International scholars review decades of postwar reconstruction in international comparison from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, demonstrating how foreign domestic policy cannot be separated.

Introduction: neither war nor postwar: decades of reconstruction Ute Planert; Part I. A World in Upheaval: From the Seven Years' War to the Age of Metternich: 1. Sea power and informal empire: Great Britain and the world after the Seven Years' War Julia Angster; 2. Losing an empire, re-entering the stage: France after the Seven Years' War Sven Externbrink; 3. How long was the Seven Years' War? 1763 in Native American country Ulrike Kirchberger; 4. The reorganization of Europe in 1815 as a 'subject domestic policy' Reinhard Stauber; Part II. Between Reich and State: The Germanies, 1648-1830: 5. The Habsburg Empire 1763 and 1815: reconstruction and repose Charles Ingrao and John Fahey; 6. Eras of postwar reconstruction in Prussian history Christopher Clark; 7. The alchemy of credit: Saxony's rétablissement after 1763 Robert Beachy; 8. Identifying a postwar period: case studies from the Hanseatic cities following the Napoleonic wars Katherine Aaslestad; Part III. Civil and Uncivil Wars: The 1860s and 1870s: 9. US reconstruction, republicanism, and imperial rivalries in the Caribbean after 1865 Christopher Wilkins; 10. After the 'German civil war' of 1866: building the state, embracing the nation James Retallack; 11. The civil war in France, Alsace-Lorraine, and postwar reconstruction in the 1870s Elizabeth Vlossak; Part IV. Central Europe and its Borderlands in the Twentieth Century: 12. German state-building in occupied Poland as an episode in postwar reconstruction, 1915-18 Jesse Kauffman; 13. Violent reconstruction as shatterzones: the German revolution of 1918/19 and the foundation of the Weimar Republic Mark Jones; 14. Reconstruction and representation: state-building and interpretations of war in Germany after 1945 Jörg Echternkamp; Part V. A New International Order after Total War?: 15. The International Red Cross, the League of Nations, and Humanitarian Assistance Regimes, 1918-39 Kimberly Lowe; 16. After civil war: Francoism and the reconstruction of Spain Adrian Shubert; 17. The end of empires and the triumph of the nation state? 1918 and the new international order Jörn Leonhard; Part VI. Prospects: 18. Five postwar orders, 1763-1945 James J. Sheehan.