by Tatsuo Oyama. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis takes the first edition of Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589) as its focus. A significant, sixteenth-century printed text and Richard Hakluyt’s major work, it is familiar to scholars of the period. Its rich archival source has aided understanding of early modern geography, English discovery and cultural encounters. It has also been evaluated in relation to Hakluyt’s substantial contribution to the burgeoning literature of vernacular prose and to imperial expansionism. My thesis conceives a social history of the production, transmission and reception of Principall Navigations from bibliographical analysis, an investigative method that has remained largely untapped. In each chapter, I incorporate information drawn from the material text into an appreciation of historical practice and relocate Principall Navigations more precisely in its socio-historical moment. This engages with and, in some cases, destabilizes current critical positions. In the first chapter, I explore the importance of Hakluyt’s patrons. Francis Walsingham’s essential role is recorded through his connection with the various interdependent networks of people involved in the book’s production and Hakluyt’s description of his ‘prescribed limites’. This chapter re-evaluates authorial subjectivity. In chapter two, Walsingham’s authority over the Queen’s printing house generally and the production of Principall Navigations particularly is traced through the examination of the Stationers’ Company archive and the evolution of the office of the royal printer. This chapter contends that Walsingham commanded the production of Principall Navigations. Chapter three represents a bibliographical study which integrates the production of Principall Navigations into the Queen’s printers’ general work patterns and investigates textual variants and paper-stocks. The date of the interpolation of the Drake leaves is posited with reference to the debate concerning their suppression. The final chapter explores the relationship between early modern readers and empirical records, through historical reading practice, and concludes by evaluating the location of discursive authority.

There is an ongoing debate over the role that equity markets play in determining and influencing international equity flows. The first chapter of this dissertation describes the large portfolio equity flows into China and India, in order to understand the buying behavior of US investors. The rapid growth of the Chinese and Indian economies, coupled with the recent development and liberalization of their financial markets has attracted significant portfolio investment from U.S. investors. It is commonly assumed that domestic investors have an informational advantage over foreign investors; however, some recent empirical literature has questioned this assumption. Essay one dissects the nature of the relationship between foreign equity flows, equity returns, and related variables. The results of my empirical investigation provides evidence that U.S. institutional investors are making investment decisions based on long-run determinants of value rather than responding to price signals or ‘chasing returns'. I anticipate that the strong relationship between equity flows and fundamentals will strengthen as information asymmetries decline and US investors continue to develop more sophisticated methods of assessing underlying value in China and India. The second essay of this dissertation explores a new panel data set based on US gross cross-border equity flows to 20 industrialized nations combined with measures of market valuation for the period of 1977-2005. Empirical evidence of imperfect integration across world equity markets indicates that valuation matters. Consistent with relative value trading as a determinant of equity flow patterns, I find that equity flows decrease sharply with host-country market valuations—in particular the component of valuation that is forecasted to revert the following year. I also find that equity flows increase sharply with US equity market valuations. These results suggest the existence of a valuation channel for cross-border equity flows. The findings of this chapter show that US investors are informed about both domestic markets and foreign markets. Peripheral findings of this essay confirm the findings of other researches, but with a longer sample period. Consistent with existing literature, I find a negative influence of interest rates spreads, and information asymmetries on cross-border trade in equities.

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