In 1688 the attention of politically aware Europeans was focused on a splendid French court at the center of a powerful and aggressive state; on London, capital of a realm growing in power and wealth if only it could stop tearing itself apart over religion and the family quarrels of its monarchs; and on Amsterdam, commercial capital of Europe, at the center of a confederation of cities and provinces so intricately checked and balanced that it seemed incapable of decisive action. Surveying the politics of Europe more widely, one would think of the polycentric Holy Roman Empire; anarchically elective Poland; cautious, legalistic Spain; and many others. Observers from many other parts of the world—India, China, Russia, the Ottoman Empire—would have found these differences less striking than the singular fact that the European political world had no imperial center, no Beijing, no Agra, no Istanbul. The medieval holy Roman emperors had aspired to rule all Europe; but their power never had reached beyond the German and Italian lands and the Balkan frontier they held against the Ottomans, and now Vienna faced major rivals even within those territories.
The intense struggle for survival of each unit in this multistate system pushed all of the more adaptable of them toward new strategies for mobilization of allegiance, wealth, and manpower. This made the Europe of 1688 a cauldron of forms of political life new in Europe, such as centralizing bureaucracies, or new in the world, such as representative assemblies with real powers. It was generally accepted that rulers had the right to determine what religions would be followed in their realms. Cynical manipulation of religion by rulers and ruled, incitement of one faith against another, turned some entirely against orthodox Christianity and others toward deeper inwardness within it. Novel forms of mobilization of resources and human energy, like the Dutch East India Company and the Society of Jesus, spread European power and presence to almost every part of the world.
There were always new points of crisis on the great chessboard of European politics. In 1688 they included the election of a ruling bishop in Cologne and the birth of a crown prince in London. French armies moved. A formidable Dutch fleet set out down the Channel and landed an invasion force in England. By the end of the year the chessboard had a new configuration. That narrow Channel now divided the central antagonists. This configuration was to last from the end of 1688 to the fall of Napoleon in 1815.