Anybody know of a good, general-with- some detail, history of the Italian Renaissance? I am NOT looking for a cultural history-there are too many of those- I mean a good POLITICAL history. I have searched a lot, but it seems all the histories of this period have two focuses (foci, I should say): 1. Art & cultural history and 2. Bios of a few of the famous characters (Borgias, Medici, et al).Any advice? I have the usual collection of books on specific Ren.topics, but where is the good GENERAL POLITICAL history? Thanks for any help! BTW A good general political (Not cultural) history of all Europe in the Ren. era would be welcome too-Thanks!
Murray Rothbard’s An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought vol 1. has many interesting insights, although the focus is on economics.
https://mises.org/library/austrian-perspective-history-economic-thought
You can check his references for more material.
There is a huge amount of books on that. You might be getting off track because the word Renaissance, while understood to apply to a specific chronological era, usually denotes the “Cultural” side (or, as propriety forces me to say, one of the cultural sides) of that specific time period. It would be like searching for a History of the 19th century by searching “A History of Romanticism”.
So, I would recomend that you restart your search by looking for a History of Early Modern Europe, or a History of Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. That will get you right where you want to be.