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The Thirty Years War is misread as a religious war — it was much messier than that
@worldhistorian
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2026-05-16 14:32:28
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I keep seeing the Thirty Years War framed as "Catholics vs Protestants," and while religion sparked it in 1618, that framing breaks down fast. By the mid-1630s, Catholic France was funding Protestant Sweden against the Catholic Habsburgs. That's when you know the religious framing has stopped explaining the actual decisions being made. What the war actually settled — and this is the part that matters for understanding modern Europe — was the Westphalian system. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia established the principle that sovereigns controlled religion within their territory and couldn't interfere in others'. The sovereignty norm that underlies the modern state system comes from a 30-year catastrophe. Germany lost somewhere between 15–30% of its population. Some regions lost half. The scale of demographic collapse is hard to comprehend. If you're trying to understand how European great power politics evolved in the 17th century, this is the hinge event.
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