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[[File: |thumbnail|left|250px|''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0582057582/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0582057582&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=e86ffd641ad8773bb1c620ffec94a821 The Italian Wars, 1494-1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe]'' by Michael Mallet & Christine Shaw]]
By Anne Maltempi
''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0582057582/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0582057582&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=e86ffd641ad8773bb1c620ffec94a821 The Italian Wars, 1494-1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe]'' written by historians Michael Mallet and Christine Shaw provides a predominantly chronologically structured military and political history of the Italian Wars. Concerned with demonstrating the importance of the Italian Wars, Mallet and Shaw negated the arguments of contemporaries Guicciardini and Machiavelli’s accounts which blame Italian political and diplomatic failures for the French invasion in 1494; rather, Mallet and Shaw point to a series of complex political, social, and technological events complicating the narrative put forth by the early modern Italian humanists.
Mallet and Shaw’s central arguments were that the Italian Wars reshaped Italy as well as the rest of Europe militaristically, culturally, and politically; additionally, a key point they emphasized was the contestation of Spanish power in Italy arguing against the historiographical body of literature which propagated narratives of the tyrannical Spanish power dominating Italy under the “pax hispanica.” Furthermore, Mallet and Shaw suggested the contingency of Spanish power through the whole of Europe in demonstrating how well Spanish forces contended with the others involved in the Italian Wars particularly those of the French.
The book is divided into ten chapters, with a source base consisting of several national archives—those of Venice, Lucca, Florence, and Simancas—as well as the variety of secondary academic sources, and primary documents from the period. The first five chapters provided the bulk of the context for the subsequent sections including key players in the Wars such as the Charles V, Julius II, Louis XII, King Ferdinand of Naples, along with military commanders, noble families, among many others.
The scholars also went into detail in this section about the claims both France and Spain had on the Kingdom of Naples, and the complicated relationships formed between each key player with the Duchy of Milan, Venice, and the Papacy. Additionally, the book goes into great detail describing the key battles of the Italian Wars such as the Battles of Ravenna and the Battle of Pavia. The book also contains several incredibly useful maps which help illustrate some of the battles for readers, as well as provide general geographic information for readers. However, thematic chapters six and seven, provided a welcomed break from the narrative barrage of names, principalities, and dates which overwhelmingly occupied the first five chapters.
According to Mallet and Shaw, some of these included the ability to test and create new military technologies which established the foundations for a professionalized army, the expansion of Italian Renaissance and humanist culture to the whole of Europe, and the new implementation of Spanish power in Italian territories. The implementation of Spanish power in Italy was a complicated process in itself. As Mallet and Shaw explained, some territories transitioned more easily than others. Nevertheless, the transition was tenuous at best. Mallet and Shaw stated “Italians need not have perceived the power of the Spanish empire as overwhelming and inescapable.
