeavour to find new markets. Hence too the mass of legislation to regulate wages, to preserve the existing pattern of society, to provide for the destitute, to set men on work: to do in fact all those very things which figure so largely in Hakluyt's writings.
