Niccolò Machiavelli warns potential revolutionaries to expel the privileged elites of the old regime or risk certain doom. In the
Discourses, he applied himself to the enduring problems of popular government, struggling to devise ways government by the people might survive in the modern world and how the transition from monarchy to republic might be managed. Political leaders, activists, and revolutionaries-from Charles V to Antonio Gramsci to Thomas Jefferson-have taken heed of the
Discourses.
About the author
Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469. At twenty-nine years old, he entered government service in the city-state of Florence as Second Chancellor, a senior post, with responsibilities for relations between Florence and its subject territories in Tuscany and more broadly for foreign affairs. Along with various treatises, plays, and poems, he wrote
The Prince (1513), the
Discourses (c.1514-1519), the
Art of War (1521), and the
Florentine Histories (1520-1525). He died in 1527.
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