Introduction: The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) remains one of the most complex and devastating conflicts in European history, its origins debated extensively by historians seeking to classify its primary cause as either religious or political. Traditional narratives have often framed the war as a direct consequence of the Reformation and the escalating confessional divisions between Protestant and Catholic rulers within the Holy Roman Empire, a view championed by historians emphasizing the role of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Habsburgs’ consolidation of power, and the Protestant...

Introduction: From the trenches of the Western Front to the jungles of Vietnam and the geopolitical standoff of the Cold War, the 20th century transformed the United States through a succession of conflicts whose effects reshaped nearly every dimension of American life. Military history did not merely accompany the development of modern America: it drove it. Charles Tilly’s well-known dictum—“war made the state and the state made war”—captures the essence of the American experience: the United States amassed unprecedented administrative, fiscal, and coercive capacities through wartime...

War and the Making of the American State in the 19th CenturyIntroduction:From the colonial frontier to the battlefields of Gettysburg, war has been both a crucible and a mirror for the American experiment. Historians from Charles Tilly to Allan Millett have long emphasized the centrality of warfare in the formation of modern states, arguing that “war made the state and the state made war.” Yet, in the American case, this process unfolded within a republican framework that ostensibly distrusted standing armies and centralized power. The tension between libertarian ideals and the exigencies of...