Jonathan Hart has three main goals in this innovative study of the texts of exploration and European colonization: to show the complexity of travel as well as the importance of its depictions for Spain, France and England; to present the ambivalent and contradictory responses of France and England to Spain over the period; and to demonstrate the importance of translations in both disseminating and shaping knowledge surrounding the colonizing of the New World. By combining three major cultural traditions - France, England, Spain - the author reveals fascinating interactions about the way the New World was represented in writing, and he makes substantial contributions to our understanding of the political and social context of these writings. This allows significant reassessments of the early modern Atlantic world's perception of the Americas in both a collective sense and according to the different dynamics of each country.