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Chapter 10. Conclusion
of this difference was that where in Machiavelli’s Discorsi the presentation of
‘general rules’ triumphed over ‘historical discrimination’, in Boxhorn’s Institutiones
politicae and Disquisitiones politicae ‘historical discrimination’ served
as a general rule. 23 It is on this particular point that we can see a clear connection
between Boxhorn’s historical thought and his political thought.
Looking at the general developments in early modern European historical
thought we can say that Boxhorn’s historical thought belonged to a current
of humanists who made a more critical use of the past, like Guicciardini, and
who favoured a more scientific approach of the study of the past, like Patrizi.
In typical humanist fashion Boxhorn’s scientific approach of the past was
primarily philological in character. However, he was also aware that auxiliary
sciences like numismatics, geography, or chronology were of importance
for historical research. While Boxhorn was predominantly interested in the
religious and the political ‘spheres’ of the past, he also took an interest in
customs, monuments, and settlement patterns. In other words, as a historical
scholar Boxhorn combined in his person elements of both the early modern
historian and the early modern antiquarian.
Boxhorn’s works show that he had an understanding that there was a
distinction between different times. In addition to this, Boxhorn also had a
strong sense of causation. Present circumstances could be explained by tracking
down their causes in the past. In this way Boxhorn ‘contributed to … the
development of a new framework of understanding society, based on recognizing
specific societal interest shaped by specific historic experiences leading
into the present’. 24 In this way he also helped to make possible the transformation
of politics into a more empirical, historical study. An understanding of
the specific interests of individual nations or the political problems of the day
could be achieved by investigating their causes in the past. This made historical
research an important analytical tool in the arsenal of the policy maker.
In sum, we can conclude that ‘Boxhorn’s publications … mirror the fundamental,
but gradual and piecemeal, shift from Aristotelian politics and humanist
historiography to the new philosophy of politics and the new place of history in
its wake’. 25 While on the surface it may seem that Boxhorn can indeed be put in
the traditional Aristotelian-humanist mould, he was actually at certain crucial
points diverting from it. He undermined the principle of imitatio, which in tra-
23 Quotes taken from the introduction by James Atkinson and David Sices in The Sweetness of Power,
xxxi-xxxii.
24 “Boxhorn”, p. 147.
25 Ibidem, p. 149.