peace of westphalia essay

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Peace of Westphalia (1648)

Introduction, general overviews.

• Primary Sources
• Bibliography
• Collections of Articles
• The Holy Roman Empire
• The Emperor, France, and Sweden
• Other Foreign Powers
• Long-Term Effects of the 1998 Anniversary
• Implementation
• Interpretations and Receptions
• The State System

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Peace of Westphalia (1648) by Anuschka Tischer LAST REVIEWED: 07 April 2021 LAST MODIFIED: 28 July 2021 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199743292-0073

The Peace of Westphalia, concluded in 1648 in Münster (Germany), ended the Thirty Years’ War, which started with an anti-Habsburg revolt in Bohemia in 1618 but became an entanglement of different conflicts concerning the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, religion, and the state system of Europe. This contest was a civil “German war,” but foreign powers played a crucial role. The Peace of Westphalia ended with the signing of two treaties between the empire and the new great powers, Sweden and France, and settled the conflicts inside the empire with their guarantees. A new electorate was established for the exiled son of the revolt’s leader, the elector Palatine. Bavaria kept the electorate that it had been given for its support of the emperor Ferdinand II during the revolt. This compromise in 1648 meant a change of the empire’s fundamental Golden Bull of 1356 and was a symbol that all conflicts occurring since 1618 were resolved and that those who made peace did not avoid radical cuts and invented fresh ideas in order to make peace. Catholics and Protestants (now including Calvinists as well as Lutherans) accepted each other. Several regulations guaranteed their balance: 1624 was declared the “normal year” of any territory’s denomination, minorities were tolerated or had a right to emigrate, and no one could be forced to convert any longer. The Peace of Westphalia is regarded as a milestone in the development toward tolerance and secularization. This settlement also strengthened the imperial Estates: they could enter into foreign alliances and decide important matters, such as peace and war, along with the emperor. The suspected ambition of the Habsburgs for a “universal monarchy” was thereby controlled, in particular because the Franco-Spanish negotiations in Münster did not bring peace between France and Spain and left open conflict areas, such as Lorraine. Moreover, France and Sweden got territorial “satisfaction,” especially in Alsace and Pomerania. The Peace of Westphalia also confirmed the legal independence of the Swiss Confederation, whereas by a separate peace with Spain, in Münster, the United Provinces of the Netherlands officially became a sovereign state after eighty years of war. The Peace of Westphalia was crucial in German and international history. Its precise role in the European state system and international law is, however, subject to controversy, such as the debate over the “Westphalian System” in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Controversies about the Peace of Westphalia are not new. The history of its reception and interpretation is as long as the history of its emergence. Unquestionably, though, the negotiations were a milestone in diplomacy and peacemaking. Sources on the peace are most valuable for always changing methods and perspectives of history. Research on the Peace of Westphalia increased enormously with its 350th anniversary in 1998 and its several conferences and exhibitions.

The most recent scholarly monograph on the Westphalian negotiations and peace is Croxton 2013 . Dickmann 1998 (originally published in 1959) is still valuable due to the author’s long-term archive research, although it lacks many current aspects and is sometimes even contrary to later research. The sometimes still-quoted Kopp and Schulte 1940 is an unacceptable work of Nazi propaganda. Repgen 1999 covers the main problems of the negotiations and how they were solved in the peace. Westphal 2015 and Brunert 2017 give an overview on the basis of the latest research with a focus on the peace process. Some monographs on the Thirty Years’ War also offer information on the peace ( Parker 1997 , Wilson 2009 , Asbach and Schröder 2014 ), but they are more focused on the wider political or military frame, or both. Croxton and Tischer 2002 , a reference work, includes the variety of new research being done in the late 1990s and provides short explanations of terms, persons, topics, and so on that concern the Peace of Westphalia.

Asbach, Olaf, and Peter Schröder, eds. The Ashgate Research Companion to the Thirty Years’ War . Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014.

Impressive presentation of the war and its several aspects, including the Peace of Westphalia, by various international scholars. A perfect introduction into the current state of research on the Thirty Years’ War.

Brunert, Maria-Elisabeth. “Der Westfälische Frieden 1648: Eine Friedensordnung für das Reich und Europa.” In Friedensordnungen in geschichtswissenschaftlicher und geschichtsdidaktischer Perspektive . Edited by Peter Geiss and Peter Arnold Heuser, 69–95. Wissenschaft und Lehrerbildung 2. Göttingen, Germany: V & R Academic, 2017.

The article, based on a very deep knowledge of the sources and recent research, gives an overview over the Congress and Peace of Westphalia. The focus is on the role of the Peace of Westphalia in the development of a peace order in Germany and Europe.

Croxton, Derek. Westphalia: The Last Christian Peace . Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137333339

Thorough monograph on the Congress and Peace of Westphalia by a recognized expert on the subject. Essential for everyone who is looking for a comprehensive overview in English.

Croxton, Derek, and Anuschka Tischer. The Peace of Westphalia: A Historical Dictionary . Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002.

Reference work that offers short explanations and related literature on terms, persons, places, and so on relative to the Peace of Westphalia. Useful selected bibliography.

Dickmann, Fritz. Der Westfälische Frieden . 7th ed. Münster, Germany: Aschendorff Verlag, 1998.

Originally published in 1959, this is the only scholarly monograph on the Peace of Westphalia. Although it lacks more than half a century of research and is obsolete in many details, it is an unsurpassed overview. Dickmann even refers to topics that only later became the subject of research (e.g., public media, ceremony).

Kopp, Friedrich, and Eduard Schulte. Der Westfälische Frieden: Vorgeschichte, Verhandlungen, Folgen . Munich: Hoheneichen-Verlag, 1940.

What at the first glance might look just like an old-fashioned but rare overview of the Peace of Westphalia is actually anti-French Nazi propaganda. Because of its high circulation, the book is still widespread but should definitely not be used as research literature.

Parker, Geoffrey, ed. The Thirty Years’ War . 2d ed. London: Routledge, 1997.

The instructive book, written by several experts, is much quoted for the Thirty Years’ War, the Peace of Westphalia, and the history of its reception. One should be aware, however, that it does not include the very fruitful research of the last two decades.

Repgen, Konrad. “Die Hauptprobleme der Westfälischen Friedensverhandlungen von 1648 und ihre Lösungen.” Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 62 (1999): 399–438.

Concise and instructive article on all important problems of the negotiations and their outcome in the Peace of Westphalia. A similar but shorter English article by Repgen can be found in Volume 1 of Bussmann and Schilling 1998 (cited under Collections of Articles ).

Westphal, Siegrid. Der Westfälische Frieden . Munich, Germany: C. H. Beck, 2015.

DOI: 10.17104/9783406683039

The short book gives a very dense overview over the Peace of Westphalia. The focus lies in particular on the peace process and its mechanisms.

Wilson, Peter H. The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

This huge and solid monograph on the Thirty Years’ War includes chapters on the Westphalian peace congress and the aftermath. The focus is strictly on the great political decisions and military development, so the book does not offer a thorough inside view of the negotiations or the peace.

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37 The Peace of Westphalia

Andrew Phillips is Associate Professor of International Relations and Strategy in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland.

• Published: 16 August 2023
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This chapter revisits debates on the significance of the Peace of Westphalia as a benchmark date marking the advent of the modern system of sovereign states. Following a précis of the context and content of the treaties that comprised the Peace of Westphalia, I survey International Relations (IR) debates between traditionalist defenders of Westphalia’s epochal significance, versus their revisionist critics. I conclude that revisionists are correct in questioning Westphalia as definitively signifying either the sovereign state’s triumph, the birth of the modern state system, or the secularization of European international society. Drawing insights from global history, I nevertheless offer a qualified defence of Westphalia’s historical importance in the evolution of the modern international system. Specifically, I argue that Westphalia instantiated a distinctive diversity regime that tied legitimate political authority to the recognition of authorized forms of confessional religious difference. This regime entrenched a protean sovereign state system that consolidated in subsequent centuries. Contemporaneous crises of political authority elsewhere across Eurasia aided the consolidation of regional empires, and accompanying diversity regimes favouring imperial unipolarity. The resulting conjunction of European multipolarity and Asian unipolarity laid the basis for early modern globalization, making the advent of the world’s first genuinely global international system possible.

The Peace of Westphalia is arguably the most pivotal ‘benchmark date’ ( Buzan and Lawson 2014 ) in International Relations (IR). But while scholars have long hailed it for allegedly marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world, more recent scholarship has lambasted the ‘myth of 1648’ (e.g. Nexon 2009 ; Osiander 2001 ; Teschke 2003 ). Despite these revisionist efforts, however, Westphalia remains tenacious as a putative origin point for the advent of the modern state system. In this chapter, I review debates on Westphalia’s historical significance, before offering a qualified defence of Westphalia as a critical inflection point in the development of both European political order, and also of global modernity. Consistent with this volume’s emphasis on the theme of modernity, I argue that the Peace of Westphalia was critically conducive to managing Europe’s cultural diversity following the Wars of Religion. The Westphalian settlement institutionalized a new ‘diversity regime’ ( Reus-Smit 2018 , 13–14) that neutralized confessional difference as a source of inter-polity conflict. The resulting stability then aided domestic state-building, while entrenching multipolar anarchy over imperial unipolarity as Europe’s default condition.

Turning to the theme of granularity, I maintain that Westphalia’s true significance is best understood through the lens of global history, which considers Westphalia as a regionally particular solution to a more general crisis of political authority that afflicted Eurasia’s main power centres during the seventeenth century. Alongside the Thirty Years’ War, large scale rebellions, wars, and dynastic transitions convulsed most parts of Eurasia in the mid-1600s (e.g. Goldstone 1991 ; Parker 2014 ). In most instances, rulers overcame these crises through the consolidation or renovation of regional empires, and through diversity regimes emphasizing the incorporation of cultural diversity under the overarching canopy of imperial rule.

Westphalia conversely marked a critical exception to the Eurasian norm of imperial consolidation and regional unipolarity. The Westphalian solution to the seventeenth-century crisis may not have entailed the wholesale replacement of heteronomy and empire with a modern sovereign state system. But it did institutionalize a distinctive diversity regime that arrested imperial consolidation, and formed an indispensable precursor to a competitive multistate system with few global parallels. The roughly synchronous consolidation of Asian empires meanwhile facilitated revived prosperity as the seventeenth-century crisis abated, stimulating increased inter-regional trade. The resulting combination of European Westphalian fragmentation and Asian imperial integration together thus laid the foundations for subsequent emergence of history’s first genuinely global international system.

This chapter proceeds as follows. Section one offers a précis of the Peace of Westphalia, highlighting its context and core features. Section two surveys the debate within IR, tracing the arguments between defenders of Westphalia as a moment of epochal transition, versus their revisionist critics. Section three finally draws insights from global history to mount a qualified defence of Westphalia’s world-historical significance.

