Peace of Westphalia
The 1648 settlements that ended the Thirty Years War and normalized sovereign statehood
Overview
The treaties of Osnabruck and Munster ended three decades of confessional war in 1648, recognizing territorial sovereignty and the right of rulers to set religion, and excluding external powers from domestic arrangements. Historians qualify the myth of a clean Westphalian moment, yet the settlement named the principles of sovereign equality and non intervention on which modern international law rests. It stabilized a system of states rather than a universal order. Its anniversary still frames debates about intervention and global governance.
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