{ "id": "ep2h18ct0p", "slug": "peace-of-westphalia", "title": "Peace of Westphalia", "updated": "2026-10-25", "topic_path": [ { "id": "society", "label": "Society and history", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/society" }, { "id": "society.history", "label": "History and archaeology", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/society.history" }, { "id": "society.history.periods", "label": "Periods and civilizations", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/society.history.periods" }, { "id": "society.history.periods.early-modern-period", "label": "Early modern period", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/society.history.periods.early-modern-period" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.weu.t1000.society.history.periods", "label": "Western Europe · 1000 to 1799: Periods and civilizations", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1000.society.history.periods", "path": [ { "id": "geo.weu", "label": "Western Europe", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1000", "label": "Western Europe · 1000 to 1799", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1000" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1000.society", "label": "Society and history", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1000.society" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1000.society.history", "label": "History and archaeology", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1000.society.history" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1000.society.history.periods", "label": "Periods and civilizations", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1000.society.history.periods" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Peace of Westphalia (Westfälischer Friede): the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück signed 24 October 1648 ending the Thirty Years' War, restoring the Augsburg religious peace with Calvinism recognized, and later mythologized as the origin of the sovereign state system.", "snippet": "Peace of Westphalia (Westfälischer Friede): the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück signed 24 October 1648 ending the Thirty Years' War, restoring the Augsburg religious peace with Calvinism recognized, and later mythologized as the origin of the sovereign state system.", "node": "society.history.periods.early-modern-period", "markdown": "# Peace of Westphalia\n\nThe Peace of Westphalia is the collective name for the treaties signed on 24 October 1648 at Münster and [Osnabrück](https://www.edgepedia.org/osnabruck), in [Westphalia](https://www.edgepedia.org/westphalia), which ended the [Thirty Years' War](https://www.edgepedia.org/thirty-years-war) in the Holy Roman Empire and settled the religious and constitutional disputes that had begun with the German Reformation.[1](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/peace-treaties-of-westphalia-october-14-24-1648) Two treaties made up the settlement: one concluded between the Holy Roman Empire and France at Münster, the other between the Empire and Sweden and the Protestant estates of the Empire at Osnabrück.[2](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Westphalia%2C_Treaty_of) The same congress also produced the Spanish-Dutch treaty of 30 January 1648, which ended the Eighty Years' War, though it is usually counted separately from the Peace of Westphalia proper.[3](https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article-abstract/131/548/184/2404329)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Date and place | Signed 24 October 1648 at Münster (Empire–France) and Osnabrück (Empire–Sweden and Protestant estates)[2](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Westphalia%2C_Treaty_of) |\n| War ended | The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648); the Franco-Spanish war continued until the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659[1](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/peace-treaties-of-westphalia-october-14-24-1648) • [4](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/_language/de?uri=%2Fde%2Fdocument%2Fdoi%2F10.1515%2F9783110591316-046%2Fhtml) |\n| Congress | Negotiations ran from 1643 to 1649; delegates from roughly 150 European states and territories took part, in the first pan-European peace conference[5](https://www.zhf.uni-bonn.de/publikationen/apw) • [4](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/_language/de?uri=%2Fde%2Fdocument%2Fdoi%2F10.1515%2F9783110591316-046%2Fhtml) |\n| Religious settlement | Restored the Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555 and extended it to the Reformed (Calvinist) confession[6](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/ghdi%3Adocument-4386) |\n| Constitutional status | Declared permanent binding law (perpetua lex et pragmatica imperii sanctio) incorporated into the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire[7](https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2017/10/the-peace-of-westphalia/) |\n| Duration of the imperial order | The settlement secured the domestic peace of the Empire until 1806[4](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/_language/de?uri=%2Fde%2Fdocument%2Fdoi%2F10.1515%2F9783110591316-046%2Fhtml) |\n| Historiographic status | The claim that Westphalia created the modern sovereign state system is widely disputed by historians and revisionist scholars of international relations[8](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/sovereignty-international-relations-and-the-westphalian-myth/33B6B7773432BE494F31518952ABE881) |\n\n## The congress at Münster and Osnabrück\n\nThe road to the congress was long. In December 1641 the parties resolved at Hamburg to hold an assembly of plenipotentiary ambassadors at Münster and Osnabrück, with a starting date of 1 July 1643 (Old Style) or 11 July (New Style).