The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and His Arthashastra by Roger Boesche

his book provides an analysis of one of the ancient world's foremost political realists, Kautilya. Kautilya's treatise Arthashastra stands as one of the great political books of the ancient world, its ideas on the science of politics strikingly similar to those of Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Clausewitz, and even Sun Tzu. The author's commentary on Kautilya's text draws out the essential realist arguments for modern political analysis and demonstrates the continued relevance of Kautilya's work to modern Indian strategic thinking and our understanding of the relationship between politics and economics. Striking a balance between textual analysis and secondary scholarship, this work contributes to the study of ancient Indian history, Eastern political thought, and international relations.

This work is an analysis of one of the ancient world's foremost political realists, Kautilya. Kautilya's treatise "Arthashastra" stands as one of the great political books of the ancient world, its iseas on the science of politics similar to those of Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes.