Between 1200 and 1700 the national state emerged as the basic political unit of the West. These states typically rose through a pattern of taxation and warfare that concentrated power in the monarchy and its bureaucracy. This pattern unfolded in both Spain and France, in which the monarchies made the Catholic Church an instrument of national unity and royal policy. Under Ferdinand and Isabel and their successors, Spain continued its crusading tradition, waging religious wars throughout Europe financed by bullion from its empire. The military and bureaucracy grew into strong, efficient institutions, but aristocratic contempt of commercial activity prevented economic development. Spain reached its height under Philip II, whose expensive wars also pushed Spain into its long decline. The French state also grew through the gradual alliance of religious and royal interests. This process was disrupted by the religious wars of the Reformation, but with the Edict of Nantes Henry IV calmed religious strife and made the monarchy the center of political life. Bourbon absolutism advanced under Louis XIII and Richelieu and culminated in the reign of Louis XIV. His system of centralized rule, royal patronage, taxation, and repression built French power, but also sowed the seeds of political collapse in the late eighteenth century.

England and the Netherlands followed different paths to statehood. In England the Parliament and common law had long served as forces of national unity. The early Tudors checked the nobility and built a centralized monarchical state. The monarchy and Parliament cooperated in the Reformation, such that the power of both grew. Under Elizabeth I English national identity heightened and the split between court and country widened. The early Stuarts strove for royal absolutism, but their aims clashed with the growing power of the Puritan gentry and commercial classes that came to dominate Parliament. These tensions exploded into the revolution of 1640-60 that deposed the monarchy. The Glorious Revolution thwarted another bid for Stuart absolutism, establishing parliamentary government and the rule of law. During its long conflict with the Catholic Hapsburgs, the Netherlands built a bourgeois republic ruled by a Protestant commercial oligarchy and, to a limited extent, the House of Orange. During the seventeenth century, this small nation grew into one of the major economic powers of Europe.

In central Europe the Holy Roman Empire failed to unify. Aristocratic power remained strong, and the Reformation further divided Germany along religious lines. The Thirty Years War tightened Habsburg control over the eastern principalities, laying the foundations of Austria as a modern state. Wars against the Ottoman Empire and France further strengthened the Austrian Hapsburgs who, during the eighteenth century, built a centralized state. Prussia achieved statehood through an alliance between the monarchy and aristocracy that enabled the former to build a strong army and centralized administration, and the latter to impose serfdom on the peasantry. Russia developed along similar lines, as Peter the Great harnessed or suppressed the nobility, reformed the army and administration, and decreed serfdom.

By the end of the seventeenth century, most Europeans had come to identify themselves with the state. Along with the concept of the state developed the idea of sovereignty that did not include ideas of individual liberty. These did not emerge until the Enlightenment.