Welcome to The Municipal Machiavelli: The Prince Rewritten

This is an online version of a book I wrote in 2012. My goal was to modernize Machiavelli’s famous work, The Prince, and return its attention to its original audience: municipal politicians. It has not been published in a paper version, yet, but I am still looking for a suitable publisher. I am also working on an e-book  and iPad version should I not find a book publisher.

I chose to publish it in this WordPress format now because, after recent events at the local level in my own municipality, I felt it was of great and growing relevance to the daily political business of municipal governance. I do admit to some tongue-in-cheekiness in my comments in these pages, however.

2013 is the 500th anniversary since the writing of The Prince (it wasn’t published until 1532, after Machiavelli’s death). I felt it only fitting to update Machiavelli and bring back the audience he first wrote for. Municipal politicians are often overlooked when scholars dissect Machiavelli, and that’s a big oversight given who Machiavelli originally wrote for. I hope I can in some small way contribute to restoring him to his audience.

This site is somewhat of a work in progress. I am always tweaking with layout and design, so I apologize in advance if you find it changing rather too often.

I have laid this site out using the chapters and sections of the book, including all of the prefatory material, addenda and bibliography. My chapters parallel Machiavelli’s own in The Prince, although the chapter titles are somewhat different. It has approx. 65,000 words. I am still looking for some historical material through online booksellers, and may add content to the bibliography or additional quotations to the core material, in future. I have an outline for a chapter on Machiavelli and Rhetoric, too.

I use many quotes taken from a wide range of sources to buttress both my own interpretations and Machiavelli’s own arguments – Han Fei Tzu, Sun Tzu, Napoleon, Robert Greene, Cicero and others. Quotations lifted from Machiavelli’s book have often been modified to make them clearer or to phrase them in more modern language. In doing so, I used many different translations of his works to find the most appropriate wording, as noted in the bibliography. More than 450 of the main quotes from the book are displayed in the sidebar quotation widget

I take full responsibility for any misquotes, any mistakes, typos, misinterpretations, and bad ideas.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I am working on a version for e-book, iTunes and PDF. Please contact me if you would like a copy.

This work is copyright 2012 under international law by Ian Chadwick. Please do not reproduce any part of it it without prior permission, except as per fair use clauses and for reviews. Thank you for your consideration. I welcome your comments via email: ichadwick (at) rogers.com.