Richard Hakluyt

The English wanted to colonize the New World for a variety of reasons. In fact, Richard Hakluyt gave Queen Elizabeth twenty-three benefited reasons to support the colonization including the benefits of economic, political, religious, nationalist, and social (Freedom 25). England and Spain both wanted to spread their own religion and colonize the New World. England on the other hand had a problem with overpopulation and Spain did not. Spain wanted to spread Catholicism whereas England wanted to spread Protestantism. Just as Spain justified its empire in part by claiming to convert Indians to Catholicism, England expressed its imperial ambitions in terms of an obligation to liberate the New World from the tyranny of the Pope (Liberty 55). England wanted to expand their religion and colonization to gain more power and rights of trade. National power and glory were never far from the minds of the era's propagandists of empire, and Hakluyt insisted that trade would be the basis of England's empire unlike early adventures such as Raleigh who thought of wealth in terms of deposits of gold (Liberty 56). England had relatively minor power in Europe at the end of the sixteenth century and felt they could come to rival the wealth and standing of great nations like Spain and France (Liberty 56). England wanted the New World for the use of the soil and it was a safe easy travel made twice a year without passing any other country, territory, or prince (Freedom 26). England wanted to use the soil for cultivation for the fertile land of "great plenty." Its animals were supposedly so abundant and its climate and soil so favorable that colonists could enrich the mother country and themselves by providing English consumer goods now supplied by foreigners and opening a new market for English products (Liberty 56). Richard Hakluyt felt that the English settlements would help rescue the New World and its inhabitants from the influence of Catholicism and tyranny. Richard Hakluyt wrote "tied as slaves" under the Spanish rule and that the Indians were "crying out to us.... to come and help." He believed the Indians would welcome the English as bearers of liberty do to the mistreatment, and slavery by the Spanish. Indians were oppressed by the Spanish and would welcome the British as bearers of “liberty” (Freedom 25). Richard Hakluyt felt the Indians would welcome English settlers and "revolt clean from the Spaniard," crying "with ine voice, Liberia, Liberuam Liberia, as desirous of liberty and freedom" (Liberty 56). However, England would repeat much of Spain's behavior in the New World.