The Peace of Westphalia (German: Westfälischer Friede) was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster, effectively ending the European wars of religion. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in the Holy Roman Empire between the Habsburgs and their Catholic allies on one side, and the Protestant powers (Sweden, Denmark, Dutch, and Holy Roman principalities) and their Catholic (France) Anti-Habsburg allies on the other. The treaties also ended the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognising the independence of the Dutch Republic. The Treaties of Westphalia brought to a close a tumultuous period of European history which saw the deaths of approximately eight million people.^[1] The peace negotiations involved a total of 109 delegations representing European powers, including Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, Philip IV of Spain, the Kingdom of France, Cristina of the Swedish Empire, the Dutch Republic, the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and sovereigns of the free imperial cities. Thousands of diplomats and support staff attended these conferences.^[2] The Peace of Münster together with the Treaty of Münster between the Holy Roman Emperor, France and their allies and the Treaty of Osnabrück involving the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden and their allies collectively formed the Peace of Westphalia.

The Peace of Westphalia established the precedent of peaces established by diplomatic congress,^[3][4] and a new system of political order in central Europe, later called Westphalian sovereignty, based upon the concept of co-existing sovereign states. Inter-state aggression was to be held in check by a balance of power. A norm was established against interference in another state's domestic affairs. As European influence spread across the globe, these Westphalian principles, especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to international law and to the prevailing world order.^[5]

Locations

Peace negotiations between France and the Habsburgs, provided by the Holy Roman Emperor and the Spanish King, were started in Cologne in 1641. These negotiations were initially blocked by France.^[6] Cardinal Richelieu of France desired the inclusion of all its allies, whether sovereign or a state within the Holy Roman Empire.^[7] In Hamburg and Lübeck, Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire negotiated the Treaty of Hamburg. This was done with the intervention of Richelieu.^[8]

Dutch envoy Adriaan Pauw enters Münster around 1646 for the peace negotiations

The Holy Roman Empire and Sweden declared the preparations of Cologne and the Treaty of Hamburg to be preliminaries of an overall peace agreement. This larger agreement was negotiated in Westphalia, in the neighboring cities of Münster and Osnabrück.

Both cities were maintained as neutral and demilitarized zones for the negotiations. Münster was, since its re-Catholicization in 1535, a strictly mono-denominational community. It housed the Chapter of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster. Only Roman Catholic worship was permitted. No places of worship were provided for Calvinists and Lutherans. Osnabrück was a bidenominational Lutheran and Catholic city, with two Lutheran and two Catholic churches for its mostly Lutheran burghers and exclusively Lutheran city council and the Catholic Chapter of the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück with pertaining other clergy and other Catholic inhabitants.

From 1628–33, Osnabrück had been subjugated by troops of the Catholic League. The Catholic Prince-Bishop Franz Wilhelm, Count of Wartenberg then imposed the Counter-Reformation onto the city, with many Lutheran burgher families being exiled. While under Swedish occupation, Osnabrücks's Catholics were not expelled, but the city suffered severely from Swedish war contributions. Both cities strove for more autonomy, aspiring to become Free Imperial Cities, so they welcomed the neutrality imposed by the peace negotiations and the prohibition of all political influence by the warring parties, including their overlords, the prince-bishops.^[9]

Since Lutheran Sweden preferred Osnabrück as a conference venue, its peace negotiations with the Empire, including the allies of both sides, took place in Osnabrück. The Empire and its opponent France, including the allies of each, as well as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and its opponent Spain (and their respective allies) negotiated in Münster.^[10]

Delegations

Sebastian Dadler undated medal (1648), Christina of Sweden, portrait with feathered helmet r. Obverse

The reverse of this medal: Christina of Sweden as Minerva standing l., holding an olive branch in her l. arm, and grasping the tree of knowledge with her r. hand.

