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Reviewed by:
  • Italy and the European Powers: The Impact of War, 1500–1530
  • Niccolò Capponi
Italy and the European Powers: The Impact of War, 1500–1530. Edited by Christine Shaw. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2006. ISBN 978-90-04-15163-5. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Pp. xix, 317. $142.00.

This book, volume thirty-eight of Brill’s History of Warfare, is a collection of essays presented at a conference held at the University of Warwick and sponsored by the University’s AHRB Centre for the Study of Renaissance Elites and Court Cultures, which goes a long way to explain the incongruity between the tome’s contents and its title, subtitle and the series’ name. Those seeking the book with the hope of finding a wealth of new information on the Italian Wars of the early sixteenth century may be disappointed, despite the quality of the essays – invariably good; in some cases, excellent.

Out of fifteen contributions, only four deal directly with military matters. Another five – six, maybe – contain indirect references to martial topics. The rest examine matters connected with Italy’s intellectual milieu, which, while interesting in a broad sense, have little or nothing to do with the history of warfare, or the impact of war on the Italian peninsula for that matter. Humfrey Butters’s ‘Political alliances and political structures in the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini’ is a fine analysis of the political theories circulating in Florence at the beginning of the sixteenth century, yet only once, and somewhat en passant, does it refer to the abysmal failure of the Florentine militia at the sack of Prato in 1512. To be fair, since in 1494 and 1512 two separate foreign invasions caused a regime change in Florence, Dr. Butters can make a case for Machiavelli and Guicciardini’s political writings having been shaped by the Italian Wars. Such finesse is totally absent in William F. Prizer’s ‘Cardinals and courtesans: Secular music in Rome, 1500–1520’, a compelling study on the cultural role of public women, but totally unrelated to anything particularly bellicose (although one could argue that mercenary lovers are not very different from hired soldiery). The last section of the book is entirely dedicated to the arts and letters in sixteenth century Italy, rather peculiar in a book ostensibly dedicated to the history of warfare.

Military historians will certainly find valuable the essay by Michael Mallett (‘The transformation of war, 1494–1530’), as well Atis Antonovics’s analysis of the inquest on the French defeat in Naples in 1503. Both Simon Pepper and Eva Ranzulli break new [End Page 933] ground in the field of fortifications, while Christine Shaw’s study on the Papacy and the European powers is likewise interesting, not least because it effectively summarizes the political and diplomatic challenges the Popes had to face in an age of crisis. John Law’s essay on the end of the Duchy of Camerino follows a similar path.

In short, do I recommend this book? Considering that most of the relevant essays in military history could have been included in half of a normal issue of The Journal of Military History and at a tenth of this volume’s price, it is probably best to wait until it has been acquired by one’s local library. But given the lack of funds of most reading institutions, this book it is likely to re main the perquisite of a few history buffs with very deep pockets.

Niccolò Capponi
Florence, Italy
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