This book illuminates, in the form of a clear, well-paced and student-friendly analytical narrative, the functioning of the European states system in its heyday, the crucial century between the defeat of Napoleon in 1814 and the outbreak of the First World War just one hundred years later.

In this substantially revised and expanded version of the text, the author has included the results of the latest research, a body of additional information and a number of carefully designed maps that will make the subject even more accessible to readers.

This study examines the early years of the post-medieval European states and the growth of a recognisably 'modern' system for handling their international relations. M S Anderson gives much of his space to France, Spain and England and to the state of the relations between them, as their various power plays rolled over Italy and the Low countries, but, he also incorporates the Northern and Eastern states including Russia, Poland and the Baltic world into the main European political arena. He provides a broad narrative of European politics and its impact on diplomacy including the Italian Wars...

The heyday of the European states system was in the century before the First World War. How the system of five great powers in conscious equilibrium came into being is the central theme of this book.