Westphalia

The Last Christian Peace

D. Croxton

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137333339
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This sweeping, exhaustively researched history is the first comprehensive account of the Peace of Westphalia in English. Bringing together the latest scholarship with an engaging narrative, it retraces the historical origins of the Peace, exploring its political-intellectual underpinnings and placing it in a broad global and chronological context.

Part I

BACKGROUND

The world changes, and people, too; nevertheless, nothing really new ever happens; people and centuries resemble each other closely.

—Queen Christina of Sweden, Apologies, 218 number 540

1

INTRODUCTION

“LET THERE BE A CHRISTIAN PEACE”

The Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648 in the German town of Münster, was described a century later as “the greatest and most important peace that has ever been concluded, not only in Germany, but in all Europe; I may even say, in the whole world.”¹ A twentieth-century historian called it “the majestic portal which leads from the old into the new world.”² In passing through this portal, one moves from the Middle Ages to modernity. On one side, diplomacy is hemmed in by religion and confused by overlapping jurisdictions that make it difficult even to identify the main actors; on the other side, it is conducted by sovereign states in pursuit of security through balance of power. The Peace of Westphalia has been compared in importance to the charter of the United Nations—ironically, since both documents were signed on October 24. But whereas the United Nations charter has been in effect for less than a century, the Peace of Westphalia endures well over 350 years after it was concluded, and scholars have only recently begun to suggest that we are moving into a “post-Westphalia” international system.

What was this peace that has cast such a long shadow over international relations? Two treaties, the treaty of Münster and the treaty of Osnabrück, make up the Peace of Westphalia. Although these documents contained somewhat different provisions, they declared themselves to constitute a single peace, and in fact they were both signed on the same day in the town of Münster in 1648. Their signature ended the Thirty Years’ War between France and Sweden on one side, and the Holy Roman Empire (the future state of Germany) on the other. In many respects, it was not a particularly noteworthy treaty. The war had already lasted 30 years (1618–48), so ending it represented no great diplomatic accomplishment. Even so, the negotiations lasted for roughly 5 years (depending on how one dates their beginning), making for what is probably the longest continuous peace conference in modern history. Moreover, the Congress of Westphalia began with the express intention of making a “universal peace,” which meant a peace among all of the Christian states of Europe. It demonstrably failed at this, as the two largest combatants, France and Spain, continued to fight for another 11 years. Moreover, many of those states that did make peace were drawn into another great war that broke out just a few years after the Peace of Westphalia was concluded.

In short: the Peace of Westphalia took a long time to make and failed to achieve anything like universal peace, even in Christian Europe. It is therefore ironic that it has been one of the most celebrated treaties in history. A century after it was signed—long after most treaties have become irrelevant—Voltaire argued that its principles still endured, and Rousseau gushed that “the Peace of Westphalia may well remain the foundation of our political system for ever.”³ Another 100 years later, in 1866, French statesman (and historian) Adolphe Thiers claimed that the Peace of Westphalia continued to embody the “highest principle of European politics.”⁴ To this day, a further 150 years on, scholars commonly date the beginning of modern diplomacy to 1648. And it is not only an academic matter: even statesmen mention the Peace of Westphalia as though it is immediately relevant to modern international relations.⁵ Recent books speak of “The End of Westphalia” or moving “Beyond Westphalia,” but only with question marks; apparently scholars believe that we are still in a “Westphalian system,” which might, after nearly four centuries, finally be yielding to a new international order.⁶

Clearly, no peace treaty between France, Sweden, and the Holy Roman Empire over 350 years ago has any direct relevance to the modern world, especially since the Holy Roman Empire does not even exist anymore. The last political echo of the peace came in 1903, when Sweden declined to pay off its mortgage on Wismar, allowing the port to become definitively and unambiguously a part of Germany. Even that faint ripple, however, occurred long ago. Why do these treaties warrant such attention in our time?

The Peace of Westphalia has been celebrated since the day it was signed, but the reasons have shifted dramatically over time; and, of course, some people doubted its benefits from the beginning. At first, the Peace of Westphalia was acclaimed as an end to a long and bloody war. After the “peace riders” had spread the news across Europe and people had once again grown accustomed to the fruits of peace, the treaty continued to be honored in the Empire as something like the Magna Carta of Protestantism, the guarantee that Lutherans and Calvinists could practice their religion freely.⁷ For German Catholics, on the other hand, the end of religious unity in the Empire was a bad thing. It not only meant the permanent admission of heresy to the country, but also came with negative political consequences: the breakdown of central rule and the domination of estates (the political subunits of the Empire). Religious diversity was a direct cause of political weakness, opening the Holy Roman Empire up to plunder by foreign powers.

