Revisiting the Foundations of International Law: A Close Analysis of the Peace of Westphalia

Historians have generally accepted that the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which concluded the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), was the moment when the concept of sovereign equality, a concept that recognizes that states have jurisdiction over their own territory and are all equal before international law, became an internationally recognized principle in diplomatic negotiations. However, recently, some scholars have begun to reevaluate this assumption, claiming that the Peace did not actually (formally or officially) establish the principle of sovereign equality throughout Europe. This reopening of a question long considered answered has proved fruitful and has encouraged this project’s exploration of both the Peace itself and of how subsequent politicians and diplomats actually deployed the Peace in their negotiations. This paper argues that, in international treaty negotiations, it may have mattered less to negotiators what the Peace actually said or what it formally established, than what negotiators argued it said and how they wielded it in their discussions. A close reading of the text of the Peace itself, as well as of subsequent negotiations between the 17th and 20th centuries, reveals when and how diplomats wielded the Peace in their negotiations and to what effect. This project applies a close, contextual reading of the texts of treaties and the various interpretations of them over time. It looks for specific references to the Peace of Westphalia in later peace treaties, analyzes what diplomats meant when they invoked it, and considers whether the treaties themselves resulted in outcomes that were consistent with the intent of the negotiators. Finally, it considers whether or not the Peace exercised the influence on international relations that some past scholars have claimed. This project has three sections. First, it analyzes the context for the Peace of Westphalia including the wider debates circulating at the time that influenced negotiations. It reads the texts of the treaties that comprised the Peace and it considers the immediate interpretations associated with it. Second, it explores if and how it was invoked in subsequent peace treaties and organizations up to the United Nations Charter (1948). A careful examination of the texts and debates from the time frame indicates that diplomats and politicians invoked the Peace of Westphalia during negotiations that concluded the following wars: The War of Spanish Succession with its Treaty of Utrecht (1715), the War of Austrian Succession with its Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), The Napoleonic Wars with the Congress of Vienna (1814), and World War I and the Treaty of Versailles (1919). This paper will also examine the United Nations Charter because it is the focus of several influential sources. Finally, it places this history in conversation with the current scholarly arguments about the importance of the Peace for international relations

La Paz de Westfalia como lieu de mémoire en Alemania y Europa

La Pau de Westfàlia com "Lieu de Mémoire" a Alemanya i Europa Aquest article exposa els motius pels quals la pau de Westfalia com a esdeveniment històric no constitueix (o solament en un sentit molt limitat) un lieu de mémoire amb connotacions positives compartit pels europeus. El record de la pau ha seguit vies divergents en els diferents territoris interes sats. En la pròpia Alemanya, el seu significat ha estat divers per a protestants i per a catòlics. El tractat de 1648 ha tingut un paper important en la consciència històrica d'Holanda, però no així en la de Suïssa, dos països que van veure reconeguda la seva independència de iure. Els historiadors france sos s'han centrat en l'éxpansió territorial del seu país, segons posa de relleu l'examen de la historiografia.The Peace of Westphalia as Lieu de Mémoire in Germany and Europe This article expounds the reasons why the Peace of Westphalia is not (or is only with many limitations) a shared European lieu de mémoire with posi tive connotations. The approaches to the Peace have been very different in the involved countries. In itself Germany, Protestants and Catholics have valued it in divergent ways. The Treaty of 1648 has had a significant role in the historical conscience of the Netherlands, but not in Switzerland, the other country whose independence was recognized de iure in Westphalia. French historians have focused on the territorial expansion of their country, as the study of historical writing shows.-

How Peter Became Pope

Alexander VII, 1655-1667. Fabio Chigi protested as papal nuntius against the peace of Muenster and Osnabrueck, and thereupon Pope Innocent X condemned all concessions to Protestants in the Pence of Westphalia. He got Innocent X to condemn the five propositions of the Augustines of Jansenius of Port Royal

The Constitution of the Holy Roman Empire after 1648: Samuel Pufendorf's Assessment in his 'Monzambano'

The examination of Pufendorf's Monzambano shows that he was strongly interested in the question of sovereignty, and that the complex reality of the Holy Roman Empire demanded a completely new approach to the question of where sovereignty within the Empire lay. Pufendorf developed his account of the Empire as an irregular political system by using essential aspects of Hobbes's theory and thus departed from all previous writers on the forma imperii. But Pufendorf's writing on the Empire has not only to be linked with political and philosophical discussion about sovereignty within the Empire but also with his own main writings where he developed a more detailed theory regarding the issue of sovereignty in general. The peace of Westphalia was not only an international settlement but it also shaped the constitution of the Empire to a considerable degree, and this is of crucial significance for the history of political thought during the seventeenth century