The Peace of Westphalia as Historical Event

The Peace of Westphalia—comprised of the Treaties of Osnabruck and Munster—marked the end of the Thirty Years’ War—one of Europe’s longest and deadliest conflicts prior to the twentieth century ( Parker 2014 , 211). While centered on the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, the war quickly spread from its German epicentre through the intervention of external powers (notably Denmark, Sweden, France, and Habsburg Spain), drawn into the conflict through a combination of confessional affinity and dynastic self-interest.

The Thirty Years’ War comprised a serious of nested crises, encompassing a constitutional crisis of the Holy Roman Empire, a more general crisis of European political order, and finally a regional instance of a more general crisis of political authority afflicting most of Eurasia’s power centres in the mid-seventeenth century ( Phillips 2011 , 129). For present purposes, the German and European dimensions of the conflict are most relevant.

Turning first to the German dimension of the conflict, the primary tension lay between the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (an elective position, but one held by successive Austrian Habsburgs since the mid-fifteenth century), and the 1,300 or so feudatories (variously comprised of petty kingdoms, free cities, and the like) over which he held nominal suzerainty ( Parker 2014 , 212). Conflict centered especially on the level of autonomy (sovereignty) that the landeshoheit possessed in relation to the Emperor. The former asserted extensive claims to autonomy, including the right to form alliances, wage war, and dictate the confessional affiliation of their subjects without restraint ( Wilson 2009 , 270). The latter conversely sought to preserve a stronger form of suzerainty over his feudatories. Moreover, as the war progressed (especially from the 1629 Edict of Restitution), the Emperor pursued a ‘rollback’ of Protestantism throughout the Empire. This inflamed Protestants’ religious anxieties, motivating external intervention and the conflict’s lateral expansion ( Lee 1991 , 6).

From a European vantage point, the Thirty Years’ War marked the last and largest of Europe’s internationalized Wars of Religion. Throughout this period, confessional polarization inflamed dynastic rivalry. Protestant powers were particularly apprehensive about the spectre of Habsburg hegemony, which threatened both their religious liberty, as well in some cases (e.g. the Dutch) threatening their claims to political independence (e.g. Lee 1991 , 6). As the war progressed, however, considerations of raison d’etat increasingly eclipsed confessional allegiances as the protagonists’ primary motivation. These dynastic interests included traditional desires for territorial aggrandizement. But as the conflict persisted, the two most powerful anti-Habsburg actors, France and Sweden, sought to impose an accommodation on the Empire that would preserve a balance of power, both between the Emperor and the German princes, and also among the latter ( Wilson 2009 , 254).

The treaties that comprised the Peace of Westphalia thus aimed both to settle a constitutional crisis within the Empire, as well as to secure a more general European peace.

With respect to the former, the Peace confirmed many nominally sovereign powers of the German princes, while preserving the Empire as an overarching political unit. The treaties assured the princes the rights to wage war and to form external alliances, but with the proviso that they could not do so against the Empire itself ( Milton et al. 2019 , 77). The princes’ religious liberties were also guaranteed within their territories, but with two caveats. First, while princes were free to change their religious affiliation, they no longer enjoyed untrammelled authority to compel their subjects to follow suit ( Reus-Smit 2013a , 100–101). Second, princes were compelled to tolerate authorized confessional minorities within their territories, rather than enjoying unilateral prerogatives to convert or expel them ( Reus-Smit 2013a , 100–101).

From the outset, then, the Peace institutionalized an uneasy balance of rights and privileges between princely subjects, and between the princes and the emperor. It institutionalized for the princes a suite of powers that are strongly reminiscent of later modern concepts of sovereignty. But the Empire remained intact as a constitutional entity, and princes’ capacities to exercise their ‘sovereign’ rights remained constrained in practice. Crucially, the princes’ rights to compel religious conformity were subordinated in the interests of preserving systemic stability, both within the Empire and throughout Europe. Westphalia institutionalized the first modern minority rights regime—compromising princely sovereignty from the outset ( Krasner 1995 ).

Within its European context, the Peace of Westphalia was notable for its form as well as for its outcomes. While the Protestant and Catholic powers negotiated peace through two separate treaties, Westphalia nevertheless represented the first multilateral effort to secure a general European peace ( Parker 2014 , 252; Wilson 2009 , 753). Negotiators sought to impose a constitutional settlement on the Empire that would support a larger European peace, the seriousness of their intent underwritten by France and Sweden’s role as external guarantors of the peace ( Wilson 2009 , 753).

Besides settling German constitutional questions (at least temporarily), Westphalia further institutionalized Europe’s political pluralism, by affirming Dutch de jure independence from Habsburg Spain, as well as by cementing the Swiss cantons’ de facto independence from the Empire. Finally, it brought an end to hostilities in Germany, as well as to the internationalized Wars of Religion that had convulsed Latin Christendom since the Reformation ( Wilson 2009 , 754). Westphalia was by no means a general peace settlement—the Franco-Spanish War continued to 1659. Neither did it lead to a demilitarization of dynastic rivalries. Nevertheless, it was undeniably a pivotal moment in European political development. The magnitude and scope of its significance however remains contested, as I now consider.

International Relations Debates on the Peace of Westphalia

Before analysing debates on its significance, we must first note that Westphalia’s iconic status—as a signifier of tectonic transformation in European politics—is a convention peculiar to IR scholars. It is a view that was shared neither by the architects of the peace, nor by specialist historians. Though it ended one of Europe’s most destructive wars, Westphalia gained retrospective significance only from the nineteenth century. During this time, scholars and publicists began to conceptualize Westphalia as a defining moment in Europe’s political development, which guaranteed the traditional liberties of Germany’s princes against overweening Habsburg authority ( Keene 2002 , 21–22). Subsequent developments, first in international law and then later in the new discipline of IR, then further elevated Westphalia’s importance. The nineteenth-century shift from natural to positive international law provided a strong fillip to Westphalia’s status. Positive international law anchored its authority in contracting between sovereign states, rather than deriving its status from its supposed concordance with divinely ordained ordering principles and imperatives. For international lawyers, Westphalia marked an important step towards an international order governed by laws spawned from agreement between sovereign states ( Kayaoglu 2010 , 200).

Westphalia eventually also acquired outsized resonance within IR, following the end of the Cold War. As scholars struggled to apprehend the changes convulsing the post-Cold War world, Westphalia solidified as a convenient temporal demarcation ( Schmidt 2011 , 616). 1648 came to signify the end of medieval heteronomy, and the transition to a modern world defined by sovereign anarchy (e.g. Ruggie 1993 ). Affirmed through serial repetition in mainstream IR pedagogy, Westphalia remains synonymous with the advent of modernity for much of the discipline. Below I examine arguments identifying the Peace of Westphalia with modernity, before scrutinizing the most decisive revisionist critiques of this position.

The Peace of Westphalia as the Gateway to Modernity

Before considering arguments identifying Westphalia as touchstone of modernity, a definitional note on the latter is needed. Modernity can be understood in two distinct but potentially complementary senses—institutional and cultural.

An institutional approach identifies modernity with a range of generic practices and processes—for example the shift from so-called ‘advanced organic’ agrarian societies ( Goldstone 1998 , 261–262) to urban industrial capitalism ( Gellner 1991 ), or the transformation of political orders from indirectly ruled sprawling empires, to sovereign states characterized by uniform borders and centralized forms of bureaucratic governance ( Giddens 1987 ; Mann 1986 ). This perspective privileges modernity’s institutional forms over any specific cultural content, and often conceives of modernity in ‘acultural’, singular, and universal terms ( Taylor 1999 , 153–154).

Conversely, a cultural understanding of modernity prioritizes transformations in the ideas, norms, identities, and social imaginaries underpinning collective life. Through this lens, modernity can be characterized by phenomena as diverse as the rise of individualism, the shift from dynastic to national modes of legitimizing political authority ( Anderson 1991 ), or even reconceptualization of religion, and the accompanying secularization of the public sphere ( Taylor 2007 ). While earlier cultural conceptions of modernity tended towards Eurocentric universalism, the perspective is arguably better capable of accommodating the simultaneous coexistence of ‘multiple modernities’ than its institutional counterpart ( Taylor 1999 ).

The distinction between early modernity and high modernity further complicates matters. I understand early modernity to refer to an epoch from c. 1500–1800 ce , characterized by several key developments. These included the rise of more geographically expansive states and empires; the growth of increasingly commercialized agrarian economies; the consolidation of regional international systems; and the development of increasingly dense networks of trade, migration, and war linking these regional systems together ( Buzan and Little 2000 ; Goldstone 1998 ). High modernity signifies the period immediately following early modernity and extending at least into the mid-twentieth century, and possibly to the present. It is defined among other developments by the growth of rational state-building, industrialization, and the rise of ideologies of progress ( Buzan and Lawson 2015 , 4). Most relevant here, high modernity is also characterized by the consolidation of the first genuinely global international system, as an expanding European international society at last subsumed its non-European counterparts. The early/high modernity distinction is relevant here only to the degree that the Westphalian order was initially of parochial significance, being one of multiple regional systems that arose during early modernity. Yet Westphalia’s emergence eventually assumed global significance, its rise being a critical prerequisite for the rise of the genuinely global international system that framed high modernity.

Within IR, three grounds for according Westphalia such singular prominence stand out. These respectively emphasize its institutional significance for the sovereign state’s triumph as Europe’s dominant polity form; its institutional centrality for the birth of the modern sovereign state system; and its cultural importance in consolidating the secularization of European international order.

A key argument of Westphalia boosters is that the Peace confirmed the sovereign state over its rivals as the dominant polity form in post-Reformation Europe. Though the sovereign state had critical antecedents dating to the late-Medieval period (e.g. Strayer 1970 ), Westphalia confirmed its ascendancy over the rival transnational authority structures of Church and Empire. The Thirty Years’ War thus ended with two sovereign states—France and Sweden—victorious, the former having subordinated its confessional identity to considerations of raison d’etat in the conflict’s last stages. By contrast, by the mid-seventeenth century, the Church’s political and economic power had declined irreversibly. Likewise, though the Empire survived, 1648 entrenched a constitutional settlement that confirmed princes’ liberties at the Emperor’s expense. The Dutch Republic’s de jure independence, and Switzerland’s de facto independence, apparently further consolidated a transition to a Europe where sovereign states increasingly dominated.

Through this lens, Westphalia’s significance lies in its effect on the constitution of the European political order, with the so-called ‘first face’ of political authority (the principle underwriting which collective actors may legitimately exercise international agency) increasingly favouring sovereign states ( Philpott 2001 , 15). An implicit assumption in this narrative is that the sovereign state is a key if not the decisive institutional product of modernity, as well as the eventual vanguard for modernity’s worldwide spread.

