Peace of Westphalia
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Image:The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (Gerard Terborch 1648).jpg
Image:Helst, Peace of Münster.jpg
The Peace of Westphalia, also known as the Treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, refers to the series of treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War and officially recognized the United Provinces and Swiss Confederation. The Spanish treaty which ended the Eighty Years War was signed on January 30, 1648. The treaty signed October 24, 1648 was between the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, the other German princes, France, and Sweden. The Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, ending the war between France and Spain, is also often considered part of the treaty. It is often used by historians to mark the beginning of the modern era.
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Locations
The peace negotiations were held after initial talks held in the cities of Münster and Osnabrück, which lie about 50 km apart in the present day states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. These cities were favoured by Sweden whereas Hamburg and Cologne were proposed by the French. Two locations were needed as the Protestant and Catholic leaders refused to meet each other. The city of Münster was used by the Catholics, while Osnabrück was used by the Protestants.
Results
The results of the treaty were wide ranging. Among other things, the Netherlands now officially gained independence from Spain, ending the Eighty Years' War, and Sweden gained Pomerania, Wismar, Bremen and Verden. The power of the Holy Roman Emperor was broken, and the rulers of the German states were again able to determine the religion of their lands. The treaty also gave Calvinists legal recognition. Three new great powers arose from this peace: Sweden, the United Provinces and France. Sweden's time as a Great Power was to be short lived, however.
The majority of the treaty's terms can be attributed to the work of Cardinal Mazarin, who was the de facto leader of France at the time. France came out of the war in a far better position than any other Power and was able to dictate much of the treaty.
Another important result of the treaty was that it laid rest to the idea of the Holy Roman Empire having secular dominion over the entire Christian world. The nation-state would be the highest level of government, subservient to no others.
Tenets
The major tenets of the Peace of Westphalia were:
- All parties would now recognize the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, by which each prince would have the right to determine the religion of his own state, the options being Lutheranism or Catholicism (the principle of cuius regio, eius religio).
- There were also territorial adjustments:
- France got the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, Verdun, and all of Alsace except Strasbourg and Mulhouse. It also acquired a vote in the German Reichstag.
- Sweden got Western Pomerania and the bishoprics of Bremen and Stettin. It won control of the mouth of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser Rivers, and also acquired a vote in the German Reichstag.
- Bavaria acquired a vote in the Imperial Council of Electors (which elected the Holy Roman Emperor).
- Brandenburg (later Prussia) received Eastern Pomerania, and the bishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, whose first secular governor was the Elector of Brandenburg's representative, Joachim Friedrich von Blumenthal.
- Switzerland was recognized as a fully independent nation.
- The Republic of the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands (Protestant Netherlands) was recognized as an independent nation (before its rebellion a century earlier, it had been a possession of the Habsburg family and thus of Spain).
- The various independent German states (about 360) were given the right to exercise their own foreign policy, but they could not wage war against the Holy Roman Emperor. The Empire as a whole still could wage wars and sign treaties.
- The election of Roman emperors vivente imperatore (election of next emperor before the death of the one who actually rules) was banned.
- The Palatinate (Pfalzgraviate of the Rhine) was divided between the re-established Elector Palatine Charles Louis (son and heir of Frederick V) and Elector-Duke Maximilian of Bavaria (and thus between the Protestants and the Catholics). Charles Louis obtained the western part, near the Rhine (including the later Rhenish Palatinate and the area around Heidelberg), and Maximilian kept the Upper Palatinate (in present northern Bavaria).
Significance
It is often said that the Peace of Westphalia initiated modern diplomacy, as it marked the beginning of the modern system of nation-states (or "Westphalian states"). This interpretation comes from the treaty's role as the first acknowledgment of each country's sovereignty. Subsequent European wars were not about issues of religion, but rather revolved around issues of state. This allowed Catholic and Protestant powers to ally, leading to a number of major realignments. It also cemented Germany's internal divisions, preventing it from uniting into one nation-state. It is the Peace of Westphalia that is most often pointed to as the foundation for studying international relations.
Modern views
In 1998 on a Symposium on the Political Relevance of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, then–NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said that "humanity and democracy [were] two principles essentially irrelevant to the original Westphalian order" and levied a criticism that "the Westphalian system had its limits. For one, the principle of sovereignty it relied on also produced the basis for rivalry, not community of states; exclusion, not integration." [1]
In 2000, then–German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer referred to the Peace of Westphalia in his Humboldt Speech, which argued that the system of European politics set up by Westphalia was obsolete: "The core of the concept of Europe after 1945 was and still is a rejection of the European balance-of-power principle and the hegemonic ambitions of individual states that had emerged following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a rejection which took the form of closer meshing of vital interests and the transfer of nation-state sovereign rights to supranational European institutions." [2]
In the aftermath of the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks, Lewis ‘Atiyyatullah, who claims to represent the terrorist network al-Qaeda, declared that "the international system built-up by the West since the Treaty of Westphalia will collapse; and a new international system will rise under the leadership of a mighty Islamic state". [3]
Also, it is often claimed that globalization is bringing an evolution of the international system past the sovereign Westphalian state.
Trivia
Adolf Hitler let his grievances be known in the book Mein Kampf about how the Treaty of Westphalia cemented Germany's internal divisions for over 200 years, hampering its unitary development and preventing it from achieving the colonial empires rivaling that of France and Britain. Communism also predicted the ultimate demise of the Westphalian system, with an international workers' union replacing the formerly to-be-defunct nation-state system.
See also
- Adam Adami—German diplomat in the peace negotiations
- History of Sweden 1648-1700
- Thirty Years' War
- Eighty Years' War
External links
- Treaty text - English translation, with keyword indexes
- Treaty Text Text of the Treaty of Westphalia, translated into English.
- Treaty texts The texts of the Westphalian Treaties (IPO and IPM) and some translations (German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish).
- Treaty of Osnabrück (Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugensis, IPO) in full text
- Treaty of Münster (Instrumentum Pacis Monasteriensis, IPM) in full text
- High resolution map of Germany after the Treaty of Westphaliaca:Pau de Westfàlia
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