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This study examines the historiography of expansion, how England and France used the example of Spain in their exploration and settlement of the New World, from Columbus's first voyage to the end of the War of Spanish Succession. It discusses the ambivalent and contradictory use France and England made of the example of Spain's colonization of the New World. By analyzing translations of Spanish books about the New World, either directly or indirectly, and through French and English texts about the New World, it can be observed that historical changes occurred in the use of the example of Spain while, for the most part, ambivalence and contradiction remained. The study, the only detailed and extensive discussion of the English and French uses of the example of Spain, will set out the legal and political grounds of precedent and possession in the New World and will trace the ways France and England emulate and distinguish themselves from Spain's role as the first colonizer of the Americas, how they praise and blame the Spanish conquest and then slowly, as they establish permanent colonise and as the power of Spain declines in Europe, how they distance themselves from that model. The primary contribution of this study is that it considers this historiography of expansion in terms of close readings because, relatively speaking, these texts have not received the attention to rhetoric and language that they warrant. So many of the English and French works about the New World that use Spain involve persuasion, the centre of rhetoric, either to promote voyages and colonies, justify failure and envision success in the face of the Spanish precedent and challenge, so that a close reading of their textual strategies is long overdue. Spain was a model to imitate, displace and revile. The centre of this rhetorical reading is the motive of eloquence as focused on ambivalence and contradiction and not on the technical matters of tropes and schemes.