Did the Peace of Westphalia create the modern state system?

The Peace of Westphalia was the name for two treaties signed in October 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. They ended the Thirty Years' War. The traditional story says they created the system of sovereign states. Most recent scholarship treats that story as a myth or a heavy exaggeration, though some historians argue the Peace still mattered in more limited ways. [1] [2]

According to [wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia), the two treaties ended the Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648) and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire. The war killed between 4.5 and 8 million people. The parties included Emperor Ferdinand III, the kingdoms of France and Sweden, and their allies among the princes of the Empire. [1]

As described by [foreignaffairs.com](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2016-10-10/westphalian-peace-middle-east), the settlement confirmed the princes' territorial superiority. They could take part in major imperial decisions, make alliances, keep armies, and wage war and make peace. They could not ally against the emperor, the empire or the peace settlement, and they remained the emperor's subjects. [3]

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ([plato.stanford.edu](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sovereignty/)) sets out the orthodox view, associated with Daniel Philpott. It holds that states became virtually the only form of substantive constitutional authority in Europe, and that the Holy Roman Empire no longer seriously challenged them. The Netherlands and Switzerland gained uncontested sovereignty, and German states gained the right to ally outside the empire. The Church's temporal powers were curtailed, and Pope Innocent X condemned the treaties. Intervention in religious matters, the most common limit on sovereignty for the preceding 130 years, became exceedingly rare. [2]

Scholars including Krasner, Osiander, Nexon and Teschke argue that elements of statehood existed long before 1648 and that hierarchy persisted long after it. The treaties nowhere prescribe a sovereign states system ([plato.stanford.edu](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sovereignty/)). History Today ([historytoday.com](https://www.historytoday.com/treaties-and-turning-points-thirty-years-war)) adds specific points. The Empire recognised Protestantism in 1532. Princes were already signing treaties, and Brandenburg allied with the Netherlands in 1605. After 1648 the emperor was still recognised as overlord, and the Imperial Diet still controlled legislation, warfare and taxation. Overlapping sovereignties continued. [2] [4]

Axworthy and Milton call the common view that Westphalia created equal, non-interventionist states fallacious. They point out that the treaties let external guarantors intervene in the empire. [3]

One Oxford Handbook chapter ([academic.oup.com](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/46861/chapter/414172041)) agrees that revisionists are right to doubt Westphalia as the birth of the state system or of secularization. It still argues that the Peace set up a diversity regime tying legitimate authority to recognised forms of confessional difference, which entrenched a sovereign state system that consolidated later. A separate article in International Studies Review ([academic.oup.com](https://academic.oup.com/isr/article-abstract/26/2/viae024/7672996)) argues that Westphalia was a culminating moment in the legal development of territorial rights within the Holy Roman Empire, where territorial autonomy sat inside an imperial hierarchy. The Stanford entry notes that only a long-term scholarly consensus can settle how Westphalia will be regarded. [5] [6] [2]