A second, potentially complementary, perspective identifies Westphalia’s modernity through its prominence as the origin moment in the rise of a modern system of sovereign states. In contrast to the historic predominance of imperial international orders, a hallmark of modernity is the organization of relations between sovereign political communities through a reflexively monitored international system of sovereign states ( Giddens 1987 , 4). Off the back of this conviction, influential English School, liberal, and constructivist accounts have argued that the Peace of Westphalia marked a transformative moment in first European and then eventually global politics. Whether through contracting, cultural innovation, or a combination of the two, the Peace of Westphalia supposedly institutionalized a new means of managing Europe’s confessional pluralism and political fragmentation. Following the Peace, and with the twin universalisms of Church and Empire diminished, European rulers turned from heteronomy and hierarchy to sovereignty as the chief principle regulating the recognition and allocation of political authority.

Westphalia through this interpretation thus marked the advent of a so-called ‘anarchical society’ (Bull 1977) . The Peace neutralized religious difference as a cause of war between European polities, and established the possibility of institutionalized coexistence between competing independent sovereigns. Successive waves of colonialism and decolonization then diffused the Westphalian system globally, laying the foundations for today’s plural order ( Jackson 2000 ; Ikenberry 2020 ). For proponents of this view, the sovereign state system is the key interaction field through which relations between political communities are organized globally, with the Peace of Westphalia as its initial epicentre. Admittedly, English School interpretations in particular have varied in their intuitions regarding the importance of (Western) cultural consensus in gestating the Westphalian system and then driving its global spread. This concern for Westphalia’s alleged cultural particularity drove some apprehension regarding its prospective survival in a multicultural world, particularly in decolonization’s immediate aftermath (e.g. Wight 1977 , 33). These fears aside, the conception of Westphalia as international society’s ground zero has proved broadly influential, not only among English School theorists, but also among key liberals and constructivists as well ( Ikenberry 2020 ; Philpott 2001 ).

A final claim for Westphalia’s significance stresses its cultural centrality as a key inflection point in the secularization of international order. This interpretation situates Westphalia within a more protracted series of cultural transformations within the West, which recast the relationship between religious and political authority (e.g. Mendelsohn 2012 ; Philpott 2001 ). The most conspicuous manifestation of this change was the neutralization of religious difference as a trigger for international conflict. But more broadly, Westphalia served as the capstone of a double domestication of religion. This encompassed the delegation of primary responsibility for organizing religious difference downwards, from the systemic level (Church and Empire) to the unit level (the sovereign state). But it also paradoxically included a curtailment of sovereigns’ authority to dictate subjects’ religious conformity. This is because Westphalia exemplified a recasting of the understanding of religion itself, from a corporal and communal body of believers, to a privately held body of beliefs ( Holt 2005 , 2). This involved a reimagining of religion as a matter of individual conscience, with authorized confessional minorities accordingly granted limited rights of toleration ( Reus-Smit 2013a , 101).

Contesting the ‘Myth’ of Westphalia

Despite Westphalia’s prominent identification with modernity in mainstream IR, critics have contesting each of the aforementioned claims.

Critics of the ‘myth’ of Westphalia have focused particular attention on the post-1648 persistence of diverse polity forms besides the sovereign state. For the sovereign state’s modern territorial configuration was not established by the mid-seventeenth century; mutually exclusive forms of sovereign territoriality instead came much later ( Ruggie 1993 , 163; Reus-Smit 2013a , 70). Revisionists have also noted dynasticism’s post-1648 persistence as a key property of Europe’s dominant political units, and the distinct forms of violent transnational conflict that arose from it (e.g. Nexon 2009 ). The survival of non-state polities like the Holy Roman Empire, and later the German Confederation, further confounds Westphalia’s identification as a mass extinction event for non-state actors ( Halden 2013 ; Osiander 2008 ). In short, the reality of polity diversity after 1648 undermines Westphalia’s identification with the sovereign state’s triumphant ascent, as well as the identification of the sovereign state as the institutional embodiment of modernity.

Just as Westphalia did not mark the sovereign state’s definitive triumph over its competitors, revisionists have also critiqued efforts to identify it as heralding the genesis of the modern sovereign state system. Narratives stressing Westphalia’s status as the birth certificate of the international system are susceptible to critique first on grounds of anachronism. This is because many of the most crucial features of the modern sovereign state system arose only incrementally in the centuries following the Peace of Westphalia. The rise of modern border delimitation regimes ( Goettlich 2019 ); the delegitimation of private international violence ( Thomson 1994 ); the entrenchment of norms of non-intervention and sovereign equality ( Reus-Smit 2013b )—each are fundamental to the modern international system, and arose long after the end of the Thirty Years’ War.

To be fair, even the most ardent Westphalia boosters rarely cast it as a single ‘big bang’ moment heralding the pristine arrival of a modern international system. This nuance blunts the force of charges of anachronism. A more serious criticism focuses on the Eurocentric teleology that pervades influential accounts of the expansion of international society (e.g. Bull and Watson 1984 ). These accounts strongly endorse international society’s apparent Westphalian origins. Yet there are dangers in this endorsement. Most obviously, it risks sanitizing the colonial violence that accompanied international society’s expansion, as well as downplaying the hierarchical character of international society during the fleeting era of Western dominance ( Kayaoglu 2010 ). Such narratives likewise omit the constitutive role overseas colonial expansion played in shaping the evolution of core institutions and identities within and between European states (e.g. Branch 2012 ).

More fundamentally, in elevating Westphalia as the singular epicentre and origin point for the modern international system, traditional accounts reinforce the idea of modernity as a constellation of institutions that originated from the West, and then propagated with the sovereign state’s amoeba-like global diffusion. This conception is historically flawed, in that it overlooks the complex dynamics of Western expansion prior to the nineteenth century, which frequently entailed Westerners’ incorporation into powerful Afro-Asian polities, rather than the outright imposition of Western institutions ( Suzuki et al. 2015 ). Equally, it also obscures the ways in which international society was not only globally extended, but also transformed, through subaltern actors’ struggles for recognition ( Dunne and Reus-Smit 2017 ).

Turning last to accounts of Westphalia as an exemplar of secularization (e.g. Philpott 2001 ; Straumann 2008 ), this claim is vulnerable to the charge that it risks overstating religion’s retreat from public life after 1648. True, religious difference was no longer a catalyst for international war after Westphalia. But rulers’ legitimation strategies remained suffused by religious convictions throughout the Age of Absolutism ( Gorski 2003 ). So too did underlying conceptions of the moral purpose of the state, and the accompanying design of European international society’s fundamental institutions ( Reus-Smit 1999 ). The Westphalian settlement likewise laid a basis for confessional co-habitation within the Empire, rather than seeking to sublimate religious difference through appeals to alternative forms of collective identity.

Westphalia thus is better imagined as an ecumenical rather than a secular peace. The distinction is not merely pedantic, for recognizing Westphalia as an ecumenical rather than secular settlement is key to understanding the distinctive type of diversity regime that it instantiated. Disentangling Westphalia from secularism is also important to avoid conflating modernity with secularization, and to sidestep the Eurocentric conceit that Europe’s Westphalian ‘breakthrough’ might offer a model for emulation for non-Western regions still hostage to sectarian conflict (c.f. Milton et al. 2019 ).

Finally, identifying Westphalia with secularism is problematic given the mutable and continuously evolving category of ‘secularism’ and ‘religion’ as categories of productive power in world politics ( Agensky 2017 ; Hurd 2009 ). As Elizabeth Shakman Hurd has demonstrated, secularism even in the Western tradition has encompassed both laicist and Judeo-Christian variants ( Hurd 2009 ). Tellingly, these emerged not from developments endogenous to the West, such as the Thirty Years’ War, but from Western colonial encounters, ranging from the French conquest of Algeria to the American republic’s struggles against the Barbary pirates ( Hurd 2009 ). This complexity reminds us of the centrality of cross-cultural encounters in shaping the modern international system’s evolution, and the insufficiency of Westphalia-centric accounts that consider this evolution through a Eurocentric rather than global lens.

Rethinking Westphalia’s Significance through the Lens of Global History

Critiques of the ‘myth’ of 1648 have been extensive and cumulatively influential. In response, IR scholars are increasingly identifying the advent of modern international relations with the nineteenth century, rather than with Westphalia (e.g. Buzan and Lawson 2015 , 1–8; Zarakol 2010 , 46). This realignment brings IR into line with cognate disciplines, which have traditionally cast modernity as arising no earlier than the late eighteenth century (e.g. Giddens 1987 ; Mann 1986 ).

There are however significant dangers in erasing Westphalia entirely from our accounts of the modern international system’s development. This is not least because Westphalia undeniably marked a key inflection point in Europe’s political development. While Westphalia may not have inaugurated a wholesale shift towards a states-under-anarchy model, conceptions of seismic discontinuous change are in any case largely unhelpful in conceptualizing international systems change ( Buzan and Lawson 2015 , 7–8). Essential features of the conventional narrative—that the Church and Empire were weakened relative to the sovereign state; that the Peace terminated Europe’s Wars of Religion; that in so doing, the Peace provided breathing space for the state-building that subsequently gestated a functioning sovereign state system ( Burkhardt 2004 )—remain relatively uncontested. That the polities of West-Central Europe did subsequently extend their influence globally—leading to the ultimate rise of a global sovereign state monoculture—moreover testifies to Westphalia’s global historical significance.

If Westphalia is neither the origin point for the modern international system, nor merely a negative peace of exhaustion lacking any larger global relevance, how can it best be conceptualized? I suggest that Westphalia’s importance can be best evaluated comparatively, alongside contemporaneous crises that convulsed Eurasia’s power centres during the seventeenth century. The Thirty Years’ War played out within a more general convulsion across Eurasia, which resulted in re-articulations of the relationship between political authority and cultural diversity across multiple regional orders. Westphalia mattered because it entrenched a particular relationship between political authority and cultural diversity—anchored around an embryonic sovereign state system—that distinguished it from most Eurasian imperial alternatives. The resulting divergence between European multipolarity and Asian unipolarity established distinct multiple modernities, which later became entangled as they later coalesced into a genuinely global international system. While there is insufficient scope here to develop this argument in detail, I present its broad brushstrokes below.

The Thirty Years’ War and the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century

The upheaval wrought by the Thirty Years’ War was far from unique in early modern Eurasia ( Goldstone 1991 ; Parker 2014 ). On the contrary, the period saw far-reaching convulsions throughout the Old World. Russia and China both saw widespread conflict and dynastic transitions during this time. The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires conversely proved more resilient, though each faced dramatic challenges to their rule ( Dale 2010 ; White 2013 ).

