Preface, 2000

Introduction

1. The General Crisis of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

The Nature of Early Modern Politics

The Spanish Imperial Experience

French Politics from the Wars of Religion to the Death of Mazarin

The Thirty Years' War

The English Civil War in European Perspective

The Failure of the State

2. The Age of Louis XIV

The Coming of a New Era

The France of Louis XIV

The Maritime Powers and the Hapsburg States

Smaller States during the Reign of Louis XlV

The Political Achievement of the Late Seventeenth Century

3. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era

The Enlightenment and European International Politics

Sources and Consequences of the Wars of the French Revolution

The Napoleonic Era

Rationalism and History

4. The Era of the Two World Wars

European Politics in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

European Imperialism and Economic Prosperity, 1880-1914

The Impact of Nationalism and the Outbreak of the First World War

The First World War

The Failure of Reconstruction, 1919-1933

Hitler and the Second World War

Extermination and Transfer: The Nationalities Question and the Second World War

The Origins of Totalitarianism

Conclusion

Afterword, 2000

Index

David Kaiser is a noted historian and a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the Naval War College.

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