Nicolo Machiavelli perspective on
globalization
Practically nothing is known of Nicolo
Machiavelli before he became a minor
official in the Florentine Government. His youth, however, was passed
during some of the most tumultuous years in the history of Florence. He
was
born the year that Lorenzo the Magnificent came to power, subverting the
traditional civil liberties of Florence
while inaugurating a reign of
unrivaled luxury and of great brilliance for the arts. He was twenty-five
at the time of Savonarola’s attempt to establish a theocratic democracy,
although, from the available evidence, he took no part in it. Yet through
his family, he was closer to many of these events than many Florentine
citizens. The Machiavelli family for generations had held public office,
and his father was a jurist and a minor official. Machiavelli himself,
shortly after the execution of Savanarola, became
Secretary of the Second
Chancery, which was to make him widely known among his contemporaries as
the
“Florentine Secretary.”