While the causes of these crises were diverse, their synchronicity was far from serendipitous. A combination of over-population and climatological oscillations (the so-called ‘little Ice Age’) made all complex agrarian societies susceptible to strain during this time ( Blom 2019 ; Goldstone 1991 ; Parker 2014 ; White 2013 ). Ecological pressures intensified existing intra-elite group competition ( Goldstone 1991 ), while the previous Eurasia-wide diffusion of new military technologies ( Lorge 2008 ) increased the scale and potential destructiveness of conflicts.

The resulting conjunction of popular distress, institutional strain, and increasing violence interdependence produced legitimation crises across Eurasia. As rulers responded to these crises, they recalibrated their legitimation strategies accordingly. Across much of Eurasia, this entailed the refurbishment of incorporative diversity regimes, that defined and organized cultural diversity in ways consistent with maintaining imperial power. Thus, in India, the Mughals doubled down on a strategy of syncretic incorporation that legitimized the Emperor as the divine reconciler of the Empire’s otherwise irreducibly heterogeneous faith communities ( Phillips 2021 ). Conversely, following the Manchu conquest, the Qing Dynasty defined cultural diversity largely along ethnic lines, preserving and extending their empire through a diversity regime grounded in the careful segregation of imperial ‘constituencies’ ( Crossley 2002 , 6) from one another.

Crises of Legitimacy and the Distinctiveness of Westphalian Diversity Regime

Seen through the lens of a Eurasia-wide crisis of authority, Westphalia presents as a distinct solution to the turmoil that engulfed the Old World in the seventeenth century. In common with Eurasia’s other power centres, Latin Christendom during the Thirty Years’ War experienced a legitimation crisis, as the Habsburgs unsuccessfully sought to strengthen imperial authority against the Empire’s petty rulers in the context of internationalized religious and civil conflict. The intersection of a systemic legitimation crisis with the spread of disruptive military innovations and cultural (especially religious) polarization was not what made Latin Christendom distinctive. By contrast, the Westphalian solution did depart from the imperial consolidation evident elsewhere in Eurasia—establishing a distinctive developmental pathway that marked Latin Christendom off from its Asian counterparts.

The Westphalian solution nudged the Empire towards a distinctive diversity regime , that in turn gradually established sovereignty as Latin Christendom’s dominant organizing principle, while elevating the management of confessional difference as the pivotal focus of order-building efforts. Following Christian Reus-Smit, I understand diversity regimes as ‘systemic norms and practices that legitimize certain units of political authority (states, empires, and so on), define recognized categories of cultural difference (religion, civilization, nation and so on), and relate the two (civilization and empire, nation and state, and so on)’ ( Reus-Smit 2018 , 13–14).

Westphalia did not mark the pristine advent of a sovereign state system. Nevertheless, it did invest the Empire’s petty rulers with sovereign-like powers, recognize Dutch de jure and Swiss de facto independence, and curtail both Habsburg power, as well as the transnational authority of the Church. In so doing, it entrenched sovereignty over imperial suzerainty and heteronomy as Christendom’s dominant principle for organizing and allocating political authority.

With respect to organizing authorized forms of cultural difference and relating them to units of political authority, Westphalia endorsed a limited ecumenical vision, centered around confessional cohabitation within the Empire between Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, and endorsing—with strict provisions to protect confessional minorities—princely rulers’ rights to determine the official faith within their territories ( Phillips and Reus-Smit 2020 , 28–29). Confessional identity—rather than nationality or locality—emerged as the most salient form of collective identification, and was explicitly tied to the legitimation as well as the limitation of princely rulers’ powers. To the extent that norms of sovereignty were ‘compromised’ ( Krasner 1995 ) through minority rights protections, this was done to preserve a balance of power between the princes and the emperor, and with a view to upholding the general peace of Europe.

Westphalia was therefore a sovereign as well as an ecumenical settlement. It entrenched sovereignty over suzerainty or heteronomy as the dominant—though not the only—mode for organizing political authority in Christendom. And it recognized Latin Christendom’s permanent confessional division, institutionalizing a system-stabilizing compromise between the sovereign’s prerogative to determine confessional identity within his territory, and confessional minorities’ rights to exercise individual freedom of religious conscience ( Reus-Smit 2013a ).

Admittedly, even this revised characterization of Westphalia needs caveats. Notably, we must neither overstate the geographic scope of the Westphalian diversity regime, nor exaggerate its elasticity in accommodating cultural difference.

Geographically, the Peace of Westphalia was primarily a means to manage political and religious conflict within the Empire. Westphalia guaranteed continued religious and political pluralism within Latin Christendom’s physical core. Together with the concurrent extension of independence to the Dutch Republic and the Swiss cantons, it foreclosed the consolidation of imperial hierarchy across much of the great cluster of urban settlements that were traditionally West-Central Europe’s great incubators of wealth and cultural innovation.

The resulting mixture of proto-sovereign and imperial arrangements within the Empire deviated significantly from the ideal of sovereign anarchy. Nevertheless, at a systemic level, Westphalia still indirectly helped entrench the rise of sovereignty in Western Europe over alternative organizing principles, such as heteronomy or suzerainty. This is because it stopped neighbouring state-builders from being side-tracked into ruinous entanglement in the Empire’s constitutional and religious controversies. This enabled them to concentrate on consolidating their own sovereign authority over internal rivals at home, even as many concurrently extended imperial hierarchies abroad through overseas expansion.

The geographic effects of Westphalia were thus uneven, radiating out in concentric circles from the Empire to Western Europe to the wider world. Paradoxically, Westphalia’s improvised combination of sovereign and suzerain practices in Europe’s core helped consolidate sovereign state-building projects on its Atlantic periphery (e.g. France, Spain, and England). This then enabled the latter to further pursue trans-continental expansion, eventually extending imperial hierarchies across large swathes of Afro-Asia, the Americas, and Oceania.

Just as its geographic impact was limited, so too was Westphalia’s fabled ecumenicism. Undeniably, Westphalia entrenched a more stable confessional order than before. Nevertheless, the Westphalian diversity regime remained highly restrictive, especially when compared to its Eurasian counterparts. This is because it continued to tie political authority tightly to confessional allegiance, broadening the bandwidth of toleration within the Empire to encompass only Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists. Both within and beyond the Empire, Jews, Muslims, and Christian dissident sects remained largely excluded from public life in Westphalia’s wake. This contrasted with the relatively more favourable treatment religious minorities generally enjoyed in the Ottoman and Mughal Empires, cautioning against Westphalia’s commemoration as a milestone in the move towards a more tolerant world.

These caveats aside, the Westphalian dispensation nevertheless undeniably differed profoundly from its Eurasian counterparts. Elsewhere, the seventeenth-century crises favoured imperial consolidation, and the subordination or extinction of local sovereignties by centralizing conquest elites. Thus, in South Asia, by the late seventeenth century the Mughal Empire had peaked in size, extending its reach almost throughout the entirety of the sub-continent. In East Asia, meanwhile, the Qing Dynasty’s ascendancy foreshadowed vast conquests, the Manchus encompassing huge new territories including Tibet and Xinjiang, and doubling the empire’s size by the end of the eighteenth century. Following the ascent of the Romanov Dynasty, Russia likewise expanded relentlessly, enfolding diverse duchies, kingdoms, khanates and tribal confederacies into a vast patrimony stretching from Finland to Vladivostok. By contrast, Latin Christendom stood out as one of the few major power centres where the trend was towards political fragmentation rather than integration, and the institutionalization of pluralism through a sovereign state system.

Likewise, early modern Eurasian empire-builders favoured diversity regimes centered on either syncretism or segregation. The former centered on hybrid elite court cultures that ostentatiously celebrated the heterogeneity of the peoples yoked under imperial rule. The latter self-consciously balkanized subject peoples into discrete imperial constituencies, each separately tied to the centre through their own customized institutions and legitimating rituals. Despite their differences, syncretic and segregated diversity regimes supported Emperor-centric strategies of legitimation, the former foregrounding the Emperor as either the divine reconciler of diverse faiths, the latter elevating him as the incarnation of different communities’ distinct and separate collective identities. By contrast, confessional ecumenicism prevented any single imperial figurehead from claiming universal authority through sacred legitimation. Given the confessional identities’ categorical character (e.g. the Emperor could not be both Catholic and Lutheran), the privileging of these identities within the Westphalian diversity regime inhibited imperial consolidation, while legitimizing the dispersal of political authority among a plethora of sovereign polities.

Westphalia’s Significance in the Context of Multiple and Entangled Early Modernities

Seen alongside its Eurasian counterparts, the distinctiveness of the Peace of Westphalia is clear. Whereas other regional systems tended towards unipolarity after the mid-seventeenth century, Latin Christendom evolved in a direction of multipolarity. This trend was already embryonic from the fifteenth century. But from the Peace of Westphalia, the prospects of Latin Christendom coalescing into a unipolar system were meaningfully constrained. Instead, Westphalia established a path dependency for West-Central Europe, with sovereignty, multipolarity and the balance of power increasingly reinforced as its default condition at all subsequent general peace congresses.

Westphalia’s significance moreover is not confined to its importance as a critical juncture in European political development. Rather, it also has a global significance that flows directly from its distinctiveness relative to the norm of Eurasian imperial consolidation, and from the patterns of interaction that emerged as a result of this divergence between European and Asian political development. The fragmentation and competition enshrined by Westphalia solidified Europeans’ predilections to project their rivalries globally, in pursuit of the non-European resource portfolios they coveted to enhance their wealth and power. Simultaneously, Asian imperial consolidation helped to preserve stability in what were then the world’s wealthiest and most populous power centres. The push of European rivalries under multipolarity, together with the pull of Asian security and prosperity under regional unipolarity, then laid the foundations for expanding inter-regional trade, and rising global interaction capacity thereafter.

The value in considering Westphalia comparatively through the lens of global history is therefore twofold.

First, a comparative assessment of Westphalia enables us to see more clearly how Latin Christendom deviated from its Eurasian contemporaries. To acknowledge this European exceptionalism is not to reproduce the Eurocentrism of earlier valorizations of Westphalia, which conceived it as a uniquely viable solution to the problem of political and cultural pluralism (e.g. Jackson 2000 ). On the contrary, a comparative analysis illuminates the limitations of European achievements, by contrasting them with the successful projects of imperial renewal and incorporation of cultural diversity that distinguished most other early modern regional systems ( Phillips and Reus-Smit 2020 ).

More positively, a comparative analysis does invite us to revisit the puzzle of Europe’s persistent political pluralism. Certainly, Westphalia did not make future bids for universal empire impossible. But it did make them more challenging than before, establishing a path dependency for Europe that grew stronger with each successive general peace. This is because Westphalia insulated Europe’s geographic core, and a good chunk of its urban wealth-producing heartland, within a constitutional order that survived down to the Empire’s abolition in 1806. The imperial constitution preserved diverse polities that empire-builders might otherwise have easily devoured, while allowing time for the maturation of other system-stabilizing mechanisms (notably the idea and practice of the balance of power) that then further entrenched Western Europe’s political fragmentation.

