The Thirty Years War

The Thirty Years War by J. V. Polišenský, translated by Robert Evans, offers a sweeping reinterpretation of one of Europe's most formative conflicts. Rather than treating the war as merely a clash of monarchs and generals, Polišenský situates it within a broader crisis of European society between 1560 and 1660. Drawing on newly available archival sources, he shows how political, religious, and economic tensions converged into a continent-wide struggle, with the Bohemian revolt at its core. His account emphasizes the interdependence of diplomacy, ideology, and social structure, presenting the war as both a product of Europe's fractured civilizations and a turning point that reshaped them.

Polišenský's narrative moves from the streets of Prague to the battlefields of Central Europe, always attentive to the wider European and even global stakes. He reinterprets the war as not simply a dynastic quarrel but as a confrontation between competing models of civilization-Catholic-Habsburg universalism versus Protestant humanist pluralism. Along the way, he highlights the decisive roles of the Netherlands, England, and Sweden, while also showing how the conflict forged new political prototypes in France and England. Erudite yet accessible, this book offers a fresh, integrative vision of the Thirty Years War, making it essential reading for historians of early modern Europe and anyone interested in the roots of modern international order.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.