Describing historians as political actors often brings to mind notions of bias, political maneuvering, and a lack of objectivity. This view reduces historians to political commentators, selectively using historical evidence to support contemporary agendas, potentially succumbing to the trap of presentism. In recent decades, this dual role has gained prominence. While some argue that historians can aid politicians by enriching current debates and offering insights for future planning, critics caution against the dangers of superficial, hurried historical interpretations that prioritize political objectives over accuracy.
First published in 1975, J.G.A. Pocock’s The Machiavellian Moment is widely regarded as a masterpiece and one of the most influential works of the 20th century for intellectual historians, political philosophers, and theorists. By 2025, this seminal work will have shaped scholarly discourse and public debates for half a century. The book offers a dynamic, non-linear, and geographically expansive history of republicanism as a transatlantic political language, traversing periods and contexts from classical antiquity to Renaissance Florence, early modern England, and colonial America.
Pocock’s work stirred both academic and public controversies, as it reframed the narrative of American political foundations. He positioned the American Revolution not as a unique or isolated event but as part of a broader Atlantic republican tradition. By tracing the intellectual origins of the United States back to the Aristotelian ideal of citizenship and Florentine civic humanism, Pocock challenged two prevailing assumptions: first, that the US Declaration of Independence was the apex of modernity and a singularly intentional foundation of a political system; and second, that the foundational debates of America were solely rooted in liberal ideology. Instead, Pocock argued that these debates were neither entirely liberal nor historically unprecedented.
J.G.A. Pocock later admitted that The Machiavellian Moment was deliberately challenging, crafted in a “complex and discursive style” to reflect the contradictions and complexities inherent in the narrative he sought to tell. Unsurprisingly, given the depth and breadth of his work, Pocock’s key conclusions have often been misunderstood or remain opaque.
The Machiavellian Moment explores the development and transmission of classical republican ideals in the Western world. It offers a comprehensive view of the survival of Aristotle’s concept of the good life, grounded in active citizenship and civic virtue, while addressing the constant effort to prevent corruption and political instability. The book identifies three pivotal historical contexts: Renaissance Florence, 17th-century England, and the American Revolutionary period. Central to this exploration are figures like Niccolò Machiavelli and James Harrington, whose ideas shaped the republican discourse. Key concepts such as time, virtue, corruption, and liberty form the foundation of this tradition. Pocock highlights Machiavelli’s focus on sustaining civic virtue amidst Florence’s instability and decline, coining the term “Machiavellian moment” to describe the tension between the ideal of active citizenship and the fragile, transient nature of republics.
Pocock identifies two additional “Machiavellian moments” within the republican tradition. First, Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) envisioned an “immortal” English commonwealth designed to resist corruption and decay, a vision that influenced 18th-century political thought. Second, during the founding of the American republic, the Federalists emphasized creating robust constitutional frameworks to protect the republic from corruption. At that time, commerce and the rise of a commercial society posed significant challenges, as wealth and luxury were seen as threats to civic virtue and political stability. Pocock shows that their primary concern was preserving virtue and preventing the selfish accumulation of power at the expense of the public good.
Described by Pocock as a “tunnel history,” The Machiavellian Moment revitalized the study of republicanism in political thought by tracing its evolution across centuries. The book’s final chapter, “The Americanization of Virtue,” sparked significant controversy. Pocock linked the American Revolution to classical republicanism, tracing its intellectual lineage through Machiavelli and Harrington. He argued that the republican language shaping America’s nation-building efforts sought to uphold popular virtue against corruption and commercial decay. This interpretation challenged the idea that the American Revolution marked a radical break from the old regime. Instead, Pocock framed it as part of a broader European tradition, suggesting that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were not entirely novel but rooted in enduring political languages of the old world. This perspective, in some ways, reduced their distinctiveness by embedding them in a larger historical continuum.
A marble bust of a man with curly hair, dressed in draped clothing, stands on a pedestal against a dark backdrop.
George Washington (1795) by Giuseppe Ceracchi, courtesy of the Met Museum, New York.
In contrast to Pocock’s perspective, thinkers like Leo Strauss and his followers argued that the connection between republicanism and the founding of the United States was superficial at best. They maintained that Pocock’s emphasis on the continuity of republicanism overlooked the significant and groundbreaking influence of liberalism. According to them, Pocock left little room for liberal ideas and prominent liberal thinkers such as John Locke. Similarly, Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America (1955), shaped by the ideas of C.B. Macpherson, presented Locke as an honorary Founding Father. Hartz depicted liberalism—with its focus on individualism, commerce, and limited government—as the philosophical foundation of the emerging American republic. This set the stage for a broader debate pitting republicanism, grounded in civic humanism, reason, and virtue, against liberalism, characterized by possessive individualism, emerging capitalism, and private interests. The virtuous citizen-patriot was juxtaposed with the economic man, with Machiavelli and Locke symbolizing opposing philosophical underpinnings for a new society.