Additionally, Westphalia also provided successive anti-imperial coalitions with a potent propaganda device they could invoke to frustrate would-be empire-builders, and to legitimize general peace settlements favouring pluralism over hegemony. Weaponized nostalgia for Westphalia for example proved crucial in solidifying support for the Congress of Vienna. It did so by providing an elongated historical genealogy of Europe’s political pluralism, that the anti-Napoleonic coalition had successfully defended against imperial conquest ( Keene 2002 , 21–22). In this latter sense, then, successive invocations of the ‘myth’ of Westphalia proved cumulatively as important as the initial contents of the settlement itself in reinforcing a trajectory towards sovereignty over empire as West-Central Europe’s default condition.

Second, considering Westphalia comparatively is valuable in helping us to understand the crucial warm-up period of early modernity that helped to pave the way for a global international system in the nineteenth century. The combination of European fragmentation after Westphalia and Asian imperial consolidation was critical in driving both the European thrust overseas, as well as in shaping regionally diverse patterns of European incorporation into Asia. The resulting thickening of inter-regional ties was critically conducive to the much later acceleration of European colonial conquest that helped inaugurate a global modern international system. Equally, these colonial entanglements were themselves critical in reshaping European political order, and in giving form to the ‘Westphalian’ sovereign state system in its most mature elaboration.

Though Westphalian revisionists are convincing, the case for defining Westphalia down into insignificance is overdrawn. Westphalia was indeed a critical juncture in European political evolution, which nudged Europe down the path to sovereign anarchy, against the Eurasian norm of imperial hierarchy. This seventeenth-century ‘great divergence’ then drastically shaped the contours of subsequent inter-civilizational interactions, inaugurating a web of entanglements that then made the nineteenth century advent of a global international system possible. To understand how we became ‘modern’ and how the global international system came to be, it is critical to explore the interactive pre-histories between different regions that made this development imaginable. Within this context, Westphalia remains vitally important for all who are interested in comprehending the deep historical origins of today’s global order.

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How the Peace of Westphalia Shaped Europe

Oct 10, 2022

Reading time: 5 minutes

The Peace of Westphalia, sometimes known as the treaty of Westphalia, is the collective name for three important treaties signed in 1648 that would shape the destiny of Europe. One ended the Dutch Revolt, creating a powerful, independent Dutch Republic, while the other two ended the Thirty Years’ War and gave a measure of peace to Germany and surrounding countries.

By Fergus O’Sullivan

The Peace of Westphalia was more than a handful of treaties, though. According to many scholars, the Peace is where we first see the idea of an international community emerging, with many countries working toward a common goal.

Moving Parts

To understand that a little better, let’s go over some of the events. The three treaties that make up the Peace of Westphalia are the Peace of Münster, the Treaty of Münster and the Treaty of Osnabrück, all of which were signed over the course of 1648. The two cities were then and are now important towns within the area of Germany called Westphalia.

The Peace of Münster ended the Eighty Years War, the independence struggle of the Netherlands against Spain. The Treaty of Münster and the Treaty of Osnabrück were the final act of the Thirty Years War , a brutal war fought in Germany between, well, almost everybody.

When a conflict runs as long as either of these two did, it almost automatically starts sucking in surrounding nations, or even countries far away. The Dutch Revolt, for example, was the catalyst for what would become the massive Dutch overseas empire and saw fighting all over what’s now the Netherlands and Belgium, but also in the New World and Asia. It wasn’t just the Dutch and Spanish fighting, either; the English were involved for a while, as were some German princelings and even French troops.

Of course, this pales in comparison to the Thirty Years War in which pretty much all of Europe got involved. Though the bulk of the fighting was contained to Germany and Czechia (the Battle of White Mountain just outside Prague was the first major engagement of the war), the list of belligerents reads like a who’s who of early modern European countries.

A simplified list includes practically all German states — about 200 or so of them, though fewer after the war — as well as Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, England, France and Spain, which included Portugal at the time. There were also some related sideshows, like the wars between Sweden and Poland or the Austrian border wars with the Ottoman Empire. The only country not involved in the Thirty Years War was the Dutch Republic, which resisted joining the fray and kept its own war separate from the goings-on in Germany, at least mostly.

All of these countries got involved so they could carve out a little for themselves: Sweden wanted to kickstart its empire , Spain to protect its approach to the Netherlands and Austria to keep control over the Holy Roman Empire. 

Getting Together

Because everybody at some point had had a dog in the fight, this means that everybody had an interest in getting something out of it. As a result, when it was time to settle a peace deal, everybody who was anybody descended on Westphalia. In total, 109 delegations attended the negotiations, though not all at the same time. 

To get an idea, currently the United Nations has 193 sovereign states as members. Getting anything done requires a massive effort even with modern methods of travel and communication. Imagine hammering out a peace deal in early modern Europe with just over half that number.

Somehow, though, deals were struck in a triumph of international cooperation. However, much as with the Treaty of Vienna after the Napoleonic Wars or the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War, it was the big boys that came out best and the minnows were forced to some extent to be satisfied with the scraps.

Peaceful Cooperation?

Though it may not have been an entirely fair deal for everybody, the Peace of Westphalia did an impressive job of bringing people together and settling some kind of peace on the European continent, or at least in the central part of it. Spain and France would keep fighting for a while longer, for example, and the Ottomans weren’t going anywhere.

Some measure of peace was restored between Protestants and Catholics, though, and the Dutch Republic and the Swiss Confederacy were recognized as separate countries with borders that more or less remain to this day. Germany’s cornucopia of states was brought back to just a few dozen, though a few once independent statelets and cities were doled out to France and Sweden.

Though it may not stand as a triumph of the underdog, the Peace of Westphalia did an amazing job of bringing a lot of people together and ending two massive wars that had cost millions of lives and had devastated the German states. Though it may not have set the standard for international cooperation, it may have laid the groundwork for what was to come.

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Peace of Westphalia: Basis of International Relations Essay

Introduction, outcomes of the peace of westphalia, principles, laid in the treaties, contemporary views, balance of power, compromises, concept of democratic peace.

First of all it should be mentioned, that the Peace of Westphalia is regarded as the first statute, defining the character of international relations for the following centuries within more than two states. The Peace of Westphalia submits to the pair of agreements, the Treaty of Osnabrück and the Treaty of Münster, concluded on May 15 and October 24 of 1648 correspondingly, which ended both the Thirty Years’ War and the Eighty Years’ War. 1 The agreements included the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III Habsburg, the other German princes, Spain, France, Sweden and plenipotentiaries of the Dutch Republic. The Treaty of the Pyrenees, concluded in 1659, terminating the war between France and Spain, is also often regarded as part of the overall accord.

The France with Ludwig XIV at the head placed the predominant position in the international relations. Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs were its main opponents, but they were weakened by the Thirty Years’ War, and humbled by the provisions of the Peace of Westphalia. Moreover, Spain, after the new unsuccessful war with France had to cede the county of Rusillion and Arras according to The Treaty of the Pyrenees. But Ludwig was not satisfied with these successes, and wishing not only to widen his possessions, but also become the unrestricted reign of the whole Europe, as he was in France. The condition of the French army, perfect in both qualitative and quantitative measure motivated him to undertake the number of wars, and gave hope for the fulfillment of this hope. The other European states could not let Ludwig to bring to life his plans to disturb the political balance in Europe, and created powerful coalitions to confront him. This significantly interrupted Ludwig’s plans (Brown, 2001).

Ludwig led four wars, two of which were aimed to capture Spanish Netherlands (Belgium). It means the possibility of threat for England, and also the superiority in North sea, the threat for Netherlands’ domination, which did not participate in the Thirty Years’ war, and raised its power. Holland, bewaring to have powerful France instead of weak Spain as a neighbor, concluded coalitions against France, attracting Sweden and England. Ludwig’s military successes appeared insufficient. According to the peace of Aachen (1668), France got just several frontier fortresses (Gross, 1948).

Strong commercial rivalry existed between England and Holland. France aggravated the contradictions between England and Spain for the monopoly of trading with America. German empire was fictive. Austria aims to dominate in Germany. Sweden is France’s ally. And Turkey with Poland are Austrian ones. France’s aim is not to allow the union of sea states (England, Holland), to isolate its opponents, by capturing Spanish trade way. 1660 – restoring of Stewards in England. Karl II brakes the union with Madrid, and helps Portugal, and French king Ludwig gets the opportunity to make pressure on Netherlands. The war between England and Holland started in 1664. Netherlands are defeated it, and lose part of the colonies in America, which were called the New England later. Phillip dies in 1665. 1667 – The war against Spain, during which South Netherlands had been captured by the French army. Spain and Holland stop war actions, and create the tripartite political union with Sweden. Then, Ludwig stops his troops, and concludes peace with Spain. Ludwig decided to revenge Holland severely. He interrupted Sweden and England from concluding the union with Holland, and invaded Holland with huge army in 1672 and reached Amsterdam. Hollanders could not resist, and to save the country broke the dams, which surrounded Holland from the side of the sea. The water flooded all the law-lying locations, and the French were made to retreat (Gross, 1948).

Wilhelm the king of Orange created the new coalition, which united all the German lands, and Spain. Ludwig fought this coalition very successfully. As Friedrich -Wilhelm, elector of Brandenburg, was the most dangerous, Ludwig, in order to divert his forces from the theater of war actions, persuaded Sweden to attack Brandenburg possessions from Pomerania. Friedrich hurried to defend Brandenburg, defeated Swedes, and captured part of Pomerania. Since that war lasted approximately 4 years, and ended in 1679. It ended with almost no results. France keeps territory in Flandreau, but Netherlands do not lose independence. They got all their cities, captured by France, back, and France turns the whole Europe against itself (Krasner, 1995).

While France strengthened more and more, German empire, divided into lots of independent territories, weakened more and more. This weakness pushed Ludwig to rambling expansion, leading by the principle of capture. Ludwig captures the cities of Rheine, and also Strasburg. In 1684 Germany Concluded normal treaty with him, according to which declared all the captures, just in order he did not start new ones. In1683 French army conquers Luxemburg, which causes conflict with Vienna. Poland defeats Turkey and Turkish power starts falling. Austria starts leading active anti-France policy. Wilhelm the king of Orange concluded the third coalition against Ludwig. Almost all Western Europe participated in it: German emperor, Spain, Sweden, Holland, Savoy, German and Italian rulers. Only England was on Ludwig’s side, but when English king Jacob II was deposed, and Wilhelm the king of Orange became the king, England became France’s enemy. Ludwig’s capture of Pyrenean lands became the start of the third war, which lasted for ten years (1688-1697). The struggle was persistent, and exhausted both sides, and ended with the Peace of Ryswick 2 . According to the provisions of this agreement Ludwig left Strasburg and other captured cities, but was obliged to declare Wilhelm the king of Orange as the king of England. The dawn of French power started. Though, France ceded not too much, this war ended with all the claims for the dominance of France in Europe (Gross, 1948).

