1380 BOOK REVIEWS

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Machiavelli and Empire. By Mikael Hörnqvist (Cambridge: Cambridge
U.P., 2004; pp. 302. £45).

Often, when confronted by modern scholarly expositions of Machiavelli’s

‘meaning’, I have wondered what he himself might have made of their far-
fetched hermeneutics. He would certainly have found the imperial theories
attributed to him by Mikael Hörnqvist interesting and even congenial: but he
would have been surprised to learn not only that they were the central element
of his political thought, but also that he had so concealed this centrality that
nobody had noticed it. Until now, that is.
Hörnqvist believes that Machiavelli’s meaning can only be laid bare by
submitting his works to a ‘rhetorical reading’; and this—as we discover in an
opening jargon-choked survey of modern criticism, in which the word ‘rhetoric’
and its derivatives are repeated at least 170 times—means nothing beyond
recognising that Machiavelli wrote in order to persuade, and that he employed
literary or dialectical tricks to lure unsuspecting readers (and especially the Medici)
into sharing his views. To penetrate these rhetorical stratagems, and thereby
‘uncover the authorial intention’, Hornqvist distinguishes between two levels of
meaning. On the one hand, there is an ideological level, ‘focussing on the
relationship between the particular text and the ideological vocabularies and the
systems of representation available at the time’; and, on the other, there is a
rhetorical level ‘that addresses the text’s engagement with, and embeddedness in,
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the local and historically contingent political and practical context of interacting
particulars’ (p. 37). Rendered into English, Hörnqvist’s intention is to scrutinise
Machiavelli’s texts minutely while setting them within their intellectual and
historical contexts. The ambition is unexceptionable: but what of the execution?
A minor problem is posed by the author’s fashionably obscure style, so that
one often encounters words and phrases such as ouster, zero-sum, implicatures,
processual, illocutionary, legitimatory, process-oriented articulation, and
similar obstacles. But more serious is the book’s method. Fundamental to
Hörnqvist’s thesis is the relationship between territorial acquisition and the
preservation of internal liberty. This had been elaborated by pre-Machiavellian
Florentine historians and propagandists; and their reconciliation of a belief in

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Florence’s imperial destiny (as heir to ancient Rome) with the idealisation of
civic liberty and republican institutions was a balancing act more remarkable
for hypocrisy than for conviction. Machiavelli himself, argues Hörnqvist,
favoured this policy of imperial republicanism and—recognising that it could
only be pursued successfully by a massive political and military effort—
determined to persuade his Florentine contemporaries to undertake the task.
This, according to Hörnqvist, is the principal purpose of Il principe and the
Discorsi, and he contextualises it by discussing the hallowed traditions which
Machiavelli deliberately subverted: ambiguous political and military moralising
on the ‘just’ war; Florentine commitment to a gutless foreign policy of
neutrality and temporising; and Aristotelian political virtues and vices, with
special emphasis on the nature of tyranny.
Hörnqvist’s exposition of these intellectual contexts is, on the whole,
informative. He is, however, less effective when dealing directly with Machiavelli’s
works, because his two fundamental assumptions—that Il principe and the
Discorsi are self-consciously rhetorical and are designed to further the ideal of
imperial republicanism—lead him to a third, and disastrous, assumption
which is that Machiavelli’s many inconsistencies and self-contradictions must
invariably be seen as deliberate devices of persuasion. Thus they only ‘seem’
to be inconsistent and are merely creating an ‘impression’ of ‘loss of control’.
Machiavelli’s writings are repeatedly cried up as systematic, coherent, and
purposive: but this view can only be maintained by textual misreadings,
omissions, and distortions, and by special pleading or question-begging.
A case in point is the Pisan question which, in Hörnqvist’s treatment, is
crucial to an understanding of Machiavelli’s message. It is true that, when in
public service, Machiavelli had been involved in the problems of trying to hold
down Florence’s minuscule ‘empire’. But to suggest that the brief, passing, and
purely illustrative references to Pisa in Il principe and the Discorsi constitute a
major preoccupation is a gross exaggeration—though less extraordinary than
the statement that Cyrus is ‘the greatest hero’ of Il principe (p. 192) when, in
fact, he is never singled out, and is mentioned only in the company of
comparable ancient figures. Cyrus is designated the ‘greatest hero’ only because
it suits Hörnqvist’s thesis.
Selecting out odd sentences or examples and then inflating their importance
is a dubious rhetorical technique. So, too, is the re-ordering of an original
argument: as occurs in a discussion of Discorsi II.4 (pp. 134–9). And so, too, is
re-interpreting a text by ignoring its precise wording: as occurs when Hörnqvist
(p. 128), discussing the Medici’s absence from Florence, states that in Il principe 5,
‘the closing argument of the chapter should be read: “go and live in Florence
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and destroy Pisa”’ (my italics). But, in fact, Machiavelli is making a general
statement about how to deal with conquered territories and ends the chapter
(as Hörnqvist well knows) with the words ‘la piú secura via è spegnerle o
abitarvi’—‘the safest way is to destroy them or reside there’ (my italics).
Similarly, when discussing the messianic passage in the closing chapter of
Il principe, Hörnqvist writes of ‘men who seem to have been “ordained by God”
for Italy’s redemption’ but who have been rejected by fortune ‘at the height of
their careers’ (p. 255). Yet there are no ‘men’ rejected by fortune. There is only
a single man (qualcuno) who—within the context of Il principe and its praise
of armed prophets, native troops, and rulers unhampered by moral scruples—
must have been Cesare Borgia who had failed ‘per una estraordinaria ed estrema

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malignità di fortuna’. Does it matter if one misreads the odd word? Well yes,
if, like Hörnqvist, you claim to be an ‘analytical’ and ‘discerning’ reader (p. 284)
and base an argument upon the misreading.
Precise attention to words is important. So, too, is attention to chronology.
Machiavelli’s optimistic hopes for Florentine regeneration may have been
modified by Guicciardini’s scepticism (pp. 286–7): but not by the Ricordi, as is
implied by Hörnqvist, since they were secret writings largely assembled by
Guicciardini after Machiavelli’s death in 1527; and even less by the Considerazioni
intorno ai Discorsi, which were not started until 1530.
Hörnqvist’s various observations on Machiavelli’s relationship with Aristotle
constitute another kind of misrepresentation, for they convey the impression
that Machiavelli composed Il principe with the Politics open before him. It is
much more likely that he was simply trying to shock readers by overturning the
traditional virtues extolled by the sub-Aristotelian genre of mirror-for-princes
literature within which he seemed to be working. That scholars are still
concerned to demonstrate a simplistic, one-for-one, direct dependence on
classical sources in Il principe is curious, when the material mocked by
Machiavelli was part of the intellectual baggage of every educated person.
Perhaps the most tendentious section of Machiavelli and Empire is the
treatment accorded to Roman triumphalism and to the triumphator, where
Machiavelli’s few, bare, unrelated remarks on the subject are blown up—
beyond recognition—into ‘many direct and probing observations’, and where
the discussion of pagan blood sacrifice in the Discorsi, II.2, is linked specifically
to the triumph (p. 190). In fact, Machiavelli does not suggest the connection at
all. Like the unwavering, rhetorically consistent ‘authorial intention’, set forth
in Hörnqvist’s ingenious book, it is a figment of the imagination.†

University of Wales, Swansea SYDNEY ANGLO

EHR, cxx. 489 (Dec. 2005) † doi:10.1093/ehr/cei406