1.2 Niccolo Machiavelli: The Prince
One of the most famous works in the history of political science is The Prince, a short book on politics written by the Florentine scholar Niccolo Machiavelli in 1513. A perceptive observer of Italian politics, Machiavelli's frank treatment of political conduct has caused the word Machiavellian to become part of our political vocabulary. In order to understand the political thinking of Niccolo Machiavelli, it is necessary to have some understanding of the Italy in which he lived.
Renaissance Italy: Political Conditions
The political situation of Renaissance Italy was similar to that of ancient Greece. There was no Italian nation unified under one central government. Italy was divided into some twenty autonomous city-states, each with its own government claiming sovereignty over its adjacent lands and people. As with the ancient Greek cities, the Italian states were frequently in conflict with each other making Italy chaotic and weak. As with the ancient Greek cities, the governments of the Italian states differed from city to city. Florence, Genoa, and Venice were republics ruled by merchant oligarchies. Milan was a hereditary duchy (ruled by a duke). Rome was ruled by the Pope. Naples was a monarchy. All the major states (Genoa, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples) commanded great commercial wealth and were centers of the Renaissance arts and scholarship.
Within the Italian cities there was almost constant political turmoil. The tremendous wealth held by the leading merchant families enabled them to exercise political power and influence. Such was the case of the Medici family of Florence, the Sforza family of Milan, and the Borgia family of Rome, to name only a few. Each family had its own faction of supporters and often its own force of armed retainers. Political power was achieved and held through bribery, intimidation, and violence. As Italian politics were often dangerous, the wealthy merchants lived in massive, fortified houses. Political issues were often resolved through street fighting as the armed factions would challenge each other for supremacy, much like the street gangs of modern urban America. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was based on just such a setting.
There was no sense of national identity among the Italians. They saw themselves as citizens of Milan, Florence, or Naples but never as Italians. In their disputes the Italian cities threatened or fought each other with condottieri, mercenary armies, often from other Italian cities! As mercenaries cared little for the people for whom and against whom they were hired to fight, Italian wars were brutal and indecisive.
One might think that as all Italians were Roman Catholic, the Papacy might have provided political leadership. The popes of the Renaissance, however, were themselves the products of Italian politics. They came from the great ruling families of the Italian cities and won election to the papacy through bribery and intimidation. As men of the Renaissance, popes were more interested in politics, finances, diplomacy, scholarship, and patronization of the arts than they were in providing spiritual leadership over the Church. Popes were themselves often at war protecting or expanding the Papal States.
The major European powers sought to take advantage of the political anarchy in Italy in order to gain access to the great Italian wealth. With Italy weak and at war with itself, it was relatively easy for other countries to exert influence over and even intervene in Italian politics. The French king, Charles VIII, coveted northern Italy and made dynastic claims to both Milan and Naples. The Hapsburg rulers of Austria were opposed to any expansion of France or French influence in northern Italy. In the south Naples (The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) had been the hereditary possession of King Ferdinand of Aragon (Spain). In 1494 French armies invaded and Italy became an international battleground. The Hapsburg - Valois Wars (so-called for the ruling families of Austria and France) ravaged Italy for the next sixty years as shifting alliances of Italian cities joined with or fought against the invading French, Austrians, and Spanish. It was on this background that Niccolo Machiavelli would write The Prince.
Of the some twenty states, six major cities dominated Italian politics. What follows is a brief description of the political identity of each.
Genoa, a republic, was a major port in northwestern Italy and dominated trade in the western Mediterranean. In 1492 one of its native sons, the ambitious navigator Christoforo Columbo, undertook a major voyage of discovery for the monarchy of Spain. Through skillful diplomacy and naval power, Genoa was able to preserve its independence as Italy fell victim to foreign intervention after 1494. One of its great heroes was Andrea Doria, an admiral who saved the city from French domination in 1528. Genoa controlled the island of Corsica until 1768.
Milan’s importance came largely from its strategic location in the north. Its government was through a line of hereditary dukes originally from the Visconti family. In 1450, following an unsuccessful attempt to establish a republic, it came under the domination of the Sforza family. In the spirit of Renaissance humanism, the Sforzas actively patronized both the arts and scholarship. The celebrated Leonardo da Vinci served the Sforzas as painter, architect, and scientist. The court of Ludovico Sforza was one of the most brilliant. In 1494 King Francis I of France launched an invasion of Italy claiming hereditary rights to Milan. The Sforza rule came to an end with French conquest in 1500. In 1535 Milan was ceded to Spain as a hereditary possession of its Hapsburg king, Charles (Emperor Charles V).
Venice was a major maritime power under merchant control. Government was through an oligarchic Great Council whose members came from the influential families listed in the 1297 Golden Book. A Council of Ten administered the city under a ceremonial head of state called the Doge. At the time of Machiavelli, this city dominated trade on the Adriatic and eastern Mediterranean seas.
