1. Writings
   1. The prince
      1. 1513
      2. A manual for effective immoral statecraft - a textbook for despots packed full of suggestions as to what a Prince must do I order to gain power and keep it
      3. A prince must learn how not to be good, be feared rather than loved, and be a gat hypocrite and dissembles. Jars with Christian values
      4. Advice on statecraft: how to build a song state and achieve glory. The provision of civil order and peace.
      5. Theprimacy of war: internal affairs will always remain stable when external ones are stable. A prince, then, must have no other object, or take up any other profession except war and its rules and discipline
      6. Machiavelli was writing for an Italy in crisis, one that woefully lacked the military might of it's ancient Roman ancestors and found its fragile city states vulnerable to repeated invasions by foreign armies. He looked at the Medici pope Leo X to found a snogging Italian state capable of repelling external attacks.
      7. Public versus private morality. Statesmen are not to be restricted by conventional moral codes. Reason of state demands moral flexibility - deceit, force.
      8. Key concepts:
         1. Fortuna
            1. Approximately the "winds of fate"
            2. I compare her to one of these destructive rives that when they are raging flood the plains destroy trees and buildings take up earth from this side and place it on the ther. Everyone flies before them. Everyone yields to their onslaught without being able to oppose them in any way
         2. Virtu
            1. What is required therefore is the heroic manly quality of virtu. For fortune is a woman and it is necessary, if you wish to keep her down, to beat her and knock he about.
            2. Virtu is not just "virtue". Machiavelli adds a new dimension to the classical concept
         3. Don't start from ideals, from what ought to be done. You have to start from what is, not what ought to be.
   2. Discourses
      1. 1519
      2. Based on Livy's History of Rome
      3. A sincere lament for the lost virtues of republicanism. For Machiavellii the Roman republic and not the degenerate age of Empire represented the acme of civic ethos
      4. Cyclical view of history. States are part of the eternal process of change
      5. Fortune is important but so is the virtue of citizens. Liberty of the people and wide amount of patriotism
      6. Importance of folding fathers N restorers. A single lawgiver I order to establish the state n the first place or reestablish it if it has degenerated
      7. Consequentialism- he excuses Romulus for killing Remus in order to found Rome "while the act accuses him, the result excuses him"
      8. Institutions and mixed constitutions. Military commands to be limited. Wealth to be limited to ensure dominance of public over private. Wars to be short and big. Decisiveness
   3. Mandragola
      1. 1518
   4. History of Florence
      1. 1520
      2. Modelled on ale of contemporary and classical histories. But picture of Florence in pvious century is not heroic. It is corrupt, atomised society. Religious and civic sense and honesty are in decline. Government is captured by cliques. avarice, indolence, luxury proliferate
      3. Positive notion of the community. Distinct from mediaeval conceptions and limited view of the community in classical liberal thought
      4. Civic order must be periodically reviewed
      5. Even the best ordered commonwealths, Rome and Sparta, declined
   5. Art of War
      1. 1521
      2. All about war as an art. A technical manual for war
2. Political biography
   1. 1498: head of second chancery and served on the council of ten
      1. Remember when reading Machiavelli that he was writing from experience of high office.
   2. 1500: visits Louis XII of France
   3. 1502: Soderini elects Gonfalioniere; meets Cesare Borgia and writes on the "Diet of Failures" at Senigallia
   4. 1503: Accompanies Julius II on first military campaign
      1. See Erasmus writing about Julius II
   5. 1504: mission to Pandolfo Petrucci ruler of Siena
   6. 1505: Florentine militia
      1. Florentine citizens army introduced. Machiavelli dared the statute making it law. It replaced mercenaries with regular, loyal, militia.
         1. Interestingly the same year or the next the Swiss Guard came into existence and started working for the Pope. The longest serving mercenary army in the world, still loyal today.
   7. 1502-1509: Florence attempts to subjugate Pisa; Leonardo da Vinci consulted
      1. Whilst fourth biggest power in Italy, Florence was small on the European scale compared with hat powers like France, Spain and the HRE
   8. 1512: The Medici return to power; Machiavelli dismissed
   9. 1513: tortured; writes The Prince
      1. From being the I centre of attention, at the heart of government, he is utterly overthrown, and this is the context in which he starts writing.
   10. 1527: Sack of Rome; Medici expelled from Florence; the Republic adds a new constitution, but Machiavelli dies.
3. Historical context
   1. 1453: Fall of Constantinople, threat to Latin Christendom
   2. 1454: Peace of Lodi; 40 years of. Relative. Peace in the Italian peninsula as the five Italian powers agree to not attack each other in common interest.
      1. In 1480 the Ottomans actually set foot on Italy. Short lived, left the west alone. But this was a key threat that united the Italian states
   3. A world of rennaissance city states, trade, wealth, civilisation, culture and the papacy
   4. 1494: French invasion of Italy
      1. Peace is shattered; balance of power is no more
      2. TheMedici are expelled from Florence after Piero surrenders; Savonarola takes power
         1. Piero a complete coward. He literally runs away!
      3. New technologies of destruction. Canon overcomes city walls that we previously more or less impregnable. So the whole city state paradigm was in flux, just as today the nation state one might be by terrorism versus conventional warfare
      4. Conventional defences were rendered redundant
   5. 1498: Alexander VI allies with France; Savonarola excommunicated and executed; Florentine republic restored
   6. Overall an era of rapid change and unstable alliances. The Italian Wars of 1494 to 1559
   7. The threat from France and Spain
      1. Rome: the secularisation of the papacy and the acceleration of papal-state building. Borgia dynasty. Strong centralised states needd
      2. Cesare Borgia and the conquest of the Romagna. Papal vicars.
         1. One of the origins of Max Weber's idea of the state showing to be the monopoly of force
      3. Florence: what good a Florentine virtues if the Republic cannot defend itself.
         1. Michaelangelo's David, the citizen's militia. Was David even symbolic of the Florentine independent military?
         2. Leonardo and the attempt to divert the Arno "Fortune is a river"
         3. 1512: The Medici return to power; 1513: Giovanni di Lorenzo de Medici is elected to Pope Leo X
   8. Rennaissance humanism
      1. Rennaissance is the rebirth of Classical Greek and Rman culture. Mimics ancient style. Reflected for example in Machiavelli's chapter titles.
      2. Quote about Machiavelli getting home and feasting on the ancients from letters to Francesco Vettori
      3. One of the key aspects of rennaissance humanism was the questioning of mediaeval received authority; transformed into more empirical evidence and scientific process.
         1. Vesalius in anatomy; Leonardo in military affairs; Copernicus in astronomy; Machiavelli in statecraft
      4. Historical consciousness
         1. Tripartite periodisation of history. People begin to appreciate how the present is different from the past
4. Interpreting Political Thought
   1. Always produced in a particular historical context
   2. Context dependency vs relevance down the ages
   3. Danger of anachronism: applying concepts and arguments out of their historical context
      1. E.g. Does it make sense to call Machiavelli a realist? We understand what we mean but Machiavelli would not have understood the term so wouldn't have written in that context.
   4. Problems of interpretation:
      1. D we look to uncover author's original intention?
      2. Does the meaning inhere in the text such that it is for the reader to uncover?
      3. The past is read through the lens of the present. The risk of ideology, politicisation, revisionism
      4. To what extent must biography be taken into account
5. Legacy and influence
   1. "Machiavel"; Old Nick, unprincipled amoralism
   2. The discourses made Machiavelli a hero to nineteenth century Italins Manding a unified, republican Italy
6. Machiavelli and Bobbit
   1. Philip Bobbitt