The podcast Chapo Trap House’s miniseries Hell on Earth is an entertaining story which proposes that the Thirty Years’ War midwifed the birth of capitalism. Ultimately, however, the interesting argument doesn’t hold up.
My way of understanding this is that while the author is right in that Matt and Chris saying that the Thirty Years War was the "birthplace of Capitalism" is not literally correct in that it wasn't the case that there was feudalism before the war and capitalism after, or the transition and trends towards capitalism started in the war. But I think that what Matt and Chris meant, and why I think it is important to the formation of capitalism, is that it intensified and sped up many of the trends necessary for forming capitalism. Such as increasing financialization to fund the war, building up state power and apparatuses, the resultant secularization and rationalization of certain aspects of society laying groundwork for liberalism, the undermining of feudal institutions that would have stood in the way of capitalism, etc.
My way of understanding this is that while the author is right in that Matt and Chris saying that the Thirty Years War was the "birthplace of Capitalism" is not literally correct in that it wasn't the case that there was feudalism before the war and capitalism after, or the transition and trends towards capitalism started in the war. But I think that what Matt and Chris meant, and why I think it is important to the formation of capitalism, is that it intensified and sped up many of the trends necessary for forming capitalism. Such as increasing financialization to fund the war, building up state power and apparatuses, the resultant secularization and rationalization of certain aspects of society laying groundwork for liberalism, the undermining of feudal institutions that would have stood in the way of capitalism, etc.