The greatest city of Renaissance Italy was Florence, which dominated the region called Tuscany. Originally, the city’s wealth was based on the wool industry but it later became a center of international banking. Although officially a republic, the city government was dominated by the powerful de Medici family. Originally wool merchants, the Medicis became wealthy bankers and noted patrons of the arts. Of the Medicis, the greatest was Lorenzo the Magnificent who ruled from 1469 to 1492. In 1494 the government of Florence was overthrown in a popular uprising led by the Dominican priest, Savonarola, whose moral purism rejected the city’s characteristic materialism. Savonarola’s theocratic state failed in 1495 when he unwisely challenged and angered Pope Alexander VI. The republic was restored and it was for this government that Machiavelli served as a diplomat. In 1512 the Medicis again seized power and ruled until 1527. In 1530 the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V ended the republic altogether and made the Medicis Florence’s hereditary ruling family.
Rome was the headquarters of the Church. Its head of state was the Pope, who not only ruled the city but also a sizable portion of central Italy called the Papal States. Rome’s importance in Italian politics, however, was not due to its spiritual influence. Popes were primarily interested in politics, banking, diplomacy, patronage of the arts and scholarship, and using the resources of the Church to expand their personal wealth and power. Reflective of the urban backgrounds from which they came, the popes were often immoral and self-serving.
Naples dominated all of southern Italy and the island of Sicily. In 1505 Naples became the hereditary possession of the King of Spain (then Ferdinand of Aragon). As the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (southern Italy and Sicily), Naples remained a Spanish possession until 1713.
Machiavelli and The Prince
Of a prominent Florentine family, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 - 1527) was a historian who served in the government of the republic of Florence both as a diplomat and military commander. As a personality he was honest, trusting, and somewhat naїve. He was kind and affectionate, a caring husband and father, and a true friend to those close to him. In both his military service and on diplomatic missions he saw firsthand the anarchy of Italian politics and humiliation of foreign intervention. He deplored Italy's lack of unity seeing it as the major cause of Italian weakness. Through his diplomatic work he became familiar with the notorious Cesare Borgia (son of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI). Machiavelli admired Borgia’s ruthless but efficient methods as a soldier and leader. Yet he remained a strong supporter of republican principles and resented the Medici family's growing influence in Florentine politics. With the Medicis reassuming control of Florence in 1512, Machiavelli was dismissed from government. Accused of being part of an anti-Medici conspiracy, he was briefly imprisoned before being banished to house arrest on his estate. Angered and distressed he turned to writing. By far, his most ambitious work was Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy in which he celebrates the institutions and accomplishments of the ancient Roman Republic based on the work of Livy, the classical Roman historian. While the Discourses reflected government at its most virtuous, The Prince reflected it at its most efficient.
Essentially, The Prince is an analysis of the exercise of statesmanship and power. In some 26 short chapters, Machiavelli looked at the political chaos of his own times and examined how an effective ruler might consolidate and hold power. Effective rulers and governments, he maintained, act only in their own political interests or in the interest of the state. These interests are not bound by ethical or moral considerations of what was morally right or just, but by practical realities: what was necessary to gain and hold power. In simple summary, Machiavelli saw two fundamental principles at work: the good of the state is the supreme good; and the end justifies the means to the end. To Machiavelli, what was the good of the state? He saw four characteristic features as the directive forces in determining the good of the state. The state must be sovereign, that is, independent of any higher authority. The state must be militarily strong in order to defend or expand its sovereignty. The state must have unity of purpose, its people united with its government and its policies. And, fourthly, were the state to have these three characteristics, it would then command the respect of its people and the respect of other states. Italy, once the center of the great Roman Empire, had none of these characteristics. How to achieve the good of the state? By any means necessary, regardless of morality. A prince, Machiavelli wrote, must be both a lion and a fox if he and the state were to survive and prosper. Whatever the prince determined to be the good of the state, that was the end that should be pursued. The end justified whatever methods were used to achieve it.
Why is The Prince significant? Palmer and Colton describe the book as “the first secular treatise on politics.” Machiavelli …
"emancipated" politics from theology and moral philosophy. He undertook to describe simply what rulers actually did, and thus anticipated what was later called the scientific spirit, in which questions of good and bad are excluded and the observer attempts to discover only what really happens. What really happened, said Machiavelli, is that effective rulers "keep faith or break it, observe treaties or repudiate them, are merciful or ruthless, forthright or sly, peaceable or aggressive, according to their estimates of their political needs" (Palmer et al., 56).
The Prince made the terms Machiavellian and Machiavellianism part of our political vocabulary. Its principles are practiced by both democracies and dictatorships. We live today in a world of nation-states, each claiming sovereignty and acting in its own interests – not unlike Machiavelli’s Italian cities. The Prince gives us insight to our own times.
Although certainly not his major book, The Prince has become his most famous. Questions remain as to its motivation. Was it an angry criticism of the ruthlessness of politics or was its flattering dedication to Lorenzo de Medici sincere? Was it a "guidebook" for effective political control or was it a satire intended to ridicule de Medici and others like him (Cesare Borgia, for example)? Whatever his motivation, Machiavelli described the conduct of government as it was – and is – insensitive, ruthless, efficient, and free from moral restraint to do whatever was seen in its best interest.
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The image of Machiavelli is from Wikipedia.
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Sources for Machiavelli
Benner, Erica. Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World. New York: Norton, 2017.
Durant, Will. The Renaissance. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953.
King, Ross. Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. New York: New American Library, 1960.
Palmer, Robert R. et al. A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Plumb, J. H., ed. The Horizon Book of the Renaissance. New York: American Heritage, 1961.