All History is Human
Palmer challenges us to rethink the questions we ask of history and the answers we expect from it.
Review by Najma Zahira
Nicolas Machiavelli looms larger than life to those who study political science, history, and philosophy. I knew him as the utilitarian amoralist author of The Prince, where axioms like “the end justifies the means” and “it is better to be feared than loved” originated. But what if Machiavelli was also a Florentine patriot and The Prince actually a love letter to his hometown of Florence? Ada Palmer reframes him in just this way, extending a similar treatment to other popular Renaissance figures, in her 650-page Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age. Palmer’s goal however, is not to dismiss popular conceptions as wrong, but to show that the lens through which you view something, or someone, colors your interpretation of it. That doesn’t make the interpretation less correct, it simply reveals its inherent complexity. Removing Machiavelli from the one-dimensional lens of political science classes reveals that he was far more than a cynical political scientist.
What is true of Machiavelli can be said of the Renaissance and of history as a whole. There are many different causes for the Renaissance, like proto-capitalism and proto-democracy, and the causes on which one focuses shapes how one views the period as a whole. For example, a scholar who sees burgeoning secularism as a driving force of the period will likely focus on figures that align with that, like our friend Machiavelli, and overlook figures that don’t, like Girolama Savonarola, a Dominican friar and extremely influential preacher. This is why Palmer begins the book by telling the audience not to trust her about the Renaissance—an interesting demand from a historian teaching history. She does so not because she isn’t trustworthy, but because she recognizes how her own involvement in the project of history has shaped how she interprets the period, and she wants the audience to also be aware of that.
Palmer calls this project of history, the work of historians to create evidence-driven narratives of the past, the “History Lab.” Her book is as much about the process of history as it is about the Renaissance itself, and Palmer brings her audience into this work. She eases the uninitiated into a personable discussion that sets the stage for a deep examination of historical figures, all while illuminating the effects the History Lab has on our interpretation. For example, Palmer discusses the discourse around whether Lorenzo de Medici, a Florentine patron of the arts who was the de facto ruler of the Republic, was a hero or a villain. The answer, Palmer states, depends on where you look. Some scholars, like those focused on proto-democracy, will see Medici as a tyrant who stifled civic participation, while others, like those concerned with intellectual flourishing, will laud Medici as a hero who cultivated the arts in Florence. Palmer draws out these tensions throughout the book, considering the relationship between history and how it’s been interpreted, adding interjections with her thoughts on the historical process. This structural choice is a continual reminder that the telling of history is a complex, ever-evolving effort.
The History Lab, Palmer states, presents two philosophies of historical change that are important in understanding the myth of the golden age: great forces history and great man history. The former examines how vast forces, like the rise of capitalism or the secularization of society, shape history, while the latter focuses on the actions of remarkable individuals to shape history. The Renaissance is credited as the birthplace of many great men and great forces which, over time, Palmer argues, led historians to construct out of it a golden age, covering the messiness of the individuals and the complexity of growing ideas with a shiny veneer. Palmer chips away at that cover, revealing an imperfect, violent, beautiful, achingly human age. The bulk of the book comes in fifteen detailed, layered depictions of historical Renaissance figures both familiar, like Michelangelo, and lesser known, like Lucrezia Borgia. Palmer paints a rich tapestry of each historical figure, weaving together storylines and events that form the lives of each character study. It is clear that Palmer cares deeply about the character in this period, feelings that transfer to the audience. I found her character portraits deeply moving, especially that of Lucrezia Borgia, who watched her family fall slowly out of favor with the people and the city into which she so desperately tried to assimilate. Palmer treats her characters as people—people who loved, who feared, who cried, who laughed.
The future is made, and history understood, by holding the great forces and great man histories in tandem.
Our friend Machiavelli is Palmer’s last profile. Unlike the preeminent Medici family, he doesn’t appear much in the previous fourteen profiles but nevertheless acts as a throughline throughout the book because he is so familiar to most of Palmer’s readers. Just as modern societies use the Renaissance to legitimize themselves, Palmer argues that many of us, particularly modern atheists and secularists, use Machiavelli to legitimize ourselves and our beliefs. Compared to his contemporaries, he feels modern—he criticized the dominant religious society and engaged with early works on atomism. He was a “radical freethinker,” just like us, so he must be like us in other ways, too. But as it turns out, though Machiavelli was radical for his time and his ideas did shape parts of our modern society (secular social institutions “operating Machiavellianly, i.e. without considering external divine Law”), he was not the modern secularist that some believe. He was shaped by the Christian world around him and lacked the historical and scientific resources to come to modern day conclusions. “No one can ask big questions of a different world and come to our world’s answers,” as Palmer puts it.
Still, the urge to seek identity in the past is nothing new, Palmer writes. Petrarch wanted to believe that Cicero shared his religious leanings, and early Renaissance humanists argued that “Epictetus and Seneca were so wise they must have been secret Christians.” Palmer assures her readers that this desire to authenticate beliefs with history is an understandable and natural impulse, but she pushes us to consider the forward motion of history and ideas more broadly, despite how uncomfortable it may feel. “It is comfortable to believe that people who would agree with us… intentionally dismantled the old world to create ours,” she allows. We want to find kinship in these historical figures, Palmer argues, because it implies an intentionality in creating the future; it is much less comfortable to believe that our modern era was shaped by all people, not just proto-modern thinkers. Are we just subject to the apathetic hand of the universe, unable to affect the future? Far from it.
The future is made, and history understood, by holding the great forces and great man histories in tandem. It’s difficult (and overly reductive) to separate an individual’s great ideas from the context that they lived in or to consider the great trends of history without considering the individuals participating in them. Palmer’s framing of Machiavelli as a central figure throughout Inventing the Renaissance shows this well—he was a remarkable man and the effects of his ideas are still felt today, from political philosophy classrooms to the way we govern, and he was also just a man, shaped and formed by the society in which he was raised and lived. He did not see himself as creating a philosophical underpin of modern society: he just had a burning desire to save his beloved Florence.
There are, as Palmer states, good reasons to study each historical philosophy separately (to illustrate historical parallelisms or to deeply study the effects of a single person on history), but there also is immense value in viewing them as inextricably linked, chiefly as an acknowledgment that we are active participants in the making of the future. Palmer ends the book with this hopeful appeal, reminding the audience that the future is made by regular people who love deeply and hope for a better tomorrow, just as Machiavelli hoped for Florence. Modern scientific tools are far greater than anything anyone in the Renaissance had access to; we not only have access to ideas from the Renaissance but also every idea that was built upon it. We are better equipped now with the tools of progress than anyone in the past; we just need to use them.
Najma Zahira holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Dartmouth College. She currently works in Boston, where she can be found relaxing outside on a nice day or at a ceramics studio.
Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age was published by the University of Chicago Press on March 28, 2025. Fare Forward appreciates their provision of a copy for our reviewer. You can purchase your own copy from the publisher here.
