tes (such as provinces or colonies) is very sharp. A state may be in civil war, with two or more groups or armies fighting for control, but we regard that as only temporary, until one side wins. When Machiavelli lived, however, the feudal system was not quite dead yet. Barons inside a kingdom might still have their own armies, even though they were expected to obey the king in most ways. Machiavelli compares these states to more centralized ones of the type we are used to:
The principates of which we have memory are found to be governed in two diverse modes: either by a prince and all the others are his servants who, being ministers by his grace and permission, help him to govern that kingdom; or by a prince and barons, the latter having their rank not by the grace of the lord, but by the antiquity of their blood (25).
In this comparison, the first type of principate is the kind of centralized state
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