The peace negotiations had no exact beginning and ending, because the participating total of 109 delegations never met in a plenary session, but arrived between 1643–46, and left between 1647–49. Between January 1646 and July 1647 probably the largest number of diplomats were present. In total,194 European sovreigns were represented by these delegations. Delegations had been sent by 16 European states, sixty-six Imperial States, representing the interests of a total of 140 involved Imperial States, and 27 interest groups, representing the interests of a variety of a total of 38 groups.^[11]

• The French delegation was headed by Henri II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville and further comprised the diplomats Claude d'Avaux and Abel Servien.
• The Swedish delegation was headed by Count Johan Oxenstierna (son of Chancellor Count Axel Oxenstierna) and was assisted by Baron Johan Adler Salvius.
• The head of the delegation of the Holy Roman Empire for both cities was Count Maximilian von Trautmansdorff; in Münster, his aides were Johann Ludwig von Nassau-Hadamar and Isaak Volmar (a lawyer); in Osnabrück, his team comprised Johann Maximilian von Lamberg and Reichshofrat Johann Krane, a lawyer.
• Philip IV of Spain was represented by a double delegation. The Spanish delegation was headed by Gaspar de Bracamonte y Guzmán, and notably included the diplomats and writers Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, and Bernardino de Rebolledo. The Burgundian lawyer Antoine Brun represented Philip as hereditary ruler of the Franche Comté and the Spanish Netherlands.
• The papal nuncio in Cologne, Fabio Chigi, and
• the Venetian envoy Alvise Contarini acted as mediators.
• Various Imperial States of the Holy Roman Empire also sent delegations.
• Brandenburg sent several representatives, including Vollmar.
• The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands sent a delegation of six (including two delegates from the province of Holland (Adriaan Pauw) and Willem Ripperda from one of the other provinces;^[12] two provinces were not present).
• Johann Rudolf Wettstein, the mayor of Basel, represented the Swiss Confederacy.

Treaties

Three separate treaties constituted the peace settlement. The Peace of Münster^[13] was between the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Spain on 30 January 1648, and was ratified in Münster on 15 May 1648. Two complementary treaties, both signed on 24 October 1648, were the Treaty of Münster (Instrumentum Pacis Monasteriensis, IPM),^[14] between the Holy Roman Emperor, France, and their respective allies, and the Treaty of Osnabrück (Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugensis, IPO),^[15] involving the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, and their respective allies. The treaties did not restore peace throughout Europe, but they did create a basis for national self-determination.

Results

Internal political boundaries

Historical map

Holy Roman Empire in 1648.

The power taken by Ferdinand III in contravention of the Holy Roman Empire's constitution was stripped and returned to the rulers of the Imperial States. This rectification allowed the rulers of the Imperial States to decide their religious worship independently. Protestants and Catholics were redefined as equal before the law, and Calvinism was given legal recognition.^[16][17] The independence of the Dutch Republic also provided a safe country for European Jews.^[18]

The Holy See was very displeased at the settlement, with Pope Innocent X in Zelo Domus Dei^[19] reportedly calling it "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time".^[20]

Tenets

The main tenets of the Peace of Westphalia were:

• All parties would recognize the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, in which each prince would have the right to determine the religion of his own state, the options being Catholicism, Lutheranism, and now Calvinism (the principle of cuius regio, eius religio).^[16][17]
• Christians living in principalities where their denomination was not the established church were guaranteed the right to practice their faith in public during allotted hours and in private at their will.^[21]
• General recognition of the exclusive sovereignty of each party over its lands, people, and agents abroad, and responsibility for the warlike acts of any of its citizens or agents. Issuance of unrestricted letters of marque and reprisal to privateers was forbidden.

