ABSTRACT
One conventional narrative about twentieth-century political decolonization recounts the creation of new nation-states and their integration into a world system of states characterized by territorial demarcations and nation-state sovereignty. The twentieth-century transformation of various European colonial territories into nation-states occurred within the context of an already existing territorial system of states that had historically emerged with the Westphalian peace of 1648. In European history the Peace of Westphalia had opened a period in which territorial nation-state sovereignty became the benchmark of state-to-state relationships.
