Chapter 3: War, Religion, and the State

Identify: German Peasants' War, Habsburgs, Charles V, Peace of Augsburg, Philip II, Henry IV, Edict of Nantes.

Gunn discusses in brief outline two important religious wars: the French Wars of Religion and the Dutch Revolt (127-30). I will say a little more about these in class.

1. What were the conditions of states and boundaries in 1500?

2. What territories did the Habsburg empire comprise? What challenges did the empire face?

3. Why does Gunn refer to "the curious indecisiveness of sixteenth-century warfare" (110)? What impact did warfare have on European states?

4. One of the major themes of this chapter is the growth of the state, "the widening powers of the state" (120). How did "state growth" manifest itslef in princely courts, the administration of government, the judicial system, the religious situation after 1517? Note that "the greatest key to the tighter intermeshing of politics and religion was the development of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation" (124).

5. Gunn points out: "State growth, however, was not as linear a process as it may have appeared, whether to its proponents or its enemies" (123). What does he mean by this?

6. Where do we detect a reversal in the process of the centralization of state power? Why?