ABSTRACT
Modernizing Muscovy is a process that cannot be fully appreciated without a due measure of attention being given to international relations in Europe. Moreover, this exercise involves much more than diplomatic exchanges, requiring discussion of the relative weight of the powers, their internal situation and, especially in the early stages of the process, the nature of their religious confession. To take the seventeenth century in particular, at the beginning the Habsburg Empire predominated, at the end Bourbon France. Social disturbances were endemic and frontiers fluctuating nearer 1600, stability in both regards more evident towards 1700. And what was seen widely as Christendom throughout the century was being increasingly recognized as a secular entity by the century’s latter turn. To illustrate the process for the continent as a whole and for Muscovy in particular, let us take the example of the pan-European conflict known as the Thirty Years’ War, 1618-48, and the associated Smolensk War, 1632-34. The following exposition will move through four phases: an introduction, considering the nature of the Thirty Years’ War; an examination of aspects of the Smolensk War and its context; a discussion of the sequel to the Smolensk War; and a conclusion involving an evaluation of Thirty Years’ War as a whole, in particular the manner in which it came to an end.