Territorial adjustments

• The independence of Switzerland from the Empire was formally recognized; these territories had enjoyed de facto independence for decades.
• The independence of the Dutch Republic was formally recognized (having declared its independence in 1581).
• France retained the control of the Bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun near Lorraine, received the cities of the Décapole in Alsace (but not Strasbourg, the Bishopric of Strasbourg, or Mulhouse) and the city of Pignerol near the Spanish Duchy of Milan.
• Sweden received an indemnity of five million talers, used primarily to pay its troops.^[22] Sweden further received Western Pomerania (henceforth Swedish Pomerania), Wismar, and the Prince-Bishoprics of Bremen and Verden as hereditary fiefs, thus gaining a seat and vote in the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire as well as in the respective circle diets (Kreistag) of the Upper Saxon, Lower Saxon and Westphalian circles.^[23] However, the wording of the treaties was ambiguous:

• Whether or not the city of Bremen was included in Swedish Bremen-Verden remained disputed. Facing the Swedish take-over, Bremen had claimed Imperial immediacy, which was granted by the emperor and thus separated the city from the surrounding bishopric with the same name. Sweden understood that Bremen was nevertheless to be ceded to it, and started the Swedish-Bremen wars in 1653/54.^[24]
• The treaty also delegated the determination of the Swedish-Brandenburgian border in the Duchy of Pomerania to the parties. At Osnabrück, both Sweden and Brandenburg had claimed the whole duchy, which had been under Swedish control since 1630 despite legal claims of Brandenburgian succession. While the parties settled for a border in 1653, the underlying conflict continued.^[25]
• The treaty ruled that the Dukes of Mecklenburg, owing their re-investiture to the Swedes, cede Wismar and the Mecklenburgian port tolls. While Sweden understood this to include the tolls of all Mecklenburgian ports, the Mecklenburgian dukes as well as the emperor understood this to refer to Wismar only.^[25]
• Wildeshausen, a petty exclave of Bremen-Verden and fragile basis for Sweden's seat in the Westphalian circle diet, was also claimed by the Bishopric of Münster.^[25]

• Bavaria retained the Palatinate's vote in the Imperial Council of Electors (which elected the Holy Roman Emperor), which it had been granted by the ban on the Elector Palatine Frederick V in 1623. The Prince Palatine, Frederick's son, was given a new, eighth electoral vote.
• The Palatinate 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 Catholics. Charles Louis obtained the Lower Palatinate, along the Rhine, while Maximilian kept the Upper Palatinate, to the north of Bavaria.
• Brandenburg-Prussia (later Prussia) received Farther Pomerania, and the Bishoprics of Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Kammin, and Minden.
• The succession to the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, whose last duke had died in 1609, was clarified. Jülich, Berg, and Ravenstein were given to the Count Palatine of Neuburg, while Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg went to Brandenburg.
• It was agreed that the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück would alternate between Protestant and Catholic holders, with the Protestant bishops chosen from cadets of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
• Barriers to trade and commerce erected during the war were abolished, and "a degree" of free navigation was guaranteed on the Rhine.^[26]

Legacy

The Peace of Westphalia has been studied extensively by those in the fields of International Relations and Political Science, as it marked a shift on ideas of state sovereignty.^[27] It has been described as an "icon" of International Relations scholarship by Dr.Stephen Krasner of Stanford University, due to it touching upon the topics of collective security, the establishment of sovereign and equal states, and nonintervention into the internal affairs of foreign states:

The Westphalian model, based on principles of autonomy and territory, offers a simple, arresting, and elegant image. It orders the minds of policymakers. It is an analytic assumption for neo-realism and neo-liberal institutionalism, both of which posit that states can be treated as if they were autonomous, unified, rational actors. It is an empirical reality for various sociological and constructivist theories of international politics. Moreover, it is a benchmark for observers who discern a basic erosion of sovereignty in the contemporary world.^[28]

The new Westphalian system embraced the idea that nation-states held sovereignty over extraterritorial powers, such as the Catholic Church or the Holy Roman Empire. The European order after 1648 – with its basic territorial unit of the nation-state – provided the basis for the development of world-state interaction into the twentieth century. The twenty-first century has sometimes been described as "Post-Westphalian". This is due to supranational organizations such as the European Union and United Nations, alongside various other political and economic organizations, limiting state sovereignty. Furthermore, humanitarian ideas – including the "right to protect" – have increasingly been used as a justification to violate state sovereignty since the 1990's. The term "Westfailure" was coined in 1999 by Susan Strange, which has been used to note signs of the weakening of the Westphalian system.

