Reading Machiavelli in 1943

This article examines how wartime conditions affect the practice of reading. Its focus is on how Machiavelli’s The Prince was read by a high school student, Gábor Fehér, in Hungary in World War II. By examining how Fehér studied Machiavelli to understand Hitler, and how Fehér reflected on contemporary thinkers’ writings about modernity, this article offers a contribution toward understanding how people from all walks of life reflected on the meaning and methods of history. It also provides a genealogy of Quentin Skinner’s contextual interpretations of political thought, examining how earlier proponents of contextualism reconciled their historical sensibilities to the idea of comparing Machiavelli to Hitler.