Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth

TLDR

The 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia was largely ignored by IR scholars, yet recent debate over the potential demise of the Westphalian system has highlighted the need for historical comparisons. The article aims to show that the ideology of sovereignty has constrained IR theory and that studying the Thirty Years' War, the 1648 peace treaties, and the post‑1648 European system can illuminate contemporary international politics. The author analyzes the historical events of the Thirty Years' War, the 1648 peace treaties, and the subsequent Holy Roman Empire and European system to critique the sovereignty ideology. The author concludes that IR unwittingly evaluates contemporary trends against an imagined past rooted in nineteenth‑ and twentieth‑century sovereignty fixation.

Abstract

The 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in 1998 was largely ignored by the discipline of international relations (IR), despite the fact that it regards that event as the beginning of the international system with which it has traditionally dealt. By contrast, there has recently been much debate about whether the “Westphalian system” is about to end. This debate necessitates, or at least implies, historical comparisons. I contend that IR, unwittingly, in fact judges current trends against the backdrop of a past that is largely imaginary, a product of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century fixation on the concept of sovereignty. I discuss how what I call the ideology of sovereignty has hampered the development of IR theory. I suggest that the historical phenomena I analyze in this article—the Thirty Years' War and the 1648 peace treaties as well as the post–1648 Holy Roman Empire and the European system in which it was embedded—may help us to gain a better understanding of contemporary international politics.