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The English, in fact , were late-comers to the profitable business of distant trade and voyages of discovery, and Hakluyt wrote his documents partly with a view to stimulating national pride in this area. By the sixteenth century this was no idle attempt: the English were seeking out further lands and riskier routes in order to pre-empt their European neighbors. Hakluyt meant his book to be useful for navigation and trade. His research was meticulous and he relied on eyewitness accounts wherever possible. The result is perhaps even more than he intended: not just a series of fascinating accounts, which incidentally show the progress of English prose in the sixteenth century, but also the first 'modern' treatment of the world, breaking with the ingrained traditions of medieval cosmography.
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