As the Thirty Years' War was largely fought on the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, 95% of the war's casualties were Imperial subjects.^[29] The conflict was especially devastating for the ethnically German portions of the Empire: the population was reduced between 25% and 40% in Germany proper.^[30] As a result, the Thirty Years' War has taken an important position in the German national consciousness. The Treaty of Westphalia also became an important topic in the developing German nationalism of the nineteenth century. The treaty has been commemorated as ending a devastating chapter in German history.^[31] It was also a sign of the failing power of the Holy Roman Empire of the Catholic Habsburgs, and was ultimately a step in the establishment of Prussia, which would become the leading German state in the nineteenth century.

The treaties did not entirely end conflicts arising out of the Thirty Years' War. Fighting continued between France and Spain until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. The Dutch-Portuguese War had started during the Spanish occupation of Portugal, as part of the Eighty Years' War, but went on until 1663. Nevertheless, it did settle many outstanding European issues of the time. Some of the principles developed at Westphalia, especially those relating to respecting the boundaries of sovereign states and non-interference in their domestic affairs, became central to the world order that developed over the following centuries, and remain in effect today. In several parts of the world, however, sovereign states emerged from what was once imperial territory only after the post-World War II period of decolonization.^[5] More significantly, one of the major principles—the balance of power—was undermined in the Twentieth century. Referring to the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler said that without the Wehrmacht, a "wave would have swept over Europe that would have taken no care of the ridiculous British idea of the balance of power in Europe in all its banality and stupid tradition—once and for all."^[32] During World War II, the multipolar balance became bipolar, between the Axis and the Allies, followed by the United States and NATO nations against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations during the Cold War. In his book Politics Among Nations in the chapter entitled "The New Balance of Power", Hans Morgenthau opened with the words:

The destruction of that intellectual and moral consensus which restrained the struggle for power for almost three centuries deprived the balance of power of its vital energy that made it a living principle of international politics … The most obvious of these structural changes which impairs the operation of the balance of power is to be found in the drastic numerical reduction of the players in the game.^[33]

After the fall of the Soviet Union, power was seen as unipolar with the United States in absolute control,^[34][35][36] though nuclear proliferation and the rise of Japan, the European Union, the Middle East, China, and a resurgent Russia have begun to recreate a multipolar political environment.^[37][38] Instead of a traditional balance of power, inter-state aggression may now be checked by the preponderance of power,^[39] a sharp contrast to the Westphalian principle.

See also

• Charter of Liberties
• Eighty Years' War
• Freedom of religion
• History of Sweden, 1648–1700
• List of treaties
• Peace of Augsburg
• Peace of Münster
• Thirty Years' War
• Westphalian sovereignty

References

Further reading

• Croxton, Derek, and Anuschka Tischer. The Peace of Westphalia: A Historical Dictionary (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002).
• Croxton, Derek (1999). "The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and the Origins of Sovereignty". International History Review. 21 (3): 569–591. doi:10.1080/07075332.1999.9640869. 
• Mowat, R. B. History of European Diplomacy, 1451–1789 (1928) pp 104–14 online
• Schmidt, Sebastian (2011). "To Order the Minds of Scholars: The Discourse of the Peace of Westphalia in International Relations Literature1". International Studies Quarterly. 55 (3): 601–623. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2011.00667.x.  Historiography.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Peace of Westphalia.

Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article about Peace of Westphalia.

• Treaty of Münster Text (Yale University)
• Texts of the Westphalian Treaties (in German)
• High Resolution Map of Germany after the Treaty of Westphalia Dead link
• Peace Treaty of Osnabrück (Full Text)
• Peace Treaty of Münster (Full Text)