Do you want to know the secrets of winning friends and influencing people?
Are you interested in manipulating those around you to your whim?
Do you too seek complete and total domination over the mere pawns of the world?
Then you should probably consider a closer reading.
[Intro]
Machiavillain was born in 1469 to a well-to-do family in Florence, and if there was a place
to be well-to-do in 1469, well, Florence was it.
The Renaissance was in full swing you’ve got Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Botticelli, all
working in Florence under the guy who ruled it.
Well, technically Florence was a democracy, but ever since Lorenzo’s granddad got crazy
rich and basically bought out the entire government the city was effectively under the rule of
the Medici dynasty.
It might not have been very democratic of them, but they did maintain peace in Italy
for more than half a century, which was no small feat considering how freaked out everybody
was about Venice creeping into the mainland.
But alas, it didn’t last.
Pope Innocent 8 got into a spat with the King of Naples, presumably got a little drunk and
started rambling about “No!
No you don’t get to be king anymore, God wants France to have Naples because his grandfather…
married something”.
Pretty soon they hugged it out and then both died, but a few years later Naples got into
a fight with Milan and so Milan turns to France and says “Hey now would be a great time
for you to, ah, inherit Naples” “I don’t know, Pope Innocent took back
what he said and I don’t think the new Pope would be very happy about me doing that"
"Oh screw the Pope, kick his ass!”
“Aren’t you a cardinal?”
“Yeah I mean I don’t know” “Looks like it’s war then”
Now what does this have to do with Florence, you ask?
Well, if you look carefully, you’ll notice that if you’re going from Milan to Naples
you’re going to travel right through Florence and that’s exactly what France did.
Lorenzo died a couple years ago and the new Medici couldn’t do much except become Italy’s
Belgium.
The Florentines get mad and chase him out of the city and that means it’s republic
time, baby!
And guess who got himself a nice new job in that nice new republic?
This guy!
He was kind of a diplomat-y foreign affairs guy who also was in charge of the militia.
So some days he’d be having dinner with Cesare Borgia, a notoriously ruthless ruler
who wasn’t afraid to kill his enemies to stay in power (sound familiar?), and his no
less infamous father the Pope, trying to convince them not to take all the land (while simultaneously
trying respectfully to ignore all the orgies, link in the description), and other days he’d
be restocking the Florentine army with citizens instead of mercenaries because someone had
to learn a lesson from Rome after a thousand years.
Sure enough, that citizen army was just what Florece needed to march into Pisa and remind
them who’s boss.
But then another Italian War happens, and it’s messy, and it’s complicated, and
it’s much bigger than Florence, but long story short: There’s a new Pope in town,
the Warrior Pope, he calls for a Crusade against Venice because they won’t give him a couple
of cities, then he gets scared of France because they have too much land in Italy so he switches
sides and calls for a Crusade against France, so everyone starts beating up France, but
then the Holy Roman Emperor won’t give Venice any land so Venice switches sides and somewhere
along the way Spain gave Florence to the Medicis again.
This is bad news for Niccolo because the Medici make like good princes and arrest and torture
Machiavelli for being a leading figure of the old regime on the grounds that he was
plotting a conspiracy against them.
Luckily for world history, he denied everything for three weeks and they let him enjoy an
early retirement, otherwise, why, Florence would have lost a fine playwright.
No, seriously, he wrote plays, that was what he was known for towards the end of his life.
They were sort of a few values from The Prince worked into stories -- A man tricks a married
woman into sleeping with him by telling her that fertility drug he gave her will kill
the first man she lies with so she should do the right thing and hook up with that other
guy who’s totally not him
Remember, kids, if you want the girl, all it takes is aspiration and cunning and you
too can sit on a throne of lies!
But theatre isn't his raison d'etre and he wants to make a good second impression on the new
top dogs he begins to write a little book called the Prince, and for once a big book
in history is actually a little book in real life!
It’s only like a hundred pages it just has a deceptively large number of chapters so
you have no excuse not to read it.
You know who you are.
He dedicated it to the Magnificent Lorenzo de Medici, which is super confusing because
Lorenzo the Magnificent was that guy who kicked the Renaissance into ludicrous speed and all
this Lorenzo ever did was have a daughter who’s more famous than he is.
But Machiavelli was telling this guy
“Hey, you guys did good taking back Florence, but leaders come and leaders go.
You wanna stay in power?
You gotta listen to me, be like those Borgia guys, like a foxssss.”
“But the Borgias lost everything.
And so did you.”
“A run of bad luck” “But if you’re supposed to adapt to changes
in fortune to avoid ruin...”
“Also you should unify Italy”
Now I’d love to wade deeper into literary analysis but there’s already an excellent
video on the subject by, but of course, Overly Sarcastic Productions.
But wait, don’t touch that dial, because you can get the long and short of it right
here, straight from the horse’s mouth!
Jack: Knock knock Blue: Who’s there?
Jack: No time for jokes, I’m afraid, I’m already two weeks behind schedule.
How would you like to talk about Machiavelli?
Blue: WOULD I?
Jack: Okay, maybe just the one joke.
Thanks, Blue, you’re a life saver!
Blue: Aw, man, this is exciting.
SO, Machiavelli gets a bad rep for being evil, scheming, devious, and all of that bad stuff
To the point where the word “Machiavellian” is almost exclusively derogatory.
But behind all the murdery prince-y stuff, there’s another book, that’s much larger,
far less well-known, and much more true to Machiavelli’s personal beliefs about politics.
It’s his Discourses on Livy’s History of Rome, and it’s almost exclusively dedicated
to the Roman Republic.
So Machiavelli has one book in seeming praise of monarchy and princes, and another book in praise of republics.
So you might rightly ask: which one is it then?
Well…
It’s both, but at different times, and for different reasons.
So, I'll try to explain
In the Prince, Machiavelli goes really hard on all the deviousness, but he explicitly says at the
end of the book that the Prince’s most important job is to unite Italy under one banner and
stop the centuries of warring that had plagued it.
So don’t think of the Prince as “The Ends Justify the Means” so much as “Desperate
Times Call for Desperate Measures”.
Now, let’s look at his Discourses on Livy, where he praises republics at length for their stability,
fairness, and a whole host of other reasons, which, coming from Mr. “Gee I sure do love
the Florentine Republic” shouldn’t honestly be that much of a stretch.
Speaking of things Machiavelli loved: Ancient Rome.
Oh man, Machiavelli loved Ancient Rome more than he loved most people.
And this is relevant, because he took some notes from their government.
See, the Roman Republic had a system where, during a time of crisis, one citizen
would be chosen to preside over the whole city, like a king, for only as long as was
needed to solve the crisis, after which point the Republic would resume.
So when we put all that together, we get a much different picture of Machiavelli.
He wasn’t a scheming madman, he recognized that Italy was in crisis during his time, and it needed the guiding
hand of a prince to unify the country, after which it should pass into being a stable and
fair republic.
And given Italy as of right now is a unified Republic, I think Machiavelli would be proud.
Moral of the story is “Don’t judge someone’s writing until you’ve analyzed their entire
corpus and also studied their biography”... or, um, failing that, how about “Machiavelli
isn’t evil, he just knew that desperate times, and desperate times only called for
desperate measures”.
Take it away, Jack!
And that’s basically it!
He never got back into power, died in 1527, the Prince got published five years later
and Machiavelli became the father of modern political science.
So, uh… yeah.
Also he loved Rome so much he played dress up as an ancient Roman, and now I can say
I haven’t been ignoring your suggestions!
So thanks Wastheman, and thanks again to Blue for lending me a hand, if you like my videos
I have a feeling you’ll love his.
Take care!