Welcome to my book on the Swedish intervention into the Thirty Years War published by Cambridge University Press in 1996.
Exciting news: a new paperback edition is due in 2007. After eleven long years! See the “book blog” for more details.
This is how CUP introduces the book:
This book offers an original combination of cultural and narratological analysis with an empirical study of identity and political action. A powerful critique of rational choice theory, it also provides a solution to the historiographical puzzle of why Sweden intervened in The Thirty Years’ War. Arguing that people act for reasons of identity, more fundamental than reasons of interest, Erik Ringmar shows the Swedish intervention to have been an attempt on behalf of Swedish leaders to gain recognition for themselves and their country.
and this is what two of the readers of the first edition thought:
“Ringmar has written a book of history which is also path-breaking in historiographical methods and in social theory. Its historical narrative concerns the decision of King Gustav Adolf to go to war in Germany in 1630, and the theoretical problem this decision poses. How should we make sense of this, since strategic or economic interests seem at first to be evidently lacking? Ringmar’s careful analysis of the personal, social and cultural circumstances leads us to understand why historians looked for an explanation in terms of interest, whereas the process of intervening in the war was rather to be seen as part of the process of identity formation of the new Swedish nation. The alternation of narrative and clear theoretical reasoning makes for a passionate reading.”
Alessandro Pizzorno, European University Institute, Florence
“Erik Ringmar has grasped a fundamental point that generations of historical analysts have usually missed: when state leaders intervene aggressively in world affairs, whatever material interests they might be advancing or defending they are always asserting claims to be consequential international actors. In the case of Sweden and the Thirty Years War, Ringmar presents that view convincingly and engagingly.”
Charles Tilly, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University