[9](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/westphal.asp) • [1](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/peace-treaties-of-westphalia-october-14-24-1648) The two-city arrangement reflected the confessional division: the [Spaniards](https://www.edgepedia.org/spaniards), the Dutch, and the French were assigned to Münster, and the Swedes to Osnabrück.[10](https://iilj.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Straumann-The-Peace-of-Westphalia-1648-as-a-Secular-Constitution-2007-2.pdf) The Republic of Venice provided mediation; its ambassador Aloysius Contarini spent about five years as mediator with what the treaty text calls a spirit entirely impartial.[9](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/westphal.asp)\n\nBetween 1643 and 1649, delegates from around 150 European states and territories gathered in the two cities.[5](https://www.zhf.uni-bonn.de/publikationen/apw) The congress is regarded as the first pan-European peace conference, and it set a pattern for subsequent European peace congresses; its ambassadors developed a novel mode of negotiation and contributed to the developing notion of international law.[4](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/_language/de?uri=%2Fde%2Fdocument%2Fdoi%2F10.1515%2F9783110591316-046%2Fhtml) No process as tortuous as the Westphalian peace conference has a precedent in European history, according to the research center associated with the Acta Pacis Westphalicae edition of the congress records.[11](https://www.lwl.org/westfaelischer-friede-download/wfe-t/wfe-txt1-38.htm)\n\nThe congress attempted to resolve three interrelated but distinct conflicts, and it did not settle all of them. Spain had already resolved its long struggle against the Dutch at Münster on 30 January 1648, but negotiations with France broke down, and the Franco-Spanish war continued for another decade until the Peace of the Pyrenees. The lack of Franco-Spanish harmony detracted from the congress's goal of a universal peace and undermined the solidity of the settlement.[12](https://academic.oup.com/gh/article-abstract/26/1/131/770291)\n\n## Terms of the settlement\n\n**Religion.** The treaties restored the Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which had been broken in the early seventeenth century, and opened it to the Reformed or Calvinist confession, so that three public confessions, [Lutheranism](https://www.edgepedia.org/lutheranism), Catholicism, and Calvinism, received legal recognition.[6](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/ghdi%3Adocument-4386) • [13](https://philarchive.org/archive/HUNTAO-10) Subjects were no longer required to follow the religion of their lord, allowing inhabitants of the [Holy Roman Empire](https://www.edgepedia.org/holy-roman-empire) to practice one of the protected faiths freely.[14](https://www.worldhistory.org/Peace_of_Westphalia/) Contested religious articles were settled by negotiation between the confessional parties rather than by majority rule, and whatever the treaties said on these points was to stand as a permanent explanation of the Religious Peace.[1](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/peace-treaties-of-westphalia-october-14-24-1648) The legal scholar Benjamin Straumann, whose work on the treaties was published by the Institute for International Law and Justice at New York University, argues that the settlement solved the problem of deep religious disagreement by imposing proto-liberal religious liberties on the estates of the Empire, leaving subjects with exclusively secular duties toward their authorities.[15](https://www.iilj.org/publications/the-peace-of-westphalia-1648-as-a-secular-constitution/)\n\n**Constitution of the Empire.** The treaties were unusual among peace agreements in being at once international contracts and fundamental laws of the Holy Roman Empire; it would be difficult, as the historian Ronald G. Asch of the [University of Freiburg](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-freiburg) writes, to find another early modern legal document in which a domestic constitutional settlement and an international agreement are so closely combined.[16](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/peace-treaties-and-international-law-in-european-history/ius-foederis-reexamined-the-peace-of-westphalia-and-the-constitution-of-the-holy-roman-empire/031160BCB7ED0F4ADB9A9DF83007AAA5) Both the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück contained a clause granting the whole body of imperial estates, rather than merely the electors, a voice in every matter of imperial concern, be it lawmaking, taxation, or deciding on war and peace.[17](https://www.cristoraul.org/ENGLISH/READINGHALL/THIRDMILLENNIUMLIBRARY/THE-THIRTY-YEARS-WAR/14-THE-PEACE-OF-WESTPHALIA.html) The treaties also dealt with restitution of property seized during the war, a general amnesty covering acts committed since the beginning of the troubles, and the creation of an eighth electorate for the Palatine line alongside the one retained by Bavaria.[9](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/westphal.asp)\n\n**Permanence and guarantee.** The parties obligated themselves to defend and protect every article of the peace against anyone, without distinction of religion, and article XVII, 2 of the Treaty of Osnabrück gave the treaty the status of permanent binding law, perpetually incorporated into the constitution of the Empire.[7](https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2017/10/the-peace-of-westphalia/) The mutual guarantee clauses were subsequently applied as a system of collective security for central Europe, and in the 1710s and 1720s the Protestant princes developed a constitutional vision under which, as contracting parties of the treaties, they were entitled to execute the treaty terms by force if the Emperor refused to dispatch execution commissions.