In this pathbreaking work, Charles Tilly challenges all previous formulations of state development in Europe, including his own Formation of National States in Western Europe. Specifically, Tilly charges that most available explanations fail because they do not account for the great variety of states which were viable at different stages of European history, and because they assume a unilinear path of development resolving in today's national state. Thus the central question for Tilly is this: "What accounts for the great variation over time and space in the kinds of state that have prevailed in Europe since AD 990?"