The notion that republicanism and liberalism were entirely distinct and opposing political traditions became both a historical and political commonplace. This framework remains influential in understanding political discourse even today. Historian David Craig noted that Pocock’s work helped popularize—and simultaneously challenge—a clear-cut division between these ideologies. Reflecting on The Machiavellian Moment years after its publication, Pocock acknowledged that the book often portrayed republicanism as being at odds with liberalism. However, his true intention was to highlight the complex tensions between these traditions as they existed in the minds of America’s Founding Fathers.
Pocock’s final chapter was especially provocative, sparking debates that resonated on historiographical, cultural, and political levels. For Pocock, time, politics, and context were intricately connected. The way societies understand and write about their past has significant political implications, shaping the political experience of the present. Historians play a vital role in this process, crafting narratives that influence collective identities. Pocock emphasized that “what explains the past legitimates the present and moderates the impact of the past upon it.” Thus, his critique of a liberal past also questioned the foundations of a liberal identity. In this sense, history becomes an essential tool for constructing or deconstructing the self-awareness of political societies and fostering a shared sense of community.
Given Pocock’s deep engagement with the political dimensions of historical imagination, it is fitting to examine how The Machiavellian Moment was politically interpreted in various contexts. This analysis offers an opportunity to situate Pocock’s work within a broader framework of its reception and consider details of his professional biography—a fitting tribute to a scholar whose contextualist methodology was a hallmark of his approach.
Pocock faced paradoxical criticism: on one hand, he was accused of being too liberal, and on the other, not liberal enough. In other words, he was criticized for being too American and not American enough, an intriguing criticism for a New Zealander. These critiques highlight the oversimplified connection between American identity and liberalism, a connection Pocock’s Machiavellian Moment explicitly challenged.
Pocock himself was uneasy about engaging in such debates, as he admitted. In the foreword to the French edition of The Machiavellian Moment, he mentioned that the book’s overwhelming success led to intense, often confusing debates. However, Pocock was keenly aware that historical narratives are interpreted differently depending on the context, and as a historian of historiography, he dedicated his career to placing ideas within their proper historical contexts.
Pocock passed away in December 2023, just short of his 100th birthday. His death prompted heartfelt tributes worldwide and reflections on his legacy, with several academic events held in his honor. From participating in these events, I observed a common division in approaching his vast body of work. One could focus on his historical research, such as his studies on the history of legal and political thought and historiography, with standout works like The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (1957), The Machiavellian Moment (1975), and the six volumes of Barbarism and Religion (1999-2015), his study of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788).
Alternatively, Pocock was recognized for his theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of the history of political thought, which were mostly presented in journal articles and essays, later collected in books like Politics, Language, and Time (1971), Virtue, Commerce, and History (1985), and The Discovery of Islands (2005). Among those who praised his methodological innovations, many highlighted his concept of “political language” as a distinct idiom, rhetoric, or specialized vocabulary (such as that of “common law,” “civil jurisprudence,” or “classical republicanism”). Political debates can take place in multiple languages, allowing for different terms and ideas to coexist, be adopted by various authors, and move across time and space. A less discussed yet significant aspect of Pocock’s work was his view on the close relationship between historiography and politics. He believed that histories are political narratives that should always be open to reevaluation and debate.
Historians shape narratives about what should be admired or despised, imitated or avoided, based on their interpretations of the past.
In the two-fold division described earlier, Pocock’s substantive monographs and his methodological writings are often treated separately in his extensive body of work, presented as distinct from one another. This approach suggests that readers could engage with Pocock as a historian of political thought without delving into his role as a theorist and political actor, or vice versa. However, an intriguing way into Pocock’s work is to explore how his ideas on historiography enrich our understanding of his research on early modern republicanism and the political debates surrounding the reception of The Machiavellian Moment.
Pocock’s reflections on the role of historians invite us to consider his own writings through this lens. According to his own view, he embodied a historian who was also a political actor. Historians, in this perspective, are not detached intellectuals in ivory towers but are public figures occupying a privileged role in shaping and reshaping political identities and meanings. They define what is worthy of admiration or scorn, imitation or avoidance.
