Think Again: Sovereignty - By Stephen D. Krasner | Foreign Policy - 16 views
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often cite the 1648 Peace of Westphalia (actually two separate treaties, Münster and Osnabrück) as the political big bang that created the modern system of autonomous states.
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Westphalia -- which ended the Thirty Years' War against the hegemonic power of the Holy Roman Empire -- delegitimized the already waning transnational role of the Catholic Church and validated the idea that international relations should be driven by balance-of-power considerations rather than the ideals of Christendom.
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But Westphalia was first and foremost a new constitution for the Holy Roman Empire
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Westphalia established rules for religious tolerance in Germany.
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All in all, Westphalia is a pretty medieval document, and its biggest explicit innovation -- provisions that undermined the power of princes to control religious affairs within their territories -- was antithetical to the ideas of national sovereignty that later became associated with the so-called Westphalian system.
