If you open your nearest historical atlas to the political map of Europe around 1500, several features will strike your eye at once. First, the large monochromas that represent more or less continuous sovereignty over extensive territories spiral around the map's periphery: the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish domains in the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean, France, England, Scotland, Denmark/Norway, Sweden, the lands of the Teutonic Order, Russia, Poland/Lithuania, Hungary. Within that ring the largest contiguous realms Bohemia, Austria/Styria, mainland Venice, Savoy, Lorraine, the Burgundian Netherlands, Brandenburg, and (to stretch the word "realm") the Papal States and the Swiss Confederation generally occupied less than a quarter of the terrain controlled by their peripheral neighbors. And in the arc from the Baltic's south shore over to Flanders and down to Florence swarmed hundreds of formally autonomous principalities, archduchies, bishoprics, free cities, and other statelets.