After the defeat of the Spanish Armada in the summer of 1588 and with the launch of the first exploratory voyages directed towards the New World, England began to seriously consider her immense possibilities of replacing Spain in the international arena. Taking as a point of departure the final version of Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1598-1600), this paper explores the management of the texts he compiled to promote English expeditions to the New World. Considering the fundamentally private financing of these dangerous and expensive voyages, to convince Englishmen to risk their purses and their lives was not an easy task. But Hakluyt managed to do it successfully by resorting to some skillful narrative and editorial strategies. One aspect that stood above the rest in this unique attempt at channeling the desires of Englishmen towards the New World was the creation of a national identity. Many of the issues Hakluyt brought up in his work were aimed at defining a truly English national character, one radically different from that of other identifiable nations, one based on the "new worldness" of the lands encountered across the Ocean Sea. The "newness" of America became an emblem for a new and regenerated nation whose idiosyncrasy would help her become the divinely-appointed master of the known world.