The United States as a World Power (Classic Reprint), Coolidge Archibald Cary

Without stopping to trace the working of these principles in earlier days, we note that, by the close of the fifteenth century, certain states had assumed a position which en titles them to the modern designation of great European powers. The Holy Roman Empire, still first in dignity France, after she had recovered from the Hundred Years War and had broken the might of her great feudal nobles; England, in the firm hand of Henry VII; the newly formed kingdom of Spain, which had finally ended Moorish rule in the peninsula, - all these held a position unlike that of their neighbors. The difference between them and such powers as Denmark, the Swiss Confederation, and Venice was one of rank as well as of strength. Politically they were on another plane: they were not merely the leaders, they were the spokesmen, the directors, of the whole community.

As time went on, changes took place in their membership. In the course of the sixteenth century, when the Empire became so dislocated that it was hardly a power at all, its place was taken by Austria, a strangely conglomerate for mation, which protected the eastern frontier of Christendom against the Turks. Spain was for a while a real world power, overshadowing all the others, dominant in Europe.

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