During the Thirty Years' War, a war that seemed to be determining the future of Protestantism, those who believed that they were the most truly Protestant part of English society, the Puritans, frequently opposed the foreign policies of the English government. In this perceptive study of the Puritans' contribution to English nationalism between 1618 and 1640, Marvin Arthur Breslow analyzes their attitudes toward foreign nations. He demonstrates how their views of the warring European nations also expressed certain aspects of their thinking about England and how in these views there was mirrored an image of England--an image against which they measured the religion and patriotism of the true Englishman.

Drawing on contemporary parliamentary diaries, letters, memoirs, sermons, and tracts, Breslow discusses specifically the Puritans' attitudes toward Germany, the area in which the Thirty Years' War began; toward Spain, English fear and hatred of which were already firmly established; the Netherlands, with which there was trade rivalry; France, where they were forced to harmonize conflicting interests; and, finally, Sweden. The author identifies several recurrent themes, including a fundamental concern for Protestantism and the effective mythologizing of the Elizabethan past. He also reveals that while Puritan foreign policy was often opposed to the policies of the English government, it accorded closely with the attitudes, however passive, of the general public. The significant differences were the greater degree of intensity with which the Puritans vigorously expressed their concern and their efforts to arouse the general public.

Breslow emphasizes the importance of Puritan foreign-policy attitudes, the fusion of religious and political concerns in the patriotic Englishman, and the Puritan definition of the English nation in the decades preceding the Civil War and Revolution.