For non-Germans, the political weakness of the Empire was a benefit—in fact, it was the fundamental reason behind the peace. What impressed Rousseau was not that the Empire had been completely dismantled, but rather that it had been transformed into a confederative structure that was capable of defending itself but incapable of being an offensive threat. It was therefore a stable force—neither a power vacuum nor a powder keg—at the center of Europe, and helped keep international relations on the continent from becoming too aggressive. This was the same reason advanced by Adolphe Thiers in 1866 (ironically, at a time when Germany was on the verge of becoming united at last). By then, the religious significance of the Peace of Westphalia had been overtaken in the minds of most Germans by its nationalist implications. Embarrassed by their defeats at the hands of Napoleon, they began to view Westphalia as the key obstacle preventing them from forming a unified nation as France, England, and other European states had done. They blamed France, not only because Sweden (which had been equally responsible for the Peace of Westphalia) had long ceased to be a threat, but also because France still retained the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine that it had acquired in 1648.⁸

These provinces became the visible manifestation of France’s age-old policy of keeping Germany weak, and one of the first acts of the newly united German nation was to reclaim them (following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71). Over the next half-century, the Peace of Westphalia became important chiefly as the occasion for the French conquest of Alsace and Lorraine, as French and German scholars tried to prove that the provinces belonged properly to their nation. Germans claimed to discover an ancient French policy of expansion toward the Rhine, while French historians tried to unearth evidence that Alsace properly belonged to France all along (as in a 1919 work called Alsace is French by Its Origins, Its Race, and Its History).⁹ These debates uncovered some interesting historical facts, but their polemical nature advanced historical understanding very little. The controversy died down in the interwar period, but arose again during World War II: in 1940, Hitler’s government erected an exhibit in Münster that called Westphalia “France’s greatest triumph—Germany’s deepest shame.”¹⁰ Two years later, the Nazi press declared that their goal was to win the Thirty Years’ War and overcome the Peace of Westphalia.¹¹

Most of these issues have been forgotten today. Germany is once again unified and has accepted the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. Hardly anyone views it as a threat to international security; it is now a peaceful, defensive-oriented state by inclination rather than by force. Religious toleration is taken for granted across the Western world, so Protestants do not devote much attention to a treaty signed over three centuries ago. The Peace of Westphalia is no longer celebrated or decried for what it declared, but for what it implied: that treaties are made between independent governments, and no one else.

It hardly seems controversial to say that international treaties are agreements between national governments because we are accustomed to thinking of the world as divided geographically into about 200 governments that exercise exclusive authority within their borders and do not interfere in the internal affairs of their neighbors. Governments meeting this definition qualify as “sovereign,” and the system as a whole is known as a “sovereign state system.” Virtually the whole landmass of the world is divided among sovereign states, and these states (or governments) are like marbles in a bag: they bounce against each other frequently, but always remain distinct. Borders sometimes change, but they are always adjusted among sovereign states.

Events of the last two decades have challenged the idea that national governments are the only actors in international politics. Criminal and terrorist organizations, such as drug cartels and al-Qaeda, operate independently of the governments that (often involuntarily) host them and produce effects in other nations. International news is full of references to “failed states” that are unable to control violence within their borders. When it spills out and affects other countries, the international response is not only to replace the existing government, but to build up a new government that will be capable of performing its basic duties, a process known as “nation building.” The very concept of borders, which are essential to sovereignty, seems to be becoming obsolete as issues such as refugees, environmental questions, crime, and terrorism cut across internationally demarcated boundaries. Communications (cell phones and the Internet) and even weapons (intercontinental ballistic weapons) make traditionally geographic problems such as information security and defense into international issues that can strike anywhere regardless of physical location.

Sovereignty is so fundamental in our era that the United Nations Charter states at the beginning that it “is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.”¹² The Peace of Westphalia has generally been credited as establishing this international norm; unfortunately, it contains no explicit declaration comparable to the one in the United Nations Charter. It does not even use the word “sovereignty,” which does not exist in Latin; the concept of sovereignty was relatively new and had been developed in European secular languages, not in classical or church Latin. Moreover, even though the Peace of Westphalia mentions related Latin concepts—“supreme dominion,” “superiority”—these are not in the context of establishing rules for international relations. Instead of sovereignty, the Peace of Westphalia begins with the medieval-sounding injunction, “Let there be a Christian peace.” This certainly did not strive to create a new political order; to the contrary, it explicitly states as its goal to return things to their state as of 1618, prior to the war.

What are we to make of this treaty? Was it the first modern peace? Or was it perhaps the last medieval peace, focused on a moral order and centered on Christianity? No simple reading back of modern concepts will give us the answer: we must, in a sense, understand the peace on its own terms. But that doesn’t mean we can’t understand it on our terms as well. The key is that we have to appreciate the assumptions and aims of statesmen in the 1640s in order to assess the meaning of the peace, for its time and for ours.

