Counterpoint: the Westphalia overstatement.

• Author: MacRae, Andrew

Westphalia is no more. This is not the result of any one particular cause, but an acknowledgement that the conceptualization of 'the Westphalian state system' is a pedagogical oversimplification that is based on flawed assumptions. By referring to modern politics as "Westphalian," international relations specialists employ a term that no longer provides an accurate view of history and is incompatible with the two primary ideologies of international relations, namely, realism and international liberalism. The great Wesphalian overstatement no longer serves as the progenitor of our descriptive map of the Western world, if it ever did.

Westphalia has been seen as epochal for many scholastic disciplines, but none so much as international relations. Leo Gross, for example, refers to this treaty as the first "World Charter," a precursor to the United Nations and other European attempts to establish a world order of sovereign states. (1) This inaccurate perception of history has codified many mistaken assumptions within the lexicon of international relations, and is responsible for keeping the discipline from understanding globalization and other postmodern twenty-first century trends.

Among the chief claims Westphalians make is that the peace of 1648 created the first sovereign states. These states are supposed to have exercised "untrammeled sovereignty over certain territories ... subordinat[e] to no earthly authority." (2) Historically and presently, this is Enlightenment fiction at best; at worst, it highlights a substantial lack of historical knowledge weakening the foundations and relevance of the discipline of international relations.

The rise of the sovereign state was over three centuries old by the time of Westphalia. Beginning in Italy after the decline in temporal power of the Papacy, "a gap in the medieval system of hierarchy" created a vacuum, which was "filled by the political inventiveness of Italians." (3) Many components of these "omnicompetent, amoral, sovereign states" and the environment of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy refute the primacy Westphalia, however other pre-Westphalian examples of sovereignty exist as well. (4) The most comprehensive example of a sovereignty existing prior to Westphalia is England which achieved "political unity by the tenth century, emphasis of central institutions by fourteenth century, and national identity beginning in the fifteenth century." (5) English political unity suffered a setback with the War of the Roses (1455-1487), but by the sixteenth century Henry VIII severed his allegiance to Rome, thereby removing the largest external threat to domestic sovereignty. (6) During this time, England became the first country to embrace nationalism in the sense of identifying itself as a "unique, sovereign people." (7) Elements of this new form of identity were "individualistic and civic minded" in that both "commoners and the elite now saw themselves as part of the same social contract." (8) After this evolution, England relied on the collective sovereignties of its citizens. This sovereignty came into existence prior to Westphalia as well as before other modern Europeans discovered sovereignty, nationality, liberal democracy, or even a new modus operandi of economics, capitalism. (9)

The Tudors used religious identity, in this case Anglican, to sculpt national identity. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries...