Mapping Principal Navigations in the Levant

Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations is a seminal work in the historical narrative of English exploration and colonisation, but not an unbiased one. By comparing social network maps of the contemporary Anglo-Levant community with textual analysis of Principal Navigations, this article will demonstrate the ways in which editorial practices reinforced Hakluyt’s personal biases in the text’s portrayal of the Levant and eastern Mediterranean, how this bias has resonated in the following centuries to colour conceptions of the late sixteenth century English-Levant relationship, and suggest avenues for the study of unexplored perspectives on this history.