BAROQUE DIPLOMACY

“No one can claim to understand the seventeenth century, its values and modes of thought,” one historian has written, “who has not studied the peace of Westphalia.”¹³ While this is possibly true, it is equally valid to turn this statement on its head: no one can claim to understand the Peace of Westphalia who has not studied the values and modes of thought of the seventeenth century. Although there was, of course, no single mode of thought in the seventeenth century, people did share certain assumptions and approaches in common. Especially in the first half of the century, this common ground can best be summed up as Baroque. “Baroque” is a term applied by later ages to trends in the visual arts of the early seventeenth century—originally in a derogatory sense—but it has been usefully applied to literature, drama, and music as well. It has not been widely used in a political context, although it seems reasonable that such a thoroughgoing trend in intellectual life would at least touch all forms of public interaction, especially if it had some fundamental and deep-rooted cause. The following is not an attempt to prove that there was such a thing as “Baroque diplomacy,” but instead attempts to use Baroque concepts to understand the psychology and intellectual background of statesmen in the early seventeenth century.¹⁴

When you think of the seventeenth century, you might think about witch trials, such as those in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. The seventeenth century was, indeed, the great era of witch hunts; witchcraft and magic were widely assumed to be true, even among the learned.¹⁵ Witch trials indicate a deep sense of unease, of people who believed not only that the devil was actively at work in the world, but that he had a mass of secret followers to carry out his wishes. This is a good place to start understanding the Baroque, since “unease” might qualify for the best one-word characterization of the period. Witchcraft and devil-worship were the symptom of a problem that ran deeper and which manifests itself in every aspect of Baroque life.

On a basic level, the uncertainties and discomforts of life explain much of the unease. Any illness could lead to death, and, even when it fell short of that, there were still few ways to relieve pain. Poor eyesight was uncorrected by glasses, poor hearing by hearing aids, poor digestion by Pepto-Bismol. The wealthy had servants, who could alleviate certain problems, but no one could make a rash or an ulcer go away. It must have required a great deal of patience just to put up with all these inconveniences that would drive a modern person to distraction.

Such physical problems, however, were common to any premodern society. There were other issues, structural ones, that made the seventeenth century a particularly hard time. For one thing, the economic situation grew worse in most of Europe during the first half of the century. After years of population expansion and economic growth during the 1500s, things reversed in the 1600s. Wars and plagues reduced populations across the continent, while governments ratcheted taxes ever higher in order to finance their own expansion at home and abroad. And although governments were willing to enforce their rules and their taxes with armed soldiers, they faced an unprecedented amount of resistance. Some people turned to banditry, either waylaying individuals traveling through the countryside, or organizing themselves into large bands capable of raiding a noble’s house and overwhelming his servants. Others expressed their discontent by rebelling in defense of their rights. Revolts varied from small noble conspiracies to mass peasant movements to provincial wars of independence. The 1640s—the decade of the Peace of Westphalia—was so full of rebellions that it is sometimes considered a time of “general crisis” in Europe: revolts shook Catalonia, Portugal, Sicily, Naples, France, the Ukraine, and England, where Charles I was deposed and beheaded.¹⁶

Apart from economic problems, the Baroque was beset by intellectual and spiritual upheaval, which yanked the rug from underneath cherished certainties. Close contact with Asia and Africa, together with the discovery of entirely new peoples in the Americas, challenged assumptions about how all human societies functioned: whatever the rule, there seemed to be an exception somewhere. And how did those people in the Americas fit into the biblical scheme? How did they get separated, and from which of Noah’s three sons did they originate? Traditionally Shem was the ancestor of the Arabs and Jews, Ham of Africans, and Japheth of the rest of the world, but the Indians didn’t seem to fit into any category. The earth itself seemed to move beneath people’s feet. The solidity and immobility of the earth seems like one of the basic facts of experience; but, according to Copernicus, it is actually hurtling through space. If he was right, what else could people believe without questioning?

Then there was the religious division within Christianity. There had been heresies and sects from the time of early Christianity, and in 1054 the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches had permanently divided the religion. In the fourteenth century, Catholicism itself was split between two popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon, in southern France. But these disputes, although serious, lacked the radical questioning of church doctrine that marked the Reformation of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli in the sixteenth century. Luther not only denied the authority of the pope, as the Orthodox Church had done, but questioned the whole nature of divine grace as the Catholic Church taught it. Moreover, whereas the schism with the Orthodox Church had divided two regions that were already widely separated geographically, the Reformation occurred right in the heart of Catholic Europe. Suddenly, people were finding their own neighbors, subjects, and children converting to this new faith. As a result, almost everyone began to question his or her own beliefs. Some were convinced by the new interpretations of Christianity provided by Lutheranism, Calvinism, or more radical versions of Protestantism, such as Anabaptism. Others, confronted with these challenges to their beliefs, found a new strength in their faith and became more devout than before. The early seventeenth century was the height of the Counter-Reformation, which not only involved official attempts to re-Catholicize territories that had been los...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Part I Background
• Part II Negotiations
• Part III Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index