Marking time: temporality and the imperial cast of occidental law

The gist is that imperialism – rather than being ex ceptional, aberrational, over and done with – was and remains definitive of occidental political and legal formation. But there is, for legal formation, a twist. Whilst the constituent connection to the imperial can account for a primacy accorded law (in such guises as the rule of law), the terms of that same connection import an unbounded law resistant to imperium. An instance and an origin of the pervasion of the i mperial can be found in recent critical engagements with ‘p eriodization’ in history, especially with the putative tran sition from a medieval period to a modern along with its transcending of temporality. Propelled by this instance and origin, the story then expands ‘in time’ to absorb the saturation of the occidental polity in the imperial, and it does so in the perhaps unlikely company of Foucault, especially by way of his ‘Society Must be Defended’. Still in the company of Foucault, this imperial trajectory comes to be realized and resisted in and as law

Liberty of the Exercise of Religion in the Peace of Westphalia

This essay honors my dear friend of half a century, Burns Weston. In it, I take a fresh look at the backdrop and structure of toleration and religious freedom in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and in the American Constitution, with special focus on a recent unanimous Supreme Court decision of first impression. That important decision protects inner church freedoms in ecclesiastical employment, the so-called ministerial exception to federal and state employment discrimination laws. Of all the great world religions past and present, writes the noted historian Perez Zagorin, Christianity has been by far the most intolerant. Violence and the wars of religion before and after the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation, in particular, exhausted Europe. The Peace of Westphalia ended the brutal Thirty Years\u27 War in Europe (Spain and France remained at war until the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659). Europeans and Americans often congratulate themselves on the rise of religious toleration afterwards. This story may be flawed, for sectarian violence actually increased inside states from 1550 to 1750

Rethinking benchmark dates in international relations

International Relations has an ‘orthodox set’ of benchmark dates by which much of its research and teaching is organized: 1500, 1648, 1919, 1945 and 1989. This article argues that International Relations scholars need to question the ways in which these orthodox dates serve as internal and external points of reference, think more critically about how benchmark dates are established, and generate a revised set of benchmark dates that better reflects macro-historical international dynamics. The first part of the article questions the appropriateness of the orthodox set of benchmark dates as ways of framing the discipline’s self-understanding. The second and third sections look at what counts as a benchmark date, and why. We systematize benchmark dates drawn from mainstream International Relations theories (realism, liberalism, constructivism/English School and sociological approaches) and then aggregate their criteria. The fourth section of the article uses this exercise to construct a revised set of benchmark dates which can widen the discipline’s theoretical and historical scope. We outline a way of ranking benchmark dates and suggest a means of assessing recent candidates for benchmark status. Overall, the article delivers two main benefits: first, an improved heuristic by which to think critically about foundational dates in the discipline; and, second, a revised set of benchmark dates which can help shift International Relations’ centre of gravity away from dynamics of war and peace, and towards a broader range of macro-historical dynamics

Performances of peace: Utrecht 1713

The Peace of Utrecht (1713), which brought an end to the War of the Spanish Succession, was a milestone in global history. Performances of Peace aims to rethink the significance of the Peace of Utrecht by exploring the nexus between culture and politics. For too long, cultural and political historians have studied early modern international relations in isolation. By studying the political as well as the cultural aspects of this peace (and its concomitant paradoxes) from a broader perspective, this volume aims to shed new light on the relation between diplomacy and performative culture in the public spher

The Treachery of Images in the Digital Sovereignty Debate

This short theoretical and argumentative essay contributes to the ongoing deliberation about the so-called digital sovereignty, as pursued particularly in the European Union (EU). Drawing from classical political science literature, the essay approaches the debate through paradoxes that arise from applying classical notions of sovereignty to the digital domain. With these paradoxes and a focus on the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the essay develops a viewpoint distinct from the conventional territorial notion of sovereignty. Accordingly, the lesson from Westphalia has more to do with the capacity of a state to govern. It is also this capacity that is argued to enable the sovereignty of individuals within the digital realm. With this viewpoint, the essay further advances another, broader, and more pressing debate on politics and democracy in the digital era.Comment: Minds and Machines, published online in July 2021, pp. 1-1