ABSTRACT
The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) introduced the modern state system as a primary institution in interstate relations, an institution endowed with the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity over its geographical and domestic affairs. It was a major shift in world order, one that brought about legal equality and increasing secularism within and between the states. It was a treaty of mutual and peaceful co-existence but one that did not go far in deciding how each state would organize internally with respect to the grants of specific freedoms, rights and responsibilities. It was left to each state to decide for itself the type and character of government it wanted, be it monarchy, aristocracy or democracy. As Pierre Beaudry (2003) points out, the treaty only succeeded because of an economic policy of protectionism and directed public credit dirigisme-aimed to create sovereign nation-states and designed by France’s Cardinal Jules Mazarin and his great protégé Jean-Baptiste Colbert.
