1500s Italy
by Anders HoveFrancesco Guicciardini's History of Italy, edited by Sidney Alexander, might have been named more accurately "Italian history circa 1500." It is not a concise book. Legend has it that one prisoner, given the option of obtaining his freedom at the cost of reading Guicciardini's account of the ten-year war between Pisa and Florence, attempted a few pages, then asked to man the oars of a galley instead. In recounting this tale, editor Alexander seems to chuckle, adding that he has mercifully cut out almost all of the Pisan campaign out of sheer compassion for his readers - and he's cut plenty of other things as well, judging from the whole chapters which go missing, replaced by handfuls of italicized sentences. Johnson would have called this "summary judgment." What remains?
It is a commonplace that the study of ancient times benefits those wishing to understand the present. Yet we rationalists and cynics chafe at this assertion: isn't it just an apologia by those who've wasted their lives with trivia, or, better still, a self-serving remark made by romantics who enjoy luxuriating in exotic and action-packed antiquities? (Agatha Christie's Twelve Labours of Hercules begins with Hercule Poirot confessing his lack of Greek to an elderly friend; the friend replies that he couldn't imagine retirement spent any other way than with gouty leg propped on footstool, heroic Greek volume perched in lap.) When people say they went to Europe to find themselves, we roll our eyes knowing they actually went to take in the scenery and be lazy while doing it. So people who make the same claim on behalf of reading old books have the burden of proof on squarely on their shoulders.
Guicciardini's contemporary Florentine, Machiavelli, was no romantic: he eschewed the rhetoric of the day (with its frequent and useless references to classical authors) in favor of a handbook of take-it-or-leave-it recommendations. Yet many modern readers know nothing more of Machiavelli than the phrase "the ends justify the means," which does not occur in The Prince and does injustice to the book. (Machiavelli: the first of many political scientists to be condemned as evil.) Unlike Machiavelli, who was trying to be dispassionate and scientific in his analysis ("my poverty is a witness to my honesty," Nick wrote), Guicciardini's book is emphatically not intended as political science. It's a history, and that's what Guicciardini was going for when he wrote it. Some have called it the first modern history, because it relies on text as opposed to memory, and because its meanings are found not in its recounting of facts, but in the well-crafted qualifications that go along with them. Guicciardini's work is not a timeline, but rather an image of the past.
Editor Alexander does assert that we can learn from Guicciardini, and, not wanting to fail him, the reader is bound to try. The book's account begins with the collapse of Italy's fragile balance of power in 1492-94. The balance was tippy enough: it had involved five Italian powers (Venice, Milan, Florence, Naples, and the Pope in Rome) and four of ambitious neighbors (the Ottomans, Spain, Habsburg Austria, and France). It collapsed with the death of Florence's Lorenzo de' Medici, at which point the new rulers began jockeying for power. The Milanese and the Pope asked the French to invade Naples (okay ... done!), then Naples brought Spain into the act (Spain betrayed Naples and sided with France ... fini Napoli), then France went after Milan, then Venice. The cast's original characters having each died in various unpleasant ways, the story continues with new guys in Milan, France, Rome, Florence, and Naples. Fortresses are bartered, towns sacked, religious fervor fomented, potentates imprisoned, treaties made and ignored; most of all deceptive and nasty political machinations continue unabated throughout. Bizarre events come to pass: The pope visits his troops in the field and proves more ardent than they in placing cannon and storming cities by sword. Swiss mercenaries hired by the Duke of Milan defect, but not without disguising the Duke in their uniforms as a means of escaping his enemies (the Duke fails to escape, dies).
Most-enticingly, Guicciardini lets loose some fruity broadsides at commonly-held assumptions of the day. He notes that first contact with Americans proved that the Apostles had not spread the gospel there (a paragraph that was censored for centuries). He finds that the strange sexual mores of contemporary Borgia-family popes "venal" and "pestiferous" (Alexander's translations), but not exceptional given human frailties. And he shows that the Church established its customs and powers more by ambition than right, noting carefully where the documentary evidence cited by the Church on its own behalf had been either forged or misconstrued. This bringing on more censorship still.
And . . . the lessons? Giucciardini does not spell it out; it's for us to draw our own conclusions from each set of events as they come to pass. Of course, there are the easy lessons. In times when security is scarce (roving mercenary armies being plentiful and times being what they are) war is common, as is betrayal, dishonor, and dishonesty. At such times the pursuit of self-interest among states and individuals implies back-stabbing, coarseness, aggression - even among Popes and others whose declared ideology would suggest otherwise.
Students of international relations will be interested to note that neither the "spiral effect" (when two non-expansionary nations misinterpret signals leading them to escalate to war neither wants) nor the "failure-to-deter" effect (where the status-quo power fails to deter the expansionary country) appear to play out in Guicciardini. Instead, all the players are ambitious and more-or-less constantly at war. Attempts at signalling (alliances, treaties, embassies, convokations) seem geared toward fomenting war with a third party, delivering ultimata, or placating transparently. One needs a word for amity that implies no lack of hostile intent - all the powers are hostile towards all the others, it's just that sometimes they attack one neighbor rather than another. Guicciardini leaves few clues: acquisative self-interest, yes, but which self-interest when? Strategy plays a role too, but in the absence of an explanation of why one would attack one castle or town over another this too is left shrouded in mystery.
Overall, heads-of-state are sorely tempted to exaggerate the benefits of a given war and minimize the costs - not so much to their subjects as to themselves. Those who instigate conflict are as likely to die or lose their thrones as anyone else, implying miscalculation (but not necessarily failed deterrence, since victims of aggression may have wanted war as much as instigators of aggression). Those who are of low morals (such as Pope Rodrigo Borgia and nephew Cesare, who betray everyone, including each other, and commit incest besides) do quite well in life and politics. (For noting the Borgias' successes, Machiavelli was condemned by world opinion.) Finally, flags appear to follow trade: the Florentines get along well with the French since that alliance is useful to trade, while the Venetians keep in close league with the Turks despite their religious differences and frequent wars.
Sidney Alexander, our editor, complains a bit at Guicciardini's "monochromatic" "ice palaces" of self-interest. He writes, "[Guicciardini] has fallen victim to a reductive fallacy that equally distorts the range and variety of human behavior. Although (unlike Machiavelli) he believes that man is essentially good, in practice he depicts him as almost invariably bad." Indeed, because Guicciardini's history is all about war and its instigation, and not about the (short) peaceful periods and how they were obtained despite the assumption of self-interest and frequent recourse to war, it is impossible to discern the causes of conflict and peace. Indeed, all of Guicciardini's wars are the result of either miscalculated ambition or basic avarice. Defense gets short-shrift - ironic, since Guicciardini himself helped rig a successful defense of Parma when he was governor of Modena.
In today's interstate system, we assume that states are interested in self-preservation first, preservation or expansion of state interests (defensive, economic, and ideological, usually in that order) second. Sometimes the system is complicated by dictators, which are interested in their survival as dictators rather than the advancement of state interests. Security is far less scarce; the benefits of offensive war are usually minimal, and steps taken to increase defensive security are rarely taken as offensive moves by others. In Guicciardini's day individual and state interest were interwoven in a much more complicated (and mercenary) fashion.