Much of Cartellieri's early published work deals with the growth in the external power of the state. Directly after the war ended he turned to presenting an overview of domestic power struggles in r3cent centuries. That was followed in 1921 by a characteristically panoramic work on the "History of modern revolutions: From English Puritanism to the Paris Commune (1642–1871)". The work drew on his long-standing interest in the topics covered, but also reflected the author's own far more recent experiences of revolution in Germany following the destruction and military defeat of the "World War". According to the Cartellieri scholar Matthias Steinbach the book is in essence a simple factual presentation: Cartellieri wanted to clarify the different views in ways that would enable his reader to form his or her own judgements. Respecting the tradition of Ranke, Cartellieri accepts as axiomatic both the conditionality and the mutual interdependence of events and conditions in France and in Germany in the period between 1789 and 1871. He always seeks to construe the shifts between reform, revolution and reaction in their full European dimension.