Getting back to the Peace of Westphalia, it would be necessary to emphasize, that it is regarded as one the first great European or world charter. To it is usually featured the significance and distinction of being the first of numerous efforts to institute something resembling world unity on the foundation of states applying unrestricted autonomy over certain lands and subordinated to no possible authority.

The Thirty Years’ War had its origin, at any rate partially, in a religious disagreement or, as one might say, in religious prejudice. The Peace of Westphalia sanctified the standard of toleration by founding the equality among Protestant and Catholic states and by offering some maintains for religious minorities. To be sure, the standard of liberty of principles was related only partly and lacking reciprocity. The religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555 and the rule cujus regio ejus religio were corroborated. With a view to lessening the lot of religious minorities, though, the Treaty of Osnabruck offered that questions who in 1627 had been eliminated from the free realize of their religion, other than of their sovereign, were by the Peace guaranteed the right of performing private reverence, and of educating children, at home or overseas, in conventionality with their own confidence; they were not to bear in any social aptitude nor to be denied religious interment, but were to be at freedom to emigrate, trading their lands and realty or leaving them to be run by others (Osiander, 2001).

The principle of religious parity was set as part of the peace under an worldwide guarantee. The Peace of Westphalia thereby stated an example of far-reaching significance. The Constitution of the Germanic Confederation of June 8, 1815, which grounds part of the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna of June 9, 1815, specifies in Article XVI that the distinction between the Christian religions should origin no differentiation in the enjoyment by their supporters of civil and political rights, and, in addition, that the German Diet should reflect on the funding of civil rights to Jews on condition that they suppose all civic duties incumbent on other citizen (Osiander, 2001).

In addition to the guarantee, the Settlement of Westphalia formulated certain extremely interesting rules for the peaceful settlement of disputes and collective sanctions against aggressors. Thus the Treaty of Miinster, in Articles 113 and 124 stipulates that:

if it happens that any point should be violated, the Offended shall before all things exhort the Offender not to come to any Hostility, submitting the Cause to a friendly Composition, or the ordinary Proceedings of Justice. Nevertheless, if for the space of three years the Difference cannot be terminated, by any of those means, all and every one of those concerned in this Transaction shall be obliged to join the injured Party, and assist him with Counsel and Force to repel the Injury, being first advertised by the Injured that gentle Means and Justice prevailed nothing; but without prejudice, nevertheless, to every one’s Jurisdiction, and the Administration of Justice conformable to the Laws of each Prince and State; and it shall not be permitted to any State of the Empire to pursue his Right by Force and Arms; but if any difference has happened or happens for the future (between the states of the Empire), every one shall try the means of ordinary Justice, and the Contravener shall be regarded as an Infringer of the Peace. That which has been determined (between the States of the Empire) by Sentence of the Judge, shall be put in execution, without distinction of Condition, as the Laws of the Empire enjoin touching the Execution of arrests and Sentences (Osiander, 2001).

Lots of scientists have declared that the global system of states, multinational corporations and organizations which exists today began in 1648 at the Peace of Westphalia. Both the grounds and the consequence of this view have been assaulted by revisionist academics and politicians alike, with revisionists perplexed the meaning of the Peace, and commentators and politicians attacking the Westphalian System of sovereign nation-states. (McGrew, Lewis, 1992)

The Westphalian System, primarily stated by the provisions of the treaties concluded in Westphalia in 1648 is used as a tag by academics to define the system of states which the world is based on of today. In 1998, a Symposium on the lifelong political significance of the Peace of Westphalia, then–NATO Secretary General Javier Solana stated that “humankind and democratic system were two standards fundamentally unrelated to the primary Westphalian organization” and charged a criticism that “the Westphalian system had its restrictions. For one, the standard of dominion it relied on also shaped the basis for rivalry, not society of states; omission, not incorporation.” (Linklater, 1975)

In 2000, then–German minister of foreign affairs Joschka Fischer submitted to the Peace of Westphalia in his Humboldt Speech, which disputed that the system of European politics set up by Westphalia was outmoded: “The center of the notion of Europe after 1945 was and still is a refusal of the European balance-of-power attitude and the hegemonic ambitions of personage states that had emerged tracking the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a rejection which took the form of closer meshing of vital interests and the transfer of nation-state self-governing rights to supranational European foundations.” (Richmond, 2002).

In the outcome of the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks, Lewis ‘Atiyyatullah, who asserts to symbolize the terrorist network al-Qaeda, affirmed that “the global system built-up by the West since the Treaty of Westphalia will collapse; and a new global arrangement will rise under the control of a powerful Islamic state”. It has also been maintained that globalization is bringing a development of the global system past the autonomous Westphalian state. (Richmond, 2002)

Nevertheless, European nationalists and American paleoconservatives represented by Pat Buchanan grasp a constructive view of the Westphalian state. Followers of the Westphalian state notion resist socialism and some forms of capitalism for challenging the nation state. A major argument of Buchanan’s political vocation, for instance, has been attacking globalization, critical theory, neo-conservatism, and other ideas he regards as disadvantageous to today’s developed states.

Since the late 1990s, the notion of Westphalian independence has been brought into additional matter by a range of definite and projected military interferences in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan among others. (Richmond, 2002)

Few of these, taking into account the interventions in Yugoslavia have been rationalized as concerned interference, intended at avoiding approaching genocide or large-scale loss of life. Neo-conservatism particularly has enhanced this line of judging further, to assert that a lack of democracy may prefigure future humanitarian disasters, or that democracy declares a human right on its own.

There is, however, debate about whether recent violations of state independence, such as the 2003 Iraq War, really reproduced these higher standards, or whether the real explanation was simply that of self-defense, which is more dependable with the conventional view of Westphalian dominion. A new notion of dependent independence seems to be promising in worldwide law, but it has not yet achieved the point of legal legality. (Richmond, 2002)

The supplementary denigration of Westphalian sovereignty happens in relation to supposedly failed states, of which Afghanistan (before the invasion of NATO forces in 2001) is often regarded as an example. In this case, it is debated that no dominion exists and that worldwide interference is justified on compassionate positions and by the hazards posed by failed states to neighboring states and the world in general. Nevertheless, the 2001 incursion was validated more honestly on the bases of self-defense, as a reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. Some of the current argues over Somalia is also being radiated in these same terms (Richmond, 2002).

The main precious fact for the theorists of international relations, that the Peace of Westphalia is of, is that it stated the first formal paradigm of international relations in the world. It is the balance of power. The brief explanation of this concept states, that peace is maintained while all the actors of the international arena are equally powerful (or equally weak). The fact is, this concept is rather dangerous for peace in the long-term perspective. Any balance tends to be violated or interrupted. When one becomes more powerful in comparison with the others, he tries to turn this disparity into his own profit. Thus, taking into account the ambitions of medieval kings and emperors, the peace could not be maintained for a long time, and this tendency outlined in the following capturing wars among European states (Grimes, 1956).

Within a balance of power system, a state may choose to engage in either balancing or bandwagoning behavior. In a time of war, the decision to balance or to bandwagon may well determine the survival of the state. The fact is the rules for boundaries and independence elated only European states, and in no way touched the colonies. Thus, the place for the colonial wars was left. It became the first historical lesson on the division of the world, which stated, that the power and authority must be applied only within the borders of particular state.

Autonomy, declared by the provisions of the treaties concluded in Westphalia, means that no exterior actor applies power within the boundaries of the state. Territorial abuses of the Westphalian model engage the formation of power arrangements that are not coterminous with physical boundaries. Examples comprise the British Commonwealth (but not colonial empires in which power and territory are coterminous, even if territories of land are not neighboring), the European Union, Antarctica, Andorra, and the Exclusive Economic Zone for the oceans. Some trustworthy acts within a particular area are determined by actors within that area, but others are decided by extra-territorial bodies, such as the European Court. Most of these attempts to create power arrangements that surpass territory have failed, but that has not discouraged governors from formulating new institutional forms: the Westphalian model has not limited the imagination (Grimes, A.P., 1956).

Infringements of the standard of independence, in which an exterior actor is able to implement some trustworthy arrangement within the territory of a state, have been more recurrent than those of territoriality, but not always as realizable. The most modest way in which independence can be conciliated is if some external actor alters conceptions of legitimate action that are held by groups within a given polity. Autonomy can also be transgressed if rulers agree to authority structures that are managed by external actors, or if more influential actors impose foundations, policies, or staff on weaker states. Examples of disobediences of independence include the pressure of the Catholic Church on advances about the legality of birth control and abortion.

Compromises of Westphalia have occurred in four ways-through principles, contracting, coercion, and imposition. These four modalities are differentiated by whether the actions of one actor depend on that of another and by whether at least one of the actors is better off and none worse off. In meetings, rulers enter into concords, such as human rights agreements, from which they expect some gain, but their actions are not dependent on what others do. In constricting, rulers agree to break Westphalian standards, but only if they are offered some benefit, such as a overseas loan. In compulsion, the monarchs of more powerful states make weaker ones worse off by engaging in realistic threats to which the aim might or might not comply. In obligation, the objective is so weak that it has no alternative but to comply with the preferences of the stronger. Conferences, agreements, compulsion, and annoyance have all been permanent prototypes of actions in the international system, and thus lots of states have not kowtowed to the Westphalian model. (Krasner, 1995) Every major peace treaty since 1648- Westphalia, Utrecht, Vienna, Versailles, and Helsinki-has infringed the Westphalian model in one way or another. It happened so, because of the inconsistency of this model, and the principles itself can not be stated. Mechanism of the observation, and punishment for the violation should be declared. Compromising the Westphalian model is always available as a policy option as there is no influence configuration to prevent it: nothing can prevent rulers from misbehaving against the household autonomy of other states or making authority systems that surpass territory. In the international system, institutions are less constraining and more fluid, more subject to challenge and change than in more settled circumstances. The mechanisms for locking in particular institutional forms, such as socialization, positive reinforcement between structures and agents, or path-dependent processes, are weaker at the international level than in well-established domestic polities. This is even true for the Westphalian state which is taken to be the core institutional form of the modern international system. In international politics, nothing is ever off the table. Rather than being regarded as an empirical regularity in which territoriality and autonomy are accurate descriptions of most if not all states, or as an analytic assumption that regards central decision-makers as capable of independently formulating policies subject only to constraints imposed by the international system, the Westphalian model is better conceptualized as a convention or reference point that might or might not determine the behavior of policymakers who are also motivated by material interests, security and national ideals, and whose ability to influence outcomes depends upon their power. All states are not the same. Some have closely approximated the Westphalian model. Others have not. Some non-Westphalian forms of political organization, such as empires, tribes, and trading leagues, have disappeared, but at the same time the principles of Westphalia are frequently ignored. The following section of this article traces some of the confusion about the nature of sovereignty to the fact that the term has been used in several different ways. Then the mechanisms through which the principles of territoriality and autonomy have been violated-inventions, contracting, coercion, and imposition-are explicated. This is followed by a discussion of why the Westphalian model has both persisted and been frequently violated. In the conclusion, I argue that it would be constructive to recognize how fragile the Westphalian model has been, not only because violations of the principles of territoriality and autonomy will take place in any event, but also because compromising Westphalia is sometimes the best way to achieve peace and stability (Krasner, 1995).

