Peace of Westphalia in the context of "Słupsk"

The Westphalian system, also known as Westphalian sovereignty, is a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory. The principle developed in Europe after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, based on the state theory of Jean Bodin and the natural law teachings of Hugo Grotius. It underlies the modern international system of sovereign states and is enshrined in the United Nations Charter, which states that "nothing ... shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state."

According to the principle, every state, no matter how large or small, has an equal right to sovereignty. Political scientists have traced the concept to the eponymous peace treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and Eighty Years' War (1568–1648). The principle of non-interference was further developed in the 18th century. The Westphalian system reached its peak in the 19th and 20th centuries, but has faced recent challenges from advocates of humanitarian intervention.

Change and continuity is a classic dichotomy within the fields of history, historical sociology, and the social sciences more broadly. The question of change and continuity is considered a classic discussion in the study of historical developments. The dichotomy is used to discuss and evaluate the extent to which a historical development or event represents a decisive historical change or whether a situation remains largely unchanged. A good example of this discussion is the question of how much the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 represents an important change in European history. In a similar vein, historian Richard Kirkendall once questioned whether FDR's New Deal represented "a radical innovation or a continuation of earlier themes in American life?" and posed the question of whether "historical interpretations of the New Deal [should] stress change or emphasize continuity?" The issue here is if the New Deal marks something radically new (change) in US history or if the New Deal can be understood as a continuation (continuity) of tendencies in American history that were in place well before the 1930.

The dichotomy is important in relation to constructing, discussing, and evaluating historical periodizations. In terms of creating and discussing periodization (e.g. the Enlightenment or the Victorian Era,) the dichotomy can be used to assess when a period can be said to start and end, thus making the dichotomy important in relation to understanding historical chronology. Economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron has taken issue with the dichotomy, arguing that continuity "appears to mean no more than absence of change, i.e. stability." German historian Reinhart Koselleck, however, has been said to challenge this dichotomy.

A sacerdotal state is a state whose head is also an ecclesiastical leader designated by a religious body. An example of this kind of state is the Vatican City: its heads of state, the popes of the Catholic Church, have governed papal lands distinct from secular authority since the establishment of the Papal States in the 8th century AD. Andorra operates under a semi-sacerdotal system, as one of its co-heads of state is the bishop of Urgell, while the other is the head of state of France. However unlike the Vatican, the co-princes of Andorra are ceremonial and not closely involved in the government.

In the past, bishops commonly assumed temporal as well as spiritual authority and ruled as prince-bishops. This occurred, for example, in the Holy Roman Empire, where three of the seven imperial electors were prince-archbishops (those of Trier, Mainz and Cologne). After the 1648 Peace of Westphalia certain prince-bishoprics became bi-confessional and alternated between governance by Catholic bishops and by Protestant administrators.

A world-system is a socioeconomic system, under systems theory, that encompasses part or all of the globe, detailing the aggregate structural result of the sum of the interactions between polities. World-systems are usually larger than single states, but do not have to be global. The Westphalian System is the preeminent world-system operating in the contemporary world, denoting the system of sovereign states and nation-states produced by the Westphalian Treaties in 1648. Several world-systems can coexist, provided that they have little or no interaction with one another. Where such interactions becomes significant, separate world-systems merge into a new, larger world-system. Through the process of globalization, the modern world has reached the state of one dominant world-system, but in human history there have been periods where separate world-systems existed simultaneously, according to Janet Abu-Lughod. The most well-known version of the world-system approach has been developed by Immanuel Wallerstein. A world-system is a crucial element of the world-system theory, a multidisciplinary, macro-scale approach to world history and social change.

The Electorate of Bavaria (German: Kurfürstentum Bayern) was a quasi-independent hereditary electorate of the Holy Roman Empire from 1623 to 1806, when it was succeeded by the Kingdom of Bavaria.

