Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy

The significance of Machiavelli’s political thinking for the development of modern republicanism is a matter of great controversy. In this volume, a distinguished team of political theorists and historians reassess the evidence, examining the character of Machiavelli’s own republicanism and charting his influence on Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington, John Locke, Algernon Sidney, John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, David Hume, the baron de Montesquieu, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. This work argues that while Machiavelli himself was not liberal, he did set the stage for the emergence of liberal republicanism in England. By the exponents of commercial society he provided the foundations for a moderation of commonwealth ideology and exercised considerable, if circumscribed, influence on the statesmen who founded the American Republic. Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy will be of great interest to political theorists, early modern historians, and students of the American political tradition.

• Focuses on Machiavelli, whose name is synonymous with politics • Covers the English Commonwealth Tradition, which has long been a focus of scholarly interest • Deals with the American Founding Fathers, a subject of perennial interest

Introduction: Machiavelli’s liberal republican legacy Paul A. Rahe; Prologue: Machiavelli’s rapacious republicanism Markus Fischer; Part I. The English Commonwealthmen: 1. Machiavelli in the English revolution Paul A. Rahe; 2. The philosophy of liberty: Locke’s Machiavellian teaching Margaret Michelle Barnes Smith; 3. Muted and manifest English Machiavellism: the reconciliation of Machiavellian republicanism with liberalism in Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government and Trenchard’s and Gordon’s Cato’s Letters Vickie B. Sullivan; Part II. The Moderate Enlightenment: 4. Getting our bearings: Machiavelli and Hume John W. Danford; 5. The Machiavellian spirit of Montesquieu’s liberal republic Paul Carrese; 6. Benjamin Franklin’s ‘Machiavellian’ civic virtue Steven Forde; Part III. The American Founding: 7. The American prince? George Washington’s anti-Machiavellian moment Matthew Spalding; 8. John Adam’s Machiavellian moment C. Bradley Thompson; 9. Thomas Jefferson’s Machiavellian political science Paul A. Rahe; 10. James Madison’s princes and peoples Gary Rosen; 11. Was Alexander Hamilton a Machiavellian statesman? Karl-Friedrich Walling.