Most researchers note that the idea of democratic peace, primarily stated in the provisions of Westphalian Peace, is the most perspective paradigm for the long-term perspective. The principles of democratic peace, declared in the treaties stay the most sufficient rules of diplomacy and international relations, but XX century showed that alongside with democracies, formal and non-liberal democracies appeared. All the conclusions and decisions of the heads of states are based on the provisions of eternity and non-changeability of the main principles of intergovernmental relations – the striving of the states to enlarging of the power in the conditions of unsafe world, inevitability of rivalry, and necessity of the observation of the principle of the balance of power between / among Superpowers. The sate of peace is not so the result of democratic culture, or the system of checks and balances, as the result of the existence of powerful international unions and common potential of containment of potential aggressors (Brown, 2001).

Another argument against TDP (Theory of Democratic Peace), that opponents give, is that during cold war, in order to prevent the spread of communism, the USA embargoed leftists legitimate states by the policy of arm-twisting, and helping totalitarian right governments come to power (Brown, 2001).

Thus, the Peace of Westphalia appeared rather innovative treaty for that period, and stated the character of the relations among sates, which was innovative itself. The articles of the treaties stated the principles of interstate relations and cooperation, which are still actual, and are applied by the institutions and politics. Another point is that, the TDP takes its origin in the treaties of the Peace of Westphalia, but this theory has its opponents, and is considered to be imperfect.

• Brown. C., 2001. Understanding International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan; 2Rev Ed edition
• Ceadel, M. 1996 The Origins of War Prevention: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1730-1854 . Oxford: Oxford University
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• Grimes, A.P., 1956. The Pragmatic Course of Liberalism. The Western Political Quarterly , Vol. 9, No. 3.
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• The Thirty Years’ War was fought mainly on the territory of Germany, and involved most of European continental powers. Although it was a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics, the rivalry between the Habsburg dynasty and other powers was a more central motive , as shown by the fact that Catholic France under the de facto rule of Cardinal Richelieu supported the Protestant side in order to weaken the Habsburgs.
• The Treaty of Ryswick was signed on 20 September 1697 and named after Ryswick (also known as Rijswijk) in the Dutch Republic. The treaty settled the War of the Grand Alliance, which pitted France against the Grand Alliance of England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the United Provinces.
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• Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

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How ‘Westphalian’ is the Westphalian Model?

How ‘Westphalian’ is the Westphalian Model – and Does it Matter?

Consisting of two bilateral treaties signed in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was agreed upon in order to bring an end to the carnage of the Thirty Years War. Significantly, the Peace has customarily been portrayed by international relations scholars, and has consequently been generally accepted by international relations students, as the origin of what has come to be known as the Westphalian model, “a society of states based on the principle of territorial sovereignty” (Evans and Newnham, 1990: 501), which entails the corollary principles of legal equality and autonomy, as well as non-intervention in the affairs of other states (enshrined in Article 2.7 of the UN Charter). Despite this, as the revisionist scholar Osiander (2001: 251) notes, “the accepted IR narrative about Westphalia” is in fact a “myth”; the Westphalian model has little, if anything, to do with the Peace of Westphalia from which the model derives its recognised name (Stirk, 2012: 641). This essay will analyse the basis of this myth by highlighting the numerous discrepancies between the terms agreed to at Westphalia and the core tenets that constitute the Westphalian model. This essay will then proceed to highlight why the Westphalian myth emerged and how it has been perpetuated so effectively. Finally, this essay will outline why it matters that the Westphalian model is not truly ‘Westphalian,’ the impact that the Westphalian myth has had on the contemporary study of international relations, and the importance of transcending the “Westphalian straitjacket.”

The traditional portrayal of the Peace of Westphalia claims that it “made the territorial state the cornerstone of the modern state system” (Morgenthau, 1985: 294), formally acknowledging “a system of sovereign states” (Spruyt, 1994: 27), thus representing a “majestic portal which leads from the old world into the new world” (Gross, 1948: 28). Nevertheless, Osiander and other revisionist scholars have sought to emphasize that those who seek to ascribe the emergence of the concept of state sovereignty to the Peace of Westphalia do so “against the backdrop of a past that is largely imaginary” (Osiander, 2001: 252).

Firstly, it is essential to note that “nowhere do the treaties mention the word ‘sovereignty’ itself,” particularly as there is no such word in Latin, the language in which the treaties were originally written (Croxton, 1999: 577). In fact, when the French delegation did suggest insertion into the treaties of a reference to sovereignty, the offer was immediately declined (Stirk, 2012: 645-646). Whilst the treaties do make reference to the right of ‘ landeshoheit ’ or ‘territorial jurisdiction’ of states, it is crucial to bear in mind that this jurisdiction was under an external legal regime, namely the Holy Roman Empire (Osiander, 2001: 283). However, Osiander (2001: 265, 272) argues that misinterpretation of the “endless technical detail on constitutional matters” within the treaties had led international relations scholars, notably Gross (1948), to mistakenly interpret ‘ landeshoheit ’ to describe ‘territorial sovereignty,’ crucially neglecting the fact that each state’s autonomy was limited through the laws of the empire by the principle of landeshoheit . Hence, the political entities within the Holy Roman Empire were not sovereign states in the modern sense, lacking the autonomy that characterizes Westphalian sovereignty.

Hierarchy, not Westphalian sovereign equality, was the dominant motif in the international system during the seventeenth century (Stirk, 2012: 643). For example, Osiander (2001: 260) observes that the Thirty Years War was sustained by the “expansionist aggression” of the Danish, Swedish, and French crowns, who had entered into conflict in order to “aggrandize themselves,” certainly not seeking a settlement at Westphalia based on absolute sovereign equality. In addition, “at least two Swiss Cantons retained reference to the Holy Roman Empire in their oath of citizenship” for several decades after the Peace of Westphalia (Osiander, 2001: 267), and even after 1648, the estates of the Holy Roman Empire continued to recognize the emperor as “their actual overlord,” continuing to send representatives to the Imperial Diet and paying common taxes (Croxton, 1999: 574). Such examples clearly reflect the hierarchical nature of seventeenth century international society, with the hierarchy of empire persisting until 1806, importantly undermining any impression of emerging Westphalian state-sovereignty as a result of the Peace of Westphalia.

Osiander (2001), Croxton (1999), and Stirk (2012) also dispute the standard assertion that the Peace of Westphalia first granted state sovereignty through the right of states to form alliances with foreign actors. In fact, the estates of Europe had always had the right to conclude treaties and alliances with foreign actors (Osiander, 2001: 273); Palatinate and Brandenburg had “struck alliances with the United Provinces in 1604 and 1605 respectively” (Beaulac, 2000: 168). The treaties that constituted the Peace of Westphalia merely recognized a practice which had already been underway for almost half a century (Beaulac, 2000: 168). Consequently, “the peace itself was restorative not innovative in the eyes of its creators” (Stirk, 2012: 646) in reasserting the pre-existing rights of states, far from the “majestic portal” to which Gross (1948: 28) had erroneously likened the Peace of Westphalia.

Rather than establishing Westphalian sovereignty, the treaties actually included a number of provisions that violated the Westphalian model (Krasner, 1995: 141), through the restriction of each ruler’s domestic authority by an external actor (the Emperor). Firstly, the treaties restricted the rights of princes to do as they like with their citizens: they “deprived the princes and free cities of the empire the power to determine the religious affiliation of their lands” (Osiander, 2001: 272). Article 5.28 of the Treaty of Osnabrück states that anyone who “shall profess and embrace a Religion different from that of the Lord of the Territory, shall in consequence of the said Peace be patiently suffer’d and tolerated, without any Hindrance or Impediment,” essentially making religious liberty a matter of international – not domestic – responsibility (Croxton, 1999: 575). Another key restriction on sovereignty imposed by the Peace of Westphalia concerns the continuing importance of the Emperor where the right of making alliances is concerned:

The individual states shall have the eternal and free right to make alliances among themselves or with foreigners…yet only…where they preserve in all ways the oath by which all are bound to the emperor and empire (Article 8.2, Treaty of Osnabrück, 1648).

Since Westphalian sovereignty is “violated when external actors influence or determine domestic authority structures,” such restrictions are inconsistent with the traditional concept of Westphalian sovereignty (Krasner, 1999: 20).

As has been highlighted above, the Westphalian model can hardly be portrayed as ‘Westphalian’; the Westphalian model has little, if anything, to do with the Peace of Westphalia from which the model derives its recognized name (Stirk, 2012: 641). In light of this, it is essential to understand why the Westphalian ‘myth’ emerged in the first place. Misinterpretation of the treaties certainly has a part to play, but according to Osiander (2001: 251), the Westphalian myth emerged and has been perpetuated principally because it allowed for a convenient and simplistic account of how the system of European states emerged. Significantly, this neglects the fact that the emergence of sovereign states within Europe was gradual and did not result spontaneously from any revolutionary breakthrough resulting from the Peace of Westphalia. Ultimately, “Westphalia…is really a product of the (narrow) nineteenth and twentieth century fixation on the concept of sovereignty” (Osiander, 2001:251), with scholars such as Leo Gross (1948) further perpetuating the Westphalian myth. By having their minds on contemporary order building developments and the post WW2 “quest to translate the United Nations Charter into a meaningful part of the international order” (Clark, 2005: 56), scholars of these types ascribe the emergence of the Westphalian model to the Peace of Westphalia.

Moving to the question of whether it matters that the Westphalian model is not ‘Westphalian,’ the short answer is a resounding yes. Beaulac (2004: 186) argues:

the myth of Westphalia has carried extraordinary power within the shared consciousness of society, and continues to impact discourses on contemporary issues on the international plane.