[18](https://academic.oup.com/book/35021/chapter-abstract/298830946) • [19](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10087781/1/9789004384194%20-%20The%20Law%20of%20Nations%20and%20Natural%20Law%201625-1800%5D%20The%20International%20Political%20Thought%20of%20Johann%20Ja%20%281%29.pdf) The settlement secured the domestic peace of the Empire until 1806.[4](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/_language/de?uri=%2Fde%2Fdocument%2Fdoi%2F10.1515%2F9783110591316-046%2Fhtml)\n\n## The Westphalian myth\n\nIn international relations scholarship, Westphalia has long served as the founding event of the modern state system. The international law scholar Leo Gross, a prominent figure in twentieth-century international legal studies, maintained that Westphalia was the starting point for the development of modern international law and called it \"the majestic portal which leads from the old into the new world.\" In his essay \"Westphalia and All That,\" the Stanford political scientist Stephen D. Krasner, who wrote *Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy* (1999), challenged the conventional account by disputing that the 1648 peace ended the medieval order and opened a fresh period in international relations.[20](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/kokusaiseiji/2010/160/2010_160_48/_article)\n\nThe revisionist case was stated most influentially by [Andreas Osiander](https://www.edgepedia.org/andreas-osiander), then a scholar of international relations, in *International Organization* in 2001. He noted that the 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in 1998 was marked by a flurry of conferences and publications by historians but was largely ignored by the discipline of international relations, despite that discipline's treating the event as the beginning of the international system. His article argues that the standard narrative of Westphalian sovereignty is a myth.[8](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/sovereignty-international-relations-and-the-westphalian-myth/33B6B7773432BE494F31518952ABE881) Benjamin de Carvalho, Halvard Leira, and John M. Hobson, scholars of international relations in Norway, showed in 2011 that historical and historiographical scholarship has demolished the myth that international relations as we know them emerged through the peace of Westphalia, yet the myth remains pervasive in the textbooks used to teach future IR scholars.[21](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829811401459)\n\n**Eurocentrism.** A related critique holds that the Westphalian narrative carries a Eurocentric bias. Scholars taking a revisionist line hold that the tale of Westphalia as the starting point of a society of sovereign states first took shape among imperial-minded international jurists of the nineteenth century, who asserted that the Peace of Westphalia had brought into being the modern law of nations and turned Europe's states into a community of civilized nations while shutting out non-European peoples; in this telling, states outside Europe stayed in anarchy until Europeans, once those states met the \"standards of civilization,\" let them in.[22](https://academic.oup.com/isr/article-abstract/12/2/193/1846551) • [23](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13540661261446191) Jens Bartelson, professor of political science at [Lund University](https://www.edgepedia.org/lund-university), traces how the conception of Westphalia shifted after the Second World War and how moving the purported origin of the modern international system forward two hundred years, to the nineteenth century, allowed scholars to keep a benchmark date while satisfying more recent historical scholarship.[23](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13540661261446191)\n\n## Legacy\n\nThe treaties' standing in the history of international law was fixed early. [Henry Wheaton](https://www.edgepedia.org/henry-wheaton), the nineteenth-century American jurist and diplomat, wrote that \"the peace of Westphalia, 1648, may be chosen as the epoch from which to deduce the history of the modern science of international law,\" a formulation much followed by later writers.[24](https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article/24/2/557/494153) In political practice, the Westphalian label remains a shorthand for an order of sovereign states. [Henry Kissinger](https://www.edgepedia.org/henry-kissinger), who served as United States National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in the early 1970s and whose Harvard doctoral dissertation treated the [Congress of Vienna](https://www.edgepedia.org/congress-of-vienna) system, extolled the international order established in 1648 and wrote in his 2014 book *World Order* that \"Westphalian principles are, at this writing, the sole generally recognized basis of what exists of a world order.\"[25](https://time.com/3275385/henry-kissinger-2/) Historians, by contrast, generally treat the peace primarily as a settlement of the Empire's constitution and of religious coexistence within it, rather than as the invention of the sovereign state.