This is a book about the history of liberal and anti-liberal political thought in the Spanish-speaking Atlantic world between 1880 and 1940 from the perspective offered by allusions to, and reflections on, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527). The notion of the Spanishspeaking Atlantic world alludes to a space formed by Spain and its former colonies, which became independent nations during the nineteenth century and are usually referred to collectively as “Hispanic America.” Considering this scenario, the book's inquiry takes Argentina as its main case and proposes dialogues and interpretative relations between authors from Spain and Hispanic American countries.

The figure of Machiavelli is familiar to us all and yet is also shrouded in controversy. It is not necessary to have read The Prince (1532) or the Discourses on Livy (1531) to know what we mean when we call someone “Machiavellian” or “Machiavellic,” or refer to certain behavior in this way. His name resonates far beyond the frontiers of the academic world and has become synonymous with a set of manipulative attitudes and behaviors; it is frequently used as a descriptive metaphor in colloquial language (Sigmund Freud might be considered a similar example).

In fact, since his books began to circulate in sixteenth-century Europe, Machiavelli has courted controversy and censorship. Associated with the validation of immoral and self-serving attitudes of the most reprehensible kind, ranging from cruelty to tyranny, from hypocrisy to violence, Machiavelli puts the unspeakable into words and preaches the art of lying and deception. An author of exceptional frankness, his writing is free of euphemisms and displays an innate mastery of simulation. For both of these reasons, he could be considered as much an accomplice of power as an advocate for freedom: his advice to the prince was both a “textbook for tyrants” and an explicit warning to the people to be on their guard against arbitrary governments.

In the academic field, his work was and still is intensely disputed. Controversies have raged around its essential core and the problems it raises, and sundry debates have been held about the doctrinal affiliation of his ideas. In the historiography of the last decades, significant attention has been paid to Machiavelli and his work, thanks to the classic volume by John Pocock, published in 1975, which established Machiavelli as a republican.