The Thirty Years’ War 2nd Edition by Geoffrey Parker (PDF)

Description

The first edition of The Thirty Years’ War offered an unrivalled survey of a central period in European history. Drawing on a huge body of source material from different languages and countries throughout Europe, it provided a clear and comprehensive narrative and analytical account of the subject. It has established itself as the classic text with reviewers, students and the general reader.This second edition has been thoroughly revised to include the very latest research. The updated bibliographical information provides an invaluable resource, synthesising the major work in the field, in all languages, up to 1996.Written with great clarity and liveliness, the book brings alive the period in all its aspects. It covers the horrors of the war and the contorted politics of the period. It deals with all the major figures, including Wallerstein and Richelieu, Gustavus Adolphus and Tilly, the Winter King and the Habsburg emperors. For range and depth of coverage there is no other work like it. It has become the definitive book on the subject.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a very interesting history book. I enjoyed reading it as if it were a novel.It provides a complete view of all the parts involved in the conflict and their reasons to intervene. The book shed some light to this complex period of European history. Another worth reading book of the same author and period is

⭐.

⭐A very complicated history. Don’t look for an ABC history book within these covers. You have to bring some background to the table in order to get the best from this book.

⭐Clear overview of the broad trends in the Thirty Years’ War. Gives a nice summary of the political trends and the currents of the war. Would have liked however a bit more social and economic history behind the Great Powers and the theo- geo-politics

⭐Had to read it for class.

⭐The text assumes you are already familiar with much of the conditions of Europe from the 1590s – 1648, who the players are, what countries [avoiding the word “nation”] they serve, their religion, and the religions of the peoples in question. It jumped in with both legs on page 1 with incredible detail of the international diplomacy and matters at court for the various countries, empires, electorates, etc. For a book with “War” as 1/3 of its title, it doesn’t discuss the war much. Rather, the war is treated abstractly as a tool among other tools, which the politicians occasionally manipulate to achieve their own self-aggrandizement. Clearly, the authors if not the diplomats believed war was just a continuation of diplomacy by other means; a continuation which ruined and nearly depopulated the German states. Only two chapters held my interest: one near the middle on Sweden’s intervention, and the last chapter which contained a section on the state of the military at the time. The text presents numerous examples of the dangers of combining powers of violence with a preferred religion. There are countless times and places where an oppressed group proclaimed they were seeking religious freedom, got into power in some way or form, and then immediately oppressed those of different religious beliefs. If history teaches us anything at all, it’s that we don’t want an organization which uses force to have a preferred religion. This is *not* the book for the student of military history hoping to learn about the Thirty Years War. It is not the book for the student of general history hoping to learn about the Thirty Years War. I don’t recommend this book.

⭐Geoffrey Parker is quite simply one of the most thoughtful and talented military historians out there. His works are always profound and thought-provoking. However, in this instance, he may have bitten off more than he can chew.The ugly fact is that the Thirty Years’ War is a conflict of incredible complexity. No one book can capture all elements of this war. It is quite simply the historian’s Gordian Knot, and even Parker cannot do it all in one book.The bottom line? If you are a military historian, this is a very good book. However, Parker’s own “The Military Revolution” and Dodge’s classic biography of Gustavus Adolphus (really a history of European military tactics from 1600-1712) do the job better, especially as compliments to one another. For a political history, Ronald Asch does a better job in his history of the Thirty Years’ War from the Hapsburg perspective(especially when combined with the Dodge book on Gustavus). In contrast, Parker’s political history gets buried beneath too much detail (thereby running the risk of missing the forest for the trees).Folks, don’t let the complexity of the Thirty Years’ War scare you. It is a fascinating conflict, one that is essential to understanding European history, military evolution and the emergence of the modern state. If you’ve got the stomach to read two or more books on the subject, you will be richly rewarded. Taken in conjunction with other works, Parker’s book can add enormously to one’s understanding of a seminal event in world history.

⭐Arguably the most difficult to follow war ever, there is something about the 30 years’ war that keeps me looking for the ultimate, definitive book that is compact, comprehensive and a pure joy to read. Parker’s work clearly meets the first criterion. Through no fault of the author, the book still feels very much like a condensed overview – it covers the politics in a fair amount of detail but not so much the battles and campaigns – and in terms of reading pleasure it is second to Wedgwood’s 1930s work. Somehow this war was so multi-faceted and chaotic that you either end up with an endless book like Wilson’s, complete but nearly impossible to finish for non-Spartan readers, or else you get a readable overview that necessarily leaves out a lot – Parker and Wedgwood.The underlying reason for this dilemma is that Germany alone had about a dozen militarily significant ‘countries’ (and a large number of non-significant ones, but that’s not relevant here), each of which could switch sides due to external or internal (change of leadership) factors. On top of that, with literally every other European country involved in this war in some way, you really need to know the history of pretty much every country in Europe over a 30 years’ period, to fully understand why they were involved, on which side, and how successfully.Examples: a threatening Transsylvanian attack on Vienna would stall because their Ottoman overlords had jus been beaten by the Persians in Baghdad, making them wary of conflict in Europe. A string of Habsburg victories would be broken by peace between the French King and the Huguenots at La Rochelle, which freed up the French army to fight in Northern Italy; the Dutch capture of a Spanish treasure fleet on the Cuban coast would impact events in Germany as the Spanish ability to support their army in Germany was compromised. And so on, and so forth. Fascinating times!

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