[8](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/sovereignty-international-relations-and-the-westphalian-myth/33B6B7773432BE494F31518952ABE881) • [16](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/peace-treaties-and-international-law-in-european-history/ius-foederis-reexamined-the-peace-of-westphalia-and-the-constitution-of-the-holy-roman-empire/031160BCB7ED0F4ADB9A9DF83007AAA5)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Peace Treaties of Westphalia (October 14/24, 1648), German History in Documents and Images](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/peace-treaties-of-westphalia-october-14-24-1648)\n2. [Westphalia, Treaty of, Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Westphalia%2C_Treaty_of)\n3. [Review of Acta Pacis Westphalicae, Series II A, Band 9, The English Historical Review (2016)](https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article-abstract/131/548/184/2404329)\n4. [Der Westfälische Frieden 1648, De Gruyter](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/_language/de?uri=%2Fde%2Fdocument%2Fdoi%2F10.1515%2F9783110591316-046%2Fhtml)\n5. [Acta Pacis Westphalicae (APW), Zentrum für Historische Friedensforschung, Universität Bonn](https://www.zhf.uni-bonn.de/publikationen/apw)\n6. [The Religious Peace of Augsburg (September 25, 1555), German History in Documents and Images](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-the-reformations-to-the-thirty-years-war-1500-1648/ghdi%3Adocument-4386)\n7. [The Peace of Westphalia, In Custodia Legis, Library of Congress (2017)](https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2017/10/the-peace-of-westphalia/)\n8. [Andreas Osiander, \"Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth,\" International Organization 55 (2001)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/abs/sovereignty-international-relations-and-the-westphalian-myth/33B6B7773432BE494F31518952ABE881)\n9. [Treaty of Westphalia (Peace Treaty between the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France), The Avalon Project, Yale Law School](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/westphal.asp)\n10. [Benjamin Straumann, \"The Peace of Westphalia (1648) as a Secular Constitution,\" IILJ Working Paper 2007/7](https://iilj.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Straumann-The-Peace-of-Westphalia-1648-as-a-Secular-Constitution-2007-2.pdf)\n11. [Forschungsstelle Westfälischer Friede, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Münster](https://www.lwl.org/westfaelischer-friede-download/wfe-t/wfe-txt1-38.htm)\n12. [Review of Michael Rohrschneider, Der gescheiterte Frieden von Münster, German History 26 (2008)](https://academic.oup.com/gh/article-abstract/26/1/131/770291)\n13. [The Authority of the German Religious Constitution: Public Law (philarchive)](https://philarchive.org/archive/HUNTAO-10)\n14. [Peace of Westphalia, World History Encyclopedia](https://www.worldhistory.org/Peace_of_Westphalia/)\n15. [Benjamin Straumann, The Peace of Westphalia (1648) as a Secular Constitution, Institute for International Law and Justice](https://www.iilj.org/publications/the-peace-of-westphalia-1648-as-a-secular-constitution/)\n16. [Ronald G. Asch, \"The ius foederis re-examined: the Peace of Westphalia and the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire,\" in Peace Treaties and International Law in European History, ed. Randall Lesaffer (Cambridge University Press, 2004)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/peace-treaties-and-international-law-in-european-history/ius-foederis-reexamined-the-peace-of-westphalia-and-the-constitution-of-the-holy-roman-empire/031160BCB7ED0F4ADB9A9DF83007AAA5)\n17. [The Cambridge Modern History: The Thirty Years' War, Chapter XIV, The Peace of Westphalia](https://www.cristoraul.org/ENGLISH/READINGHALL/THIRDMILLENNIUMLIBRARY/THE-THIRTY-YEARS-WAR/14-THE-PEACE-OF-WESTPHALIA.html)\n18. [Patrick Milton, Michael Axworthy, and Brendan Simms, \"The Peace Congress of Münster and Osnabrück (1643–1648) and the Westphalian Order (1648–1806),\" in Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2018)](https://academic.oup.com/book/35021/chapter-abstract/298830946)\n19. [The Law of Nations and Natural Law 1625–1800: The International Political Thought of Johann Jacob Schmauss and Johann Gottlieb Heineccius (Brill/UCL discovery)](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10087781/1/9789004384194%20-%20The%20Law%20of%20Nations%20and%20Natural%20Law%201625-1800%5D%20The%20International%20Political%20Thought%20of%20Johann%20Ja%20%281%29.pdf)\n20. [On the Peace of Westphalia, Kokusaiseiji (International Politics) 160 (2010), J-STAGE](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/kokusaiseiji/2010/160/2010_160_48/_article)\n21. [Benjamin de Carvalho, Halvard Leira, and John M. Hobson, \"The Big Bangs of IR: The Myths That Your Teachers Still Tell You about 1648 and 1919,\" Millennium (2011)](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829811401459)\n22. [Westphalian Eurocentrism in International Relations Theory, International Studies Review](https://academic.oup.com/isr/article-abstract/12/2/193/1846551)\n23. [Jens Bartelson, \"A Westphalia for every weather,\" European Journal of International Relations (2025)](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13540661261446191)\n24. [John Milton and the Epochs of International Law, European Journal of International Law 24 (2013)](https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article/24/2/557/494153)\n25. [Henry Kissinger Reminds Us Why Realism Matters, Time (2014)](https://time.com/3275385/henry-kissinger-2/)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › History and archaeology › Periods and civilizations › Early modern period*\n\n*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/peace-of-westphalia", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/peace-of-westphalia.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Peace of Westphalia\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/peace-of-westphalia. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Peace of Westphalia](https://www.edgepedia.org/peace-of-westphalia)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/peace-of-westphalia](https://www.edgepedia.org/peace-of-westphalia). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Peace of Westphalia\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/peace-of-westphalia. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Peace of Westphalia: the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück signed 24 October 1648 ending the Thirty Years' War, restoring the Augsburg religious peace with Calvinism recognized, and later mythologized as the origin of the sovereign state system." }