ASRC 1851 - FWS: The Mercenary Menace: Reading Machiavelli’s Prince

Fall. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

First-Year Writing Seminar.

G. Farred.

Machiavelli’s “The Prince” is not only a manual for teaching a prince how to rule, but a critique of the use of mercenaries by Italian city-states. Using Machiavelli, this course takes up the question of universal conscription as a political problem for our mament: a political problem in so far as it raises the issue of democracy, and the relationship between representation and conscription or, a volunteer army.