Innovations

Abstract

In spite of the fact that the Congress of Westphalia was very much based in the traditional international relations theory and practice of its time, it was innovative in a number of respects. Most obviously, the very idea of settling a war by means of an international congress was unusual, if not entirely unique. The Congress of Westphalia was by no means pan-European as it is sometimes claimed, but it did involve five major participants (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic) besides the papal, Venetian, and Danish mediators (the last of whom withdrew at the beginning). Other states sent observers or semiofficial representatives, including Switzerland, Transylvania, and Poland, while Catalonia and Portugal were represented although not recognized officially. Europe had seen nothing like it in a secular setting, the closest parallel being the great church councils. The fact that two of the five major powers were Protestant underscored the unusual nature of the meeting. (This was not, however, unprecedented, because England had been Protestant while it negotiated at Cateau-Cambrésis.)

And yet it moves. [Eppur si muove.]

—Sotto voce statement attributed to Galileo after he confessed at his trial that the earth was the immobile center of the universe