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Peace of Westphalia
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The Peace of Westphalia is the set of 1648 treaties, negotiated at Munster and Osnabruck, that ended the Thirty Years' War and reshaped the political order of the Holy Roman Empire. It is widely referenced in political thought as an early landmark in the development of state sovereignty.
Facts
Key ProvisionThe 1648 treaties of Osnabruck and Munster that ended the Thirty Years' War established the principle that each state holds exclusive sovereignty over its own territory, free from outside interference in its internal and religious affairs, a principle historians and international relations theorists have long treated, with some qualification, as the founding moment of the modern state system of formally equal sovereign states. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Influenced
The Peace of Westphalia is conventionally cited as the origin point of the modern sovereign-state system.
The 1648 settlement's principle of sovereign, non-interfering states underlies the UN Charter's sovereign equality and non-intervention provisions.
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