The Origins of the Modern European State System, 1494-1618

This study examines the early years of the post-medieval European states, and the growth amongst them of a recognisably "modern" system for handling their international relations. In it, Matthew Anderson has been at pains to identify and explain the underlying forces which shaped that process, as well as to give an account of events themselves in the crowded and formative century between the French invasion of Italy in 1494 under Charles VIII (which precipitated the ruinous Italian Wars), and the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618.

M. S. Anderson has been Professor Emeritus of International History at the University of London.