Despite the high regard in which Francesco Petrarca (1304-74) held St. Augustine, scholars have been inclined to view Augustine s impact on the content of Petrarch s thought rather lightly. Wedded to the ancient classics, and prioritising literary imitation over intellectual coherence, Petrarch is commonly thought to have made inconsistent use of St. Augustine s works. Adopting an entirely fresh approach, however, this book argues that Augustine s early writings consistently provided Petrarch with the conceptual foundations of his approach to moral questions, and with a model for integrating classical precepts into a coherent Christian framework. As a result, this book offers a challenging re-interpretation of Petrarch s humanism, and offers a provocative new interpretation of his role in the development of Italian humanism.

Offering a comprehensive discussion into regime change in Italy during the Early Modern period, this book will appeal to students and researchers alike interested in the dynamics between politics, military, and culture in Europe during this crucial era.

The first comprehensive coverage of a subject that has fascinated natural historians for centuries. Avian vagrancy is a phenomenon that has fascinated natural historians for centuries. From Victorian collectors willing to spend fortunes on a rare specimen, to today's high-octane bird-chasing 'twitchers', the enigma of vagrancy has become a source of obsession for countless birders worldwide. Vagrancy in Birds explores both pattern and process in avian vagrancy, drawing on recent research to answer a suite of fundamental questions concerning the occurrence of rare birds. For each avian family, the book provides an in-depth analysis of recent and historical vagrancy patterns, representing the first comprehensive assessment of vagrancy at a global scale. The accounts are accompanied by hundreds of previously unpublished images featuring many of the most exceptional vagrants on record. The book synthesises for the first time everything we know about the subject, making the case for vagrancy as a biological phenomenon with far-reaching implications for avian ecology and evolution.

The people who live in border towns often have closer relations with people across their immediate borders than with people in the same country as them. Despite how intertwined these border communities often are, neither community can access the governmental institutions of the nation on the other side. Why are the citizens of neighboring regions that lie across an international border often subject to very different governance systems? More broadly, why can't public services be bought piecemeal, on an a-la-carte basis, with governments competing to provide higher quality services at the lowest cost in a marketplace for government services? These questions lie at the heart of modern International Relations. In The Cartel System of States, Avidit Acharya and Alexander Lee provide a powerful and field-shaping theory to address a fundamental issue in world politics: the character of the territorial nation-state. They contend that the modern territorial state system works as an economic cartel in which states have local, bounded monopolies in governing their citizens. States refuse to violate each other's monopolies, even when they could do so easily. Acharya and Lee examine what makes this system stable, when and how it emerged, how it spread, how it has been challenged, and what led it to be so resilient over time. Drawing from the centuries long process of modern state formation, The Cartel System of States explains both how the present system of territorial states-by no means a foregone conclusion in retrospect-took over the world and how it might change in the future.

Why do some states provide infrastructure and social services to their citizens, and others do not? In Development in Multiple Dimensions, Alexander Lee examines the origins of success and failure in the public services of developing countries. Comparing states within India, this study examines how elites either control, or are shut out of, policy decisions and how the interests of these elites influence public policy. He shows that social inequalities are not single but multiple, creating groups of competing elites with divergent policy interests. Since the power of these elites varies, states do not necessarily focus on the same priorities: some focus on infrastructure, others on social services, and still others on both or neither. The author develops his ideas through quantitative comparisons and case studies focusing on four northern Indian states: Gujarat, West Bengal, Bihar, and Himachal Pradesh, each of which represents different types of political economy and has a different set of powerful caste groups. The evidence indicates that regional variation in India is a consequence of social differences, and the impact of these differences on carefully considered distributional strategies, rather than differences in ideology, geography, or institutions.

The people who live in border towns often have closer relations with people across their immediate borders than with people in the same country as them. Despite how intertwined these border communities often are, neither community can access the governmental institutions of the nation on the other side. Why are the citizens of neighboring regions that lie across an international border often subject to very different governance systems? More broadly, why can't public services be bought piecemeal, on an a-la-carte basis, with governments competing to provide higher quality services at the lowest cost in a marketplace for government services? These questions lie at the heart of modern International Relations. In The Cartel System of States, Avidit Acharya and Alexander Lee provide a powerful and field-shaping theory to address a fundamental issue in world politics: the character of the territorial nation-state. They contend that the modern territorial state system works as an economic cartel in which states have local, bounded monopolies in governing their citizens. States refuse to violate each other's monopolies, even when they could do so easily. Acharya and Lee examine what makes this system stable, when and how it emerged, how it spread, how it has been challenged, and what led it to be so resilient over time. Drawing from the centuries long process of modern state formation, The Cartel System of States explains both how the present system of territorial states-by no means a foregone conclusion in retrospect-took over the world and how it might change in the future.