Pocock’s views align with, but also differ from, those of his close associate Quentin Skinner. In defending the importance of contextualizing intellectual history, Skinner countered criticisms of antiquarianism and the supposed irrelevance of historical knowledge. He showed, for example, how political freedom has historically been associated with the absence of coercion, offering insights that can guide contemporary political thought. Skinner emphasized that the past can serve as a tool for understanding and navigating the present, presenting the historian as a public intellectual who bridges past, present, and future. However, this approach risks slipping into political punditry.
While Skinner sees history as a tool for political purposes, Pocock argues that history writing itself is inherently political. His complex view merges the political sphere with academia, suggesting that political debates and academic discourses are not merely in dialogue but are intertwined forms of each other. According to Pocock, historians are not partisans manipulating historical records for political gain. Instead, history shapes the political identities we inhabit, and we live within the histories we believe. The challenge, however, lies in the weight of this responsibility, as seen in the reception of The Machiavellian Moment.
The idea that history and politics are inseparable runs through many of Pocock’s theoretical essays. For example, in ‘The Historian as Political Actor in Polity, Society, and Academy’ (1996), republished in Political Thought and History (2008), Pocock provocatively asks: ‘What kind of political phenomenon is a history?’ and ‘What kinds of political reflection, or theory, can various forms of historiography create?’ His answers highlight the circular nature of history writing as a political act, leading to a vision of both contestation and consensus in public debates.
Contestation implies multiple perspectives on historical events. As a result, history loses its singularity and embraces pluralism, resulting in several possible ‘histories’ and ‘pasts’—within the boundaries of evidence. Pocock avoids the relativist trap, emphasizing that while histories are invented, they must also be verified—they are both ‘discovered’ and ‘constructed.’ This multiplicity of histories allows for the coexistence of various political identities within a polity. For Pocock, competing narratives about a polity play a central role in shaping political identities, fostering a sense of belonging, and delineating ‘us’ from ‘them.’
He expands on these ideas in ‘The Politics of Historiography’ (2005), discussing how political societies ‘acquire pasts’ and retell contested narratives in myriad ways. These narratives, or ‘myths,’ serve to uphold the cohesion, autonomy, and sovereignty of societies. Pocock does not suggest that historians should serve as mere instruments of government propaganda—though they may have been at times—but instead that a level of disagreement and pluralism is essential to both the historian’s work and the citizen’s experience.
Pocock’s career and biography offer insights into his approach to history and politics. Though he moved to the US in 1966 and spent most of his life there, Pocock grew up in New Zealand, and this background influenced his perspective. He traveled between Britain and New Zealand while pursuing a PhD at the University of Cambridge, but he maintained his New Zealand citizenship and believed his homeland shaped his ‘antipodean perception’ of history. The Machiavellian Moment, conceived during his time between the South Pacific and the Mississippi Valley, is a history influenced by the movement of people and ideas. As he stated in his Valedictory Lecture (1994), he had traced the ‘journeying’ of the Atlantic republican tradition, humorously adding that only someone from the mid-Pacific could develop a truly mid-Atlantic perspective, a remark he later crossed out in the manuscript.
Growing up in a settler family, Pocock viewed history as constantly in motion, shaped by ‘voyages’ and settlements, with British history—encompassing the American Revolution—being a global phenomenon with influences on both hemispheres. For Pocock, history and political identities were inseparable, and from this, political contestation naturally emerged. History, when viewed as the creation of autonomy, sovereignty, and political identity, sets the stage for a ‘contest for power’ in a postcolonial context. Both dominant and subordinate groups produced incomplete histories that were never fully resolved, always seeking respectful dialogue. This framework helps explain the controversies sparked by The Machiavellian Moment. Many American scholars read Pocock’s work as a critique of US history and identity, but for Pocock, who was never entirely ‘at home,’ these debates were shaped by the complex struggles that form the political identities of the ‘British peoples.’ For him, there was no history without politics, and no politics without a contested political identity.
In analyzing Pocock’s career and contributions within contemporary political debates, I intentionally avoid simplifying his political stance according to current labels. While many critics saw The Machiavellian Moment as an attack on contemporary liberalism, Pocock’s belief in the inherent contestability of histories required a commitment to pluralism and organic liberalism. He argued that allowing diverse, sometimes conflicting, perspectives was essential for the historical profession to thrive. In Pocock’s view, history as a field of study demands a liberal environment where multiple explanations coexist. Essentially, history writing creates multiple worlds, constantly reinterpreting the continuities and discontinuities that connect the past, present, and