The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 05: Central and Southern Europe

This is not a history of the age of exploration, it is the age of exploration speaking directly to us. Volume 5 of Hakluyt's monumental compendium gathers the raw, uncensored testimony of English merchants, diplomats, soldiers, and adventurers who traversed Central and Southern Europe during the late sixteenth century. Here are the letters, reports, and memoirs of men who bargained with the Teutonic Knights in the Baltic, plotted trade routes through the Mediterranean, and navigated the treacherous politics of Renaissance Italy and Iberia. Hakluyt, himself a geographer and spy, collected these accounts to serve Queen Elizabeth's expanding empire: to chart new markets, identify rivals, and understand the strange peoples beyond England's shores. The result is something rarer than propaganda or chronicle: it is the voice of a nation becoming aware of its place in the world, full of swagger, curiosity, and not a little fear. For historians of early modern Europe, maritime scholars, and anyone who wants to hear the Tudors speak in their own words about what lay beyond the Channel.