Peace of Westphalia
Ratification of the Treaty of Münster
The Peace of Westphalia refers to the pair of treaties, the Treaty of Münster and the Treaty of Osnabrück, signed on October 24 and May 15 of 1648 respectively, which ended both the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War. The treaties involved the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III Habsburg, the other German princes, Spain, France, Sweden and representatives of the Dutch republic. The Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, ending the war between France and Spain, is also often considered part of the Peace. The Peace of Westphalia as a whole is often used by historians to mark the beginning of the modern era in international relations.
The texts of the two treaties, in over a hundred articles, are largely identical and deal with the internal affairs of the Holy Roman Empire.[1] The Peace continues to be of importance today, with many academics asserting that the international system which exists today began in 1648 at Westphalia. Both the basis and the result of this view have been attacked by revisionist academics and politicians alike, with revisionists questioning the significance of the Peace, and commentators and politicians attacking the "Westphalian System" of sovereign nation-states.
Return to: 1st page