Ahmad Qadri Student ID: 1081119

International Politics Essay

1. Why is the Peace of Westphalia considered to be so important to the history of

international relations?

The Peace of Westphalia was an important historical development that ultimately shaped
the system and principles of the modern international relations system. This included the
formalization of the concepts of sovereignty, territorial autonomy and international law,
against the background of an international diplomatic stage (Teschke, 2002). This essay will
examine two main principles as to how the Peace of Westphalia influenced concepts that
underpin modern international relations theory and its history. This includes the
development of sovereignty through the state’s ability to govern itself within a defined
territory. As well as this, the development of a model of international law and diplomacy in
order to create some order within an anarchical collection of political communities, an
anarchy that led to conflicts such as the Thirty Years War. These two cases will clearly
demonstrate as to why the Peace of Westphalia is considered to be vital to international
relations.

Political scientists have often noted the Peace of Westphalia to mark the inception of the
beginning of ‘Westphalian Sovereignty’ (Schmidt, 2011). This idea forms the basis of the
concept of states as central actors and their sovereignty within global politics and its formal
recognition within the United Nations charter. That is, that a state should not intervene
within the affairs that fall under the domestic jurisdiction of another state. An important
demonstration of this fact was the establishment of religious freedoms within the respective
territories of the Holy Roman Empire, France, The Dutch Republic and so on (Cerf, 2018).
Recognized through the term ‘Cuius regio, eius religio’, The Peace of Westphalia thus
allowed the official state religion of these political communities to be inaugurated by the
sovereign authority of the state, without the fear of conflict from foreign entities. As well as
this, states assumed responsibility and held ascendency within their geographic borders,
including over their subjects and their actions (Cerf, 2018). Indeed, the principles that were
set out by the Peace of Westphalia are of significance to the entire international relations
system, setting a precedent that was supposed to strengthen the independence of states
and ideally attempted to hinder unfair expansions of power through ‘limited war’ (Watson,
2009). It is this concept that has set the framework of a debate within the study of
international politics, in its relation to the global political affairs. Whether the peace of
Westphalia truly established perfect and absolute autonomy of states is indeed debated by
political scientists and is a vital aspect of the importance of the Peace of Westphalia upon
historical and contemporary international relations (Krasner, 1995).
Ahmad Qadri Student ID: 1081119

Another factor of the Peace of Westphalia was the formation of the concept of a type of
multilateral governance between autonomous states and these states as centralized actors
(Croxton, 1997). Indeed, this important paradigm shift had occurred within the history of
political affairs through the series of peace agreements that made up the Peace of
Westphalia. This can be seen by the imposition of the idea of relations between
communities of states (Schmidt, 2011) which would later establish the principle for inter-
governmental institutions. The overarching form of collective governance and agreements
that the Peace of Westphalia set foundations for would introduce an almost revolutionary
method of attempting to achieve collective security (Schmidt, 2011). This Westphalian
concept of sovereignty as a model within international institutions, such as the UN, has
been a vital principle over which there has been heated tension within the contemporary
global political arena (Campbell, 2016), especially in relation to concepts of international
law. The concept of the sovereignty of states, that the Peace of Westphalia had apparently
established, is arguably under attack with great regularity from the formation of these
international diplomatic institutions (Philpott, 2001, Croxton, 1997). An example includes
the conflict between the international law of respecting the sovereignty and territorial
autonomy of states and the ‘responsibility to protect’ international human rights, as
endorsed in World Summits. Evidently, the formation of multilateral, diplomatic frameworks
as promoted by the Peace of Westphalia, have had a profound effect upon the continuity of
international relations throughout history.

It is therefore evident that the Peace of Westphalia undoubtedly assumed a major role, not
only through the history of international relations but also within current affairs. The
principles of states as sovereign and central actors within global politics and the inception of
international concepts, such as human rights, signifies the cruciality of the Peace of
Westphalia and the importance of its effects which are still heavily debated and felt within
contemporary times.

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CERF, V. G. 2018. The Peace of Westphalia. Communications of the ACM, 61, 6-6.
Ahmad Qadri Student ID: 1081119

CROXTON, D. 1997. Peacemaking in early modern Europe: Cardinal Mazarin and the Congress of
Westphalia, 1643-1648.
KRASNER, S. D. 1995. Compromising Westphalia. International Security, 20, 115-151.
PHILPOTT, D. 2001. Revolutions in sovereignty: how ideas shaped modern international relations,
Princeton University Press.
SCHMIDT, S. 2011. To Order the Minds of Scholars: The Discourse of the Peace of Westphalia in
International Relations Literature1. International Studies Quarterly, 55, 601-623.
TESCHKE, B. 2002. Theorizing the Westphalian system of states: International relations from
absolutism to capitalism. European Journal of international relations, 8, 5-48.
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with a new introduction by Barry Buzan and Richard Little, Routledge.