This Companion is designed to provide scholars and graduate students with a comprehensive and authoritative overview of research on one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. It brings together leading scholars in the field to synthesize the range of existing research on the war, which is still fragmented and divided along national historical lines, and to further explore the complexities of the conflict using an innovative comparative approach.

The Thirty Years War : an introduction / Olaf Asbach and Peter Schröder -- Imperial politics, 1555-1618 / Joachim Whaley -- The Palatinate and its networks in the empire and in Europe / Brennan Pursell -- The emperor / Christoph Kampmann -- The Spanish monarchy and the challenges of the Thirty Years War / Gabriel Guarino -- Denmark / Paul Douglas Lockhart -- Sweden / Pärtel Piirimäe -- France and the Thirty Years War / Lucien Bély -- The Papacy / Guido Braun -- Non-splendid isolation : the Ottoman Empire and the Thirty Years War / Maria Baramova -- 1618-1629 / Ronald G. Aschy -- 1629-1635 / Toby Osborne -- The Long War (1635-1648) / Tryntje Helfferich -- The Dutch-Spanish War in the Low-Countries 1621-1648 / Olaf van Nimwegen -- The Thirty Years War in Italy 1628-1659 / Sven Externbrink -- The Peace of 1555 : "a failed settlement" / Matthias Pohlig -- The Edict of restitution (1629) and the failure of Catholic restoration / Marc Forster -- Lutherans, Calvinists and the road to a normative year / Ralf-Peter Fuchs -- The Thirty Years War : "a religious war" : religion and Machiavellism at the turning point of 1635 / Cornel Zwierlein -- The material conditions of war / John Theibault -- The experience of war / Sigrun Haude -- Strategy and the conduct of war / Peter Wilson -- The Peace of Prague : "a failed settlement" / Martin Espenhorst -- The settlement of 1648 for the German empire / Axel Gotthard -- The Peace of Westphalia : a European peace / Heinz Duchhardt -- A peace for the whole world? : perceptions and effects of the peace treaty of Münster (1648) on the world outside Europe / Susan Richter.