BBC Documentaries

Tales of Tudor Travel - The Explorer's Handbook (2018x223)

Air date: Sep 11, 2018

A remarkable travel guide compiled from first-hand records of Tudor seafarers in the 16th Century. Professor Nandini Das explores Hakluyt's 'The Principle Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation' (1589), which records accounts of ventures in search of lucrative spices and dyes. It is a prototype for today's travel guides with advice, warnings, descriptions of remarkable people and a list of vocabulary to converse with foreigners. It became a book that all English seafarers kept on board ship. But the descriptions of encounters with foreigners also laid the foundations for later colonialism and conquest.