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Machiavelli was painfully aware of living in a disastrous moment of Italy's history: foreign invasions, occupations and shattered states. He was harshly critical of Italy's princes (such as Francesco Sforza), its professional military class (especially Cesare Borgia), and the Church (Pope Julius II), and this is a study of his evaluation of their failures and of their underlying causes.
He believed that the root of Italy's political weakness was the excessive ambition of its elite classes, who, like their counterparts in ancient Rome, were prepared to overthrow governments that obstructed their ambition. Machiavelli formulates this phenomenon, first theoretically, then historically in the context of the Florentine Republic's descent into family-based factionalism, which culminated in the brittle Medici regime. The most damaging tyranny, according to Machiavelli, was the collective tyranny of wealthy elites ready to undermine law and government to preserve and augment their power and wealth.
List of contents
- Preface
- 1: The Travails of Italy viewed from the Chancery
- 2: Sins of Princes
- 3: Mercenaries and Cesare Borgia
- 4: The Papacy and Julius II
- 5: Momentous and Natural Enmities
- 6: Family and Faction
- 7: Faction and Regime
- 8: Regime and Repression
- 9: Repression and Conspiracy
- 10: Corruption and Tyranny
About the author
John M. Najemy has published on Machiavelli, in addition to many essays, a study of the famous epistolary exchange with Francesco Vettori, exploring the political and personal contexts in which Machiavelli wrote The Prince (Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513-1515, 1993). He has also written two books on Florentine history, including A History of Florence, 1200-1575 (2006; Italian translation, 2014), and essays on a variety of Italian authors from Albertano da Brescia and Brunetto Latini to Leon Battista Alberti and Baldassare Castiglione. He edited The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli (2010) and Italy in the Age of the Renaissance (2004) in the Short Oxford History of Italy series.
Summary
Machiavelli was painfully aware of living in a disastrous moment of Italy's history, and was harshly critical of Italy's princes, its professional soldiers, and the Church. This is a study of his evaluation of their failures, especially how wealthy elites were prepared to undermine law and government to preserve and augment their power and wealth.
Additional text
One cannot finish this book without developing a deep appreciation for Machiavelli's perceptive insights into the nature of political power and the author's ability to uncover and synthesize those perceptions from the corpus of Machiavelli's pertinent works...Scholars interested in historiography will appreciate the explication of Machiavelli's use of ancient Roman history (e.g., the Gracchi) to compare and contrast the events of his world.
Report
One cannot finish this book without developing a deep appreciation for Machiavelli's perceptive insights into the nature of political power and the author's ability to uncover and synthesize those perceptions from the corpus of Machiavelli's pertinent works...Scholars interested in historiography will appreciate the explication of Machiavelli's use of ancient Roman history (e.g., the Gracchi) to compare and contrast the events of his world. Choice
