Machiavelli’s Historical Writing and Its Irony

Generally Machiavelli has been mainly seen as a active politician or political thinker representing Florence during the Renaissance, or more precisely, as a representative of Florentine republican thought. As a result, unlike the Discourse on Livy which has been interpreted as the quintessence of Renaissance republican thought, the Florentine History which he wrote from the diachronic perspective from the city’s origin to 1492 has not received much attention. It was because of its pessimistic tone and seemingly anti-republican nuances. Contrary to today's accepted belief, however, Machiavelli prided himself on being a humanist historian and tried to look at the problems of his time through the lens of history. In focusing on these, the present study is an essay which attempts at pursuing change in Machiavelli’s perception of history from the Discourse on Livy to the Florentine History and examining the characteristics of Machiavelli as a historian rather than a political thinker. In conclusion, this study argues that Machiavelli did not think that the past and the present could ever be the same, and that one could therefore learn something from history. In this respect, there are many dilemmas and ironies in his historical writings related to the universality or didactic nature of history. But it emphasizes that those are the signs of his maturity as a historian.