Westphalia

Westphalia (pronounced west-fey-lee-uh or weat-feyl-yua)

(1) Of or relating to the historic north-west German region of Westphalia or its inhabitants (now a subdivision (landschaftsverband) of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony).

(2) A term in the Holy Roman Empire to describe the power of second sight for which the peasants of Westphalia were said to be noted

(3) One of the major dialect groups of West Low German spoken in Westphalia.

(4) In geology, a European phase of the upper-Carboniferous period.

(5) A warm-blood horse bred in the Westphalia region.

(6) A term to describe the treaty (Peace of Westphalia) ending the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

(7) A description of the international system of co-existing sovereign states said to have originated with the Treaty of Westphalia and formalised first in the new political order created in Europe.

Circa 1200:  A regional & geographical name, from Middle Dutch falen, from Old French faillir (From Old French falir, from Vulgar Latin fallire, from Latin fallere, present active infinitive of fallo.)  The term "Westphalia" contrasts with the much less used term "Eastphalia", which roughly covers the south-eastern part of the present-day state of Lower Saxony, western Saxony-Anhalt and northern Thuringia.

The nation-state and Westphalian sovereignty

Although never a part of the negotiations which culminated in the Peace of Westphalia which in 1648 ended the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the concept of Westphalian (or state) sovereignty emerged and was refined over the subsequent three-hundred years.  The principle, one of the foundation concepts in international law, is that each state enjoyed exclusive sovereignty within its territory, a principle upheld in its purest form in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Opinion of its desirably has always been contested, especially by those poor, misguided souls who attempt to inject ethics into international relations but as power-realist Henry Kissinger (B 1923, US national security advisor (1969-1975) & secretary of state 1973-1977)  noted, it was “a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight…[which depended on] states refraining from interference in each other's domestic affairs and …[maintaining stability and a balance of power].”

The doctrine of absolute state sovereignty began most obviously to fray in the 1920s when the League of Nations was formed, lawyers and political scientists there developing theories which inherently justified intervention in sovereign states.  The League prove ineffectual in translating these theories and policies into effective action but the legal principles subsequently developed for the Nuremberg trials (1945-1946) provided the basis of the framework of what came to be called the “doctrine of the international community", a school of thought which has produced both quasi-legal gestures such as the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) and actual institutions like the international criminal courts.

Treaty of Westphalia in Münster, 24 October 1648, Woodcut after a painting, circa 1900, by Fritz Grotemeyer (1864–1947).