For more than a century, scholars have believed that Italian humanism was predominantly civic in outlook. Often serving in communal government, fourteenth-century humanists like Albertino Mussato and Coluccio Saltuati are said to have derived from their reading of the Latin classics a rhetoric of republican liberty that was opposed to the 'tyranny' of neighbouring signori and of the German emperors. In this ground-breaking study, Alexander Lee challenges this long-held belief. From the death of Frederick II in 1250 to the failure of Rupert of the Palatinate's ill-fated expedition in 1402, Lee argues, the humanists nurtured a consistent and powerful affection for the Holy Roman Empire. Though this was articulated in a variety of different ways, it was nevertheless driven more by political conviction than by cultural concerns. Surrounded by endless conflict - both within and between city-states - the humanists eagerly embraced the Empire as the surest guarantee of peace and liberty, and lost no opportunity to invoke its protection. Indeed, as Lee shows, the most ardent appeals to imperial authority were made not by 'signorial' humanists, but by humanists in the service of communal regimes. The first comprehensive, synoptic study of humanistic ideas of Empire in the period c.1250-1402, this volume offers a radically new interpretation of fourteenth-century political thought, and raises wide-ranging questions about the foundations of modern constitutional ideas. As such, it is essential reading not just for students of Renaissance Italy and the history of political thought, but for all those interested in understanding the origins of liberty

‘A notorious fiend’, ‘generally odious’, ‘he seems hideous, and so he is.’

Thanks to the invidious reputation of his most famous work, The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli exerts a unique hold over the popular imagination. But was Machiavelli as sinister as he is often thought to be? Might he not have been an infinitely more sympathetic figure, prone to political missteps, professional failures and personal dramas?

Alexander Lee reveals the man behind the myth, following him from cradle to grave, from his father’s penury and the abuse he suffered at a teacher’s hands, to his marriage and his many affairs (with both men and women), to his political triumphs and, ultimately, his fall from grace and exile. In doing so, Lee uncovers hitherto unobserved connections between Machiavelli’s life and thought. He also reveals the world through which Machiavelli moved: from the great halls of Renaissance Florence to the court of the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, from the dungeons of the Stinche prison to the Rucellai gardens, where he would begin work on some of his last great works.

As much a portrait of an age as of a uniquely engaging man, Lee’s gripping and definitive biography takes the reader into Machiavelli’s world – and his work – more completely than ever before.

Featuring the beauties of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, combined with the dark and hidden side of the Renaissance, by an acclaimed historian and expert in the period. Renowned as an age of artistic rebirth, the Renaissance is cloaked with an aura of beauty and brilliance. But behind the Mona Lisa's smile lurked a seamy, vicious world of power politics, perversity and corruption that has more in common with the present day than anyone dares to admit. Enter a world of corrupt bankers, greedy politicians, sex-crazed priests, rampant disease, and lives of extravagance and excess. Enter the world of the ugly Renaissance. Uncovering the hidden realities beneath the surface of the period's best-known artworks, historian Alexander Lee takes the reader on a breathtaking and unexpected journey through the Italian past and shows that, far from being the product of high-minded ideals, the sublime monuments of the Renaissance were created by flawed and tormented artists who lived in an ever-expanding world of bigotry and hatred. The only question is: will you ever see the Renaissance in quite the same way again?

Caste and ethnicity have been crucial in shaping the discourse around identity politics in modern South Asia. This book critically discusses two important trends in twentieth-century Indian politics - the rise in the political salience of caste identities, and a shift in the way caste identity was conceptualized; from a hierarchical system based on the adoption of specific behaviours to a system based on bounded and autonomous groups not dissimilar to ethnic groups as conceived of in other parts of the world. It traces these changes to the evolving incentives of the elites of poorer ethnic groups, which are themselves a product of the gradual rise of literacy in colonial South Asia, and the democratization of the political system. This theory challenges accounts that emphasize the role of the colonial state in the evolution of caste. It presents a wide range of novel historical evidence to support these claims, both qualitative and quantitative, and covering both the colonial and post-independence periods.