Machiavelli on Deportation

Somewhat surprisingly, Machiavelli’s comments on King Ferdinand of Spain are decidedly ambivalent throughout The Prince. But I focus on a single passage to illustrate this. After praising Ferdinand for being — well — quite Machiavellian, he then closes by expressing a certain kind of (somewhat un-Machiavellian) moral disapproval of Ferdinand’s expulsion of the Marranos in Spain. Let me quote first:

Ferdinand of Aragon, the present king of Spain…can be called an almost new prince because from being a weak king he has become by fame and by glory the first king among the Christians; and, if you consider his actions, you will find them all very great and some of them extraordinary. In the beginning of his reign he attacked Granada, and that enterprise was the foundation of his state. First, he made it at leisure and without fear of being interfered with; he kept the minds of the barons of Castile preoccupied; while thinking of that war, they did not think of innovating. And in the meantime he acquired reputation and power over them which they did not perceive. He was able to sustain armies with money from the Church and the people, and with that long war to lay a foundation for his own military, which later brought him honor. Besides this, in order to undertake greater enterprises, always making use of religion, he turned to an act of pious cruelty, expelling the Marranos from his kingdom and despoiling it of them; nor could there be an example more wretched and rarer than this.—The Prince, Chapter 21 (translated by Mansfield)

There is a lot going on here. It’s not wholly clear what distinguishes an ‘almost new prince’ from a genuine ‘new prince’ (like Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus etc.) discussed in Chapter 6. But presumably it’s because while the latter gave “form” (that is laws and institutions) to scattered “matter” (a heterogeneous people), Ferdinand refined an existing form.

Mansfield’s translation translates translate Marrani as Marranos. As I learned from Edward Andrew’s (1990) "The foxy prophet: Machiavelli versus Machiavelli on Ferdinand the Catholic," History of Political Thought 11(3) 409-422, there has been some divergence on this in the past with many translators and interpreters preferring Moors or Muhammedans, and, as Andrew (1990) prefers, Jews. The late eighteenth century translation (which also included Voltaire’s notes to Anti-Machiavel) translates (here) Jews. This is also true of the seventeenth century translation (here) by Dacres.

What’s even less clear is why Machiavelli is so ambivalent about the expulsion of the Jews. Elsewhere in The Prince he advocates some such action against conquered inhabitants explicitly (say when conquering a previously free polity in Chapter 5).

Andrew’s conclusion is that according to Machiavelli, “Ferdinand's methods were not in themselves objectionable, but they did not serve a glorious end. Ferdinand was a fox, not a prophet, who craftily fabricated a war against the Marranos to enhance his reputation at the expense of the common good or the durable interest of his country.” (p. 422) The problem with this explanation is that when he is writing The Prince, Machiavelli can’t know that Ferdinand’s actions won’t serve the common good or durable interest of the country. It’s also not obvious why Machiavelli would object to the end Ferdinand is pursing. All the genuine New Princes used religion to fortify and expand their rule, so Machiavelli can’t be objecting against Ferdinand’s apparent piety or religiosity, or his growing territorial ambitions.

Now, from the start, in the Discourses Machiavelli is quite clear that for republics a growing, heterogeneous population is a good thing and, for such polities, he is a clear advocate of open immigration long before the development of liberalism. In addition, in free republics endogenous population growth is to be expected because marriages themselves are freer there, “and each man gladly begets those children he thinks he can bring up, without fear that his patrimony will be taken from him; he knows not merely that they are born free and not slaves but that by means of their abilities they can become prominent men.” (2.2.) Machiavelli is quite explicit that through open borders and secure property, republics can generate a virtuous cycle of population, military, and economic growth. But it does not follow that reducing population and making it more homogeneous (as religious/ethnic deportation does) needs to be a bad thing for a kingdom.

Having said that, Machiavelli is quite explicit that expropriation of property of ordinary people — as the expulsion of the Jews also involved — is an unmitigated bad. In fact, it is the source of the wrong sort of hatred which can be avoided if the New Prince “abstains from the property of citizens and his subjects.” (Chapter 17, emphasis added.) Clearly, Ferdinand violates this maxim.

In fact, not all the property of the expelled Marranos went to the Crown, some of it ended up financing the inquisition itself (as Edward notes). And undoubtedly Machiavelli disapproves of strengthening the independent means and power of this terror-generating (religious) institution, which becomes a state within a state.

My sense is that Machiavelli thinks the expulsion of the Marranos generated the wrong sort — because wholly unnecessary — of enmity not just among the deported, but also among their friends and even Catholic relatives among Ferdinand’s subjects. That is, for short-term gain, Ferdinand risked weakening his own power and loyalty. And he did so through an act of cruelty