As a highly compelling social construct, the myth has “managed its way into the fabric of our international legal order,” as the model for the idea of state sovereignty in contemporary international law (Beaulac, 2004: 212). Crucially, the linkage between the Peace of Westphalia and the Westphalian model is not only “bad history” (as this essay illustrates above) but is also a “hindrance to the contemporary study of international relations” (Stirk, 2012: 644). This is due to the fact that “the standard account of sovereign equality and Westphalia sets up a norm that fails to account for the actual behaviour of states” (Stirk, 2012: 660), as violations of the Westphalian model have been an enduring and recurrent characteristic of international relations (Krasner, 1995: 147). The Westphalian model seems unable to explain ‘deviant’ patterns such as the Holy Roman Empire itself (Osiander, 2001: 280), or even the sovereign inequality institutionalised through the permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council to this day. Controversially, this could suggest that Westphalian sovereignty has never actually been intact, instead being best understood as an example of “organised hypocrisy” (Krasner, 1999: 5), a long-standing norm which is frequently violated. Hence, ‘compromising’ (looking beyond) Westphalia, as Krasner (1995: 115) puts it, is essential in order to gain a valid and more imaginative insight into political structures that deviate from the Westphalian model. This is a necessity given the processes of globalization and growing interdependence which continue to challenge established concepts of Westphalian sovereignty.

In conclusion, the Westphalian model can scarcely be seen as ‘Westphalian.’ Seventeenth century Europe was hierarchic, with any notion of sovereign equality explicitly rejected at the Peace of Westphalia. If anything, the Peace of Westphalia included provisions that restricted the sovereignty of the states of Europe, particularly regarding freedom or religion and the right to form alliances with foreign actors. The Westphalian myth which links the emergence of the Westphalian model to the Peace of Westphalia is based largely on the nineteenth and twentieth century fixation on the concept of state sovereignty (Osiander, 2001: 251), as well as misinterpretation of the technical detail of the treaties of the Peace of Westphalia. It is also of vital importance to note that the mythical linkage between the Peace of Westphalia and the emergence of a system of sovereign states is not only historically incorrect, but also a hindrance to a more imaginative and accurate understanding of political structures within international relations, that often deviate from the Westphalian model, both in the seventeenth century and to this day.

Beaulac, S. (2000) ‘The Westphalian Legal Orthodoxy- Myth or Reality?’ in Review of International Studies, Vol. 2: 2

Beaulac, S. (2004) ‘The Westphalian Model in Defining International Law: Challenging the Myth’ in Australian Journal of Legal History, Vol. 8: 2

Brown, C. (2002) Sovereignty, Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today , Cambridge: Polity Press

Clark, I. (2005) Legitimacy in International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Croxton, D. (1999) ‘The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and the Origins of Sovereignty’ in International History Review , Vol. 21: 3

Evans, G. & Newnham, J. (1990) The Dictionary of World Politics: A Reference Guide to Concepts, Ideas and Institutions , Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf

Gross, L. (1948) ‘The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948’ in American Journal of International Law , Vol. 42: 1

Helfferich, T. (ed.) (2009) ‘The Treaty of Osnabrück’ (1648) & ‘The Treaty of Münster’ (1648) in The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History , Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing

Krasner, S.D. (1995) ‘Compromising Westphalia’ in International Security , Vol. 20: 3

Krasner, S.D. (1999) Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy , Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press

Morgenthau, H. (1985) Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace , New York: McGraw-Hill

Osiander, A. (2001) ‘Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth’ in International Organization , Vol. 55: 2

Spruyt, H. (1994) The Sovereign State and Its Competitors , Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press

Stirk, P. (2012) ‘The Westphalian Model and Sovereign Equality’ in Review of International Studies , Vol. 38: 3

— Written by: Camille Mulcaire Written at: Durham University Written for: Peter Stirk Date written: January 2013

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Essay / Culture

The Peace of Westphalia

by Fred Sanders on October 24, 2009

Peace is good and war is bad –the Thirty Years’ War was especially bad– so it’s hard to speak ill of the Peace of Westphalia. But moderns have drawn a few unwarranted lessons from these events of the seventeenth century. The main moral of the story, we are told, is that religious people like to kill each other over religion, and if you let their ideas be taken seriously in public, there will be a bloodbath. You have to admit, that’s a plausible story. The way Catholic and Protestant countries tore into each other all over Europe was a miserable spectacle.

Which leads to the other moral we’re taught to draw from the wars of religion and the Peace of Westphalia: That the rise of Protestantism let the genie of dissent out of the bottle, and he turned out to be a genie capable of taking on a thousand forms at once, all fighting each other.

The second moral is less important and more easily dispatched, so let’s take it first. The wars of religion were not caused by theology, neither by the Protestant Reformation nor the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The theology, and the church divisions, were an occasion and an excuse for cultural, political, and ethnic fights that were ready to happen anyway. C.S. Lewis talks about how the Reformation as a theological movement degenerated into a “tragic farce” when it “attracted the fatal attention both of government and the mob.” Here’s the whole passage, from Lewis’ best but least-read book :

…that whole tragic farce which we call this history of the Reformation. The theological questions really at issue have no significance except on a certain level, a high level, of the spiritual life; they could have been fruitfully debated only between mature and saintly disputants in close privacy and at boundless leisure. Under those conditions formulae might possibly have been found which did justice to the Protestant –I had almost said the Pauline– assertions without compromising other elements of the Christian faith. In fact, however, these questions were raised at a moment when they immediately became embittered and entangled with a whole complex of matters theologically irrelevant, and therefore attracted the fatal attention both of government and the mob. When once this had happened, Europe’s chance to come through unscathed was lost. It was as if men were set to conduct a metaphysical argument at a fair, in competition or (worse still) forced collaboration with the cheapjacks or the round-abouts, under the eyes of an armed and vigilant police forced who frequently changed sides.

But the prior charge, that religion in general is too dangerous a thing to have a place among the res publicae , the public things of our lives together, is harder to attack. It has become the conventional wisdom, the new common sense. But a number of people have pointed out the errors lurking in this conclusion. William T. Cavanaugh’s 1995 essay “A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State” scores some great points against it. It’s a brilliant essay, one that makes me dizzy from alternately nodding my head yes with gusto, and shaking it no just as vigorously.

But he points out two simple facts: First, there was somebody who stood to benefit greatly from playing policeman in the religious wars, and that was the state, the regional political entities finding new self-confidence in the breakdown of the Holy Roman Empire. And Cavanaugh’s second point emerges as he makes the first:

Liberal theorists … would have us believe that the State stepped in like a scolding schoolteacher on the playground of doctrinal dispute to put fanatical religionists in their proper place. Self-righteous clucking about the dangers of public faith, however, ignores the fact that transfer of ultimate loyalty to the nation-state has only increased the scope of modern warfare.

That is, things haven’t exactly gotten less bloody or factious since the state stepped in, have they? The religious factions agreed to hand all their swords over to the state, and now the state has all the swords. But this was not an argument about sword control (“Swords Don’t Kill People, People Kill People”). It’s an argument about who has the right to use lethal force, the right to demand loyalty to the point of death, the right to invade and re-draw boundaries. There’s only been one answer since the seventeenth century, and that’s the regional state. What people do with God was given the name “religion,” and was assigned an internal, private sphere.

So happy birthday to the Peace of Westphalia. It stopped one war, made the rest of them possible, and turned the world inside out.

Fred Sanders

Fred is a systematic theologian with an emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity. He and his wife Susan have two adult children and are members of Grace Evangelical Free Church. Read more about Fred here.

More from this author

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Summary of the IPO : This is the complete original Latin text of the IPO, but with one major difference: each section includes a brief summary in English. Considering that the treaty is almost 20,000 words, this is handy even if you have a full translation.

Summary of the IPM : Same as the other page, but for the Münster peace instrument.

Acta Pacis Westphalicae :  In 1957, the Vereinigung zur Erforschung der Neueren Geschichte (Association for Research of Modern History) was founded with the idea of publishing correspondence and other documents relating to the Congress of Westphalia.  More than 50 years later, it has published over 40 fat, well-edited volumes on French, Swedish, and Imperial correspondence, protocol of councils, diaries, and other documents — an incredible trove of research for the historian.  In 2014, the made this amazing collection available in digital form .  Historians of the Peace of Westphalia owe them a huge debt of gratitude — and by “them” I mean everyone who has participated in the project, but especially Prof. Dr. Konrad Repgen, who headed the VENG for nearly 50 years.

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Home » Political Science » International Relations » Peace of Westphalia [1648] – Thirty Years War Ended!

Peace of Westphalia [1648] – Thirty Years War Ended!

The Peace of Westphalia stands as a seminal event in European history, marking a turning point in the continent’s political landscape. This article explores the significance of the peace treaty, its impact on European borders, and the establishment of peace after years of conflict.

Historical Context

• The Thirty Years’ War: The religious and political conflicts that ravaged Europe during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) necessitated a comprehensive solution to restore peace.
• Negotiation Location: The negotiations took place in Westphalia, in the cities of Münster and Osnabrück , involving various European powers.

Objectives of the Treaty

• Peace and Stability: The primary goal was to end the hostilities and establish lasting peace in Europe.
• Religious Tolerance: The peace treaty aimed to recognize and respect the religious diversity within Europe, allowing for the coexistence of Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism.
• Territorial Settlements: A key aspect was the redrawing of European borders and the resolution of territorial disputes.

Redrawing European Borders

The Peace of Westphalia introduced significant changes to the political map of Europe. It led to the recognition of several independent states and reshaped existing territories. Here are some notable territorial settlements:

• France: France gained various territories, including Pinarello, the bishopric of Myths, and parts of Western Pomerania.
• Sweden: Sweden acquired Western Pomerania, the islands of Rügen and Power Lovely, as well as territories in present-day Germany.
• Netherlands: The Dutch Republic was recognized as an independent nation, securing its borders and political autonomy.
• Other Nations: Numerous other states and regions, such as Switzerland and the Italian principalities, were also acknowledged and given sovereignty.

Key Principles and Implications

• Sovereign Equality: The treaty established the principle of sovereign equality among nations, promoting the idea that each state had the right to govern itself without interference.
• Balance of Power: The concept of the balance of power emerged from the peace treaty, emphasizing the need to prevent any single nation from becoming too dominant.
• State Sovereignty: The recognition of state sovereignty laid the foundation for the modern system of international relations, emphasizing non-interference in internal affairs.
• Religious Freedom: The treaty acknowledged the right to practice different religions, fostering religious tolerance and paving the way for future religious freedoms in Europe.

Key Provisions of the Peace of Westphalia

Legacy and significance.

• Peace in Europe: The Treaty of Westphalia effectively ended the Thirty Years’ War and ushered in a period of relative peace in Europe for several decades.
• Modern International Relations: The principles of state sovereignty, balance of power, and sovereign equality continue to shape international relations to this day.
• Religious Tolerance: The recognition of religious freedom contributed to the development of secularism and the eventual separation of church and state.
• Redrawing of Borders: The territorial settlements made during the treaty negotiations set the stage for the geopolitical landscape of Europe that followed.

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