Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) is primarily known for his writings on history and Florentine politics. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, his major work, The History of Italy, was translated six times into French, three times into English and Spanish, and once into Dutch and German, not to mention his Maxims and Reflections – a series of meditations grown out of his personal experiences – that had an even wider circulation. In a nutshell, it is no exaggeration to argue that Guicciardini's work deeply affected the European intellectual and political elites throughout the modern age.

Much of what Guicciardini says as a historian and a participant in the ongoing debate on Florentine political institutions inevitably deals with issues of international politics and foreign policy: The History of Italy is, in fact, the history of the relations between the Italian states and the European powers of the day, and the weight of the external world can be perceived in other important writings too. Yet, although we know quite a lot about Guicciardini the historian, his dark and pessimistic views on human affairs and his own brand of ‘republicanism’, precious little has been written about his perspective on international politics and foreign policy. As a modest way to begin to shed some light on this side of Guicciardini's thought, I have chosen to focus not so much on his entire production – which, if one includes the public and private correspondence, is monumental – but only on the part of it that seems immediately relevant to our purposes.

Guicciardini frequently engages in the analysis of political situations through pairs of opposing speeches, one in favour and one against any given policy on any given issue. Now, most of these pairs deal with foreign policy. As a whole, they constitute a remarkable collection of debates on war, peace, alliance and the like – in short, key issues in international affairs. Action takes place in various contexts: different Florentine institutions, the Venetian senate, the French royal council, the papal Curia, the imperial council. The structure of the debates is always straightforward: the first speaker argues that X is the right policy and Y the wrong one; the second speaker argues the opposite.