Hakluyt in France

Although Richard Hakluyt was the first to offer his collections of travel accounts under the banner of a ‘national’ project, the spread of colonial ambition was a determining factor in the affirmation of national identity more widely across Europe in this period. Certainly, at this time Northern European nations were beginning to demonstrate colonial aspirations and resist Spain’s perceived attempts at ‘universal monarchy’. This resistance is true not only for the United Provinces, which had recently freed themselves from Iberian rule (1589), but also for France which, after forty years of civil war, had regained relative stability during the reign of Henri IV. ¹ During this time, Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations (1589; 1598–1600), and the continuation of his work in Samuel Purchas’s series of publications (1613–26), furnished Pierre Bergeron (1580–1638) with the seed idea and model for a French collection of travel writing conceived with a national focus. Separated by a generation, Bergeron never met Hakluyt. Bergeron’s career is significant because of his attempts to create the first anthology of French colonial literature, one that was intended to support both the monarchy’s and the country’s maritime and commercial interests.