Nation-building, war experiences, and European models
Year: 2025

The evolution of nations and nation-states was linked with experiences of war.1 The long process of external and internal state-building was a history of warfare and its revolutionary impacts. Most of the numerous territorial states of the early modern period did not survive this violent restructuring of Europe. Between the last third of the eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century the number decreased from about 500 states around 1500 to about 20 around 1900. State-building, so