“Why did the total number of sovereign states in Western Europe decline so radically between the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era?”1 This is one of the questions that Charles Tilly posed in Coercion, Capital and European States and in other works. It has since become one of the central questions in the broader literature on European state formation. And as arcane as the question may seem, figuring out the answer is of more than academic interest, because that answer has important implications for the study of international relations and economic development and, through them, for the formulation of international security and aid policies.