Politics: Machiavellian Style

In Elizabethan England, Niccolo Machiavelli's // Principe (The Prince, 1505) was considered a treatise on the science of evil statesmanship because it outlined how a cunning tyrant could, through brutal and forceful measures, take and maintain control over a region and a people. In fact, it seemed a veritable handbook for tyranny, with its exhortation that "It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity." Although The Prince advocates morality in a prince, it also urges the ambitious prince to use whatever means necessary to keep the state intact, and that could mean resorting to evil behavior, supposedly in the name of good. Use of force is an art, the most important one the prince has at his disposal: "A prince ought to have no other aim or thought...