Holy Roman Empire 1618
A patchwork, not a nation-state.
A map of the Empire's hundreds of territories explains the war better than a map of four "sides."
Munster and Osnabruck are peace-tourism towns; Magdeburg is the darker pilgrimage.
Maps
Bohemian revolt
The first campaign map.
Swedish corridor
1630-32 Baltic to Bavaria.
Contribution zones
Where armies wintered -- the death map.
Westphalian adjustments
Who gained what in 1648.
Portrayals
Mother Courage
Brecht's civilian-economy play -- the Anglophone theatre canon.
Schiller's Wallenstein
German classical drama of politics and army.
Jacques Callot's Miseries
Etchings of soldiers and peasants -- a visual primary source.
IR textbooks
The accidental English portrayal: a diagram of sovereignty.
German local museums
The thick portrayal English tourists rarely plan for.
C.V. Wedgwood
The mid-century English narrative history still on many shelves.
Rituals
Westphalia commemorations
1648 anniversaries in Munster/Osnabruck as peace tourism.
Village church rebuild days
German local rites more than national ones.
Academic conferences
The "ritual" of the English-speaking world for this war.
Sayings
English atlases still under-colour this war beside 1914. That is a memory choice.
Brecht's wagon is the portable image: a civilian economy dragged behind armies.