Politics and War

by Kaiser, David

• ISBN13: 9780674002722
• ISBN10: 0674002725
• Edition: Large
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-19
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

David Kaiser looks at four hundred years of modern European history to find the political causes of general war in four distinct periods (1559--1659, 1661--1713, 1792--1815, and 1914--1945). He shows how war became a natural function of politics, a logical consequence of contemporary political behavior. Rather than fighting simply to expand, states in each war fought for specific political and economic reasons. The book illustrates the extraordinary power of politics and war in modern Western civilization, if not in history as a whole. In a provocative and original new preface and chapter, Kaiser shows which aspects of four past areas of conflict do, and do not, seem relevant to the immediate future, and he sketches out some new possibilities for Europe.

Table of Contents

Preface, 2000	ix
Introduction	1	(6)
The General Crisis of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries	7	(132)
The Nature of Early Modern Politics	7	(18)
The Spanish Imperial Experience	25	(24)
French Politics from the Wars of Religion to the Death of Mazarin	49	(34)
The Thirty Years' War	83	(26)
The English Civil War in European Perspective	109	(26)
The Failure of the State	135	(4)
The Age of Louis XIV	139	(64)
The Coming of a New Era	139	(2)
The France of Louis XIV	141	(15)
The Maritime Powers and the Hapsburg States	156	(22)
Smaller States during the Reign of Louis XIV	178	(18)
The Political Achievement of the Late Seventeenth Century	196	(7)
The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era	203	(68)
The Enlightenment and European International Politics	203	(9)
Sources and Consequences of the Wars of the French Revolution	212	(25)
The Napoleonic Era	237	(26)
Rationalism and History	263	(8)
The Era of the Two World Wars	271	(144)
Europeanic Politics in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries	271	(11)
European Imperialism and Economic Prosperity, 1880--1914	282	(25)
The Impact of Nationalism and the Outbreak of the First World War	307	(18)
The First World War	325	(29)
The Failure of Reconstruction, 1919--1933	354	(16)
Hitler and the Second World War	370	(22)
Extermination and Transfer: The Nationalities Question and the Second World War	392	(18)
The Origins of Totalitarianism	410	(5)
Conclusion	415	(8)
Afterword, 2000	423	(8)
Index	431