The Rise of the Sovereign State

A sovereign state is a state with its own institutions and populations that has a permanent
population, territory, and government. It must also have the right and capacity to make treaties
and other agreements with other states.

International politics in medieval Europe consisted of a complicated pattern of

overlapping jurisdictions and loyalties. There was an enormous diversity of political entities:
feudal lords who ruled their respective estates much as they saw fit, cities made up of
independent merchants, states ruled by clerics and smaller political entities such as principalities
and duchies.

There were two institutions with pretensions to power over the continent as a whole – the
(Catholic) Church and the Empire. The Church was the spiritual authority, with its center in
Rome. Apart from a small Jewish minority, all Europeans were Christian and the influence of the
Church spread far and penetrated deeply into people’s lives. As the custodian, from Roman
times, of institutions like the legal system and the Latin language, the Church occupied a crucial
role in the cultural and intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The Empire – known as the Holy
Roman Empire – was established in the tenth century in central, predominantly German-
speaking, Europe. It also included parts of Italy, France and today’s Netherlands and Belgium.

The political system of medieval Europe was thus a curious combination of the local and
the universal. The new states simultaneously set themselves in opposition to popes and emperors
on the universal level, and to feudal lords, peasants and assorted other rulers on the local level.

In 16th-century France Jean Bodin (1530–96) used the new concept

of sovereignty to bolster the power of the French king over the rebellious feudal
lords, facilitating the transition from feudalism to nationalism.

A sovereign state (or sometimes called an independent state) has the following qualities:

 Space or territory that has internationally recognized boundaries

 People who live there on an ongoing basis
 Regulations governing foreign and domestic trade
 The ability to issue legal tender that is recognized across boundaries
 An internationally recognized government that provides public services and police power
and has the right to make treaties, wage war, and take other actions on behalf of its
people
 Sovereignty, meaning that no other state should have power over the country's territory

Many geographic entities have some but not all the qualities that make up a sovereign state.
As of 2020 there are 195 sovereign states in the world1 (197 by some counts); 193 are members
of the United Nations (the United Nations excludes Palestine and the Holy See). Two other
entities, Taiwan and Kosovo, are recognized by some but not all members of the United Nations.