The Wittelsbach dynasty which ruled the Duchy of Bavaria was the younger branch of the family which also ruled the Electoral Palatinate. The head of the elder branch was one of the seven prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire according to the Golden Bull of 1356, but Bavaria was excluded from the electoral dignity. In 1621, Frederick V, Elector Palatine was put under the imperial ban for his role in the Bohemian Revolt against Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, and the electoral dignity and territory of the Upper Palatinate was conferred upon his loyal cousin, Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria. Although the Peace of Westphalia would create a new electoral title for Frederick V's son, with the exception of a brief period during the War of the Spanish Succession, Maximilian's descendants would continue to hold the original electoral dignity until the extinction of his line in 1777. At that point the two lines were joined in personal union until the end of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1805, after the Peace of Pressburg, the then-elector, Maximilian Joseph, raised himself to the dignity of King of Bavaria, and the Holy Roman Empire was abolished the following year.

Sophia (German: Sophie, [zoˈfiː]; 14 October [O.S. 3 October] 1630 – 8 June [O.S. 28 May] 1714) was Electress of Hanover from 1692 to 1698 as the consort of Prince-Elector Ernest Augustus. She was later the heiress presumptive to the thrones of England and Scotland (later Great Britain) and Ireland under the Act of Settlement 1701, as she was the granddaughter of King James VI and I. Sophia died less than two months before she would have become Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Consequently, her son George succeeded her first cousin once removed, Queen Anne, to the British throne. The succession to the throne has since been composed entirely of, and legally defined as, Sophia's legitimate and Protestant descendants.

Sophia was born in The Hague to Frederick V, formerly Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, and Elizabeth (Stuart), daughter of King James VI and I. She grew up in the Dutch Republic, where her family had sought refuge after the sequestration of their Electorate during the Thirty Years' War. Sophia's brother Charles Louis was restored as elector in the Palatinate as part of the Peace of Westphalia. During this time, the English Stuarts also went into exile and Sophia was courted by her cousin, Charles II of England.

The concept of Germany as a distinct region in Central Europe can be traced to Julius Caesar, who referred to the unconquered area east of the Rhine as Germania, thus distinguishing it from Gaul. The victory of the Germanic tribes in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (AD 9) prevented annexation by the Roman Empire, although the Roman provinces of Germania Superior and Germania Inferior were established along the Rhine. Following the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Franks conquered the other West Germanic tribes. When the Frankish Empire was divided among Charles the Great's heirs in 843, the eastern part became East Francia, and later Kingdom of Germany. In 962, Otto I became the first Holy Roman Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the medieval German state.

During the High Middle Ages, the Hanseatic League, dominated by German port cities, established itself along the Baltic and North Seas. The development of a crusading element within German Christendom led to the Northern Crusades and the establishment of the State of the Teutonic Order along the Southern Baltic coast in what would later become Prussia. In the Investiture Controversy, the German Emperors resisted Catholic Church authority. In the Late Middle Ages, the regional dukes, princes, and bishops gained power at the expense of the emperors. Martin Luther led the Protestant Reformation within the Catholic Church after 1517, as the northern and eastern states became Protestant, while most of the southern and western states remained Catholic. The Thirty Years' War, a civil war from 1618 to 1648 brought tremendous destruction to the Holy Roman Empire. The estates of the empire attained great autonomy in the Peace of Westphalia, the most important being Austria, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony. With the Napoleonic Wars, feudalism fell away and the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806. Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine as a German puppet state, but after the French defeat, the German Confederation was established under Austrian presidency. The German revolutions of 1848–1849 failed but the Industrial Revolution modernized the German economy, leading to rapid urban growth and the emergence of the socialist movement. Prussia, with its capital Berlin, grew in power. German universities became world-class centers for science and humanities, while music and art flourished. The unification of Germany was achieved under the leadership of the Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the formation of the German Empire in 1871. The new Reichstag, an elected parliament, had only a limited role in the imperial government. Germany joined the other powers in colonial expansion in Africa and the Pacific.

Jules Mazarin (born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino or Mazarini; 14 July 1602 – 9 March 1661), from 1641 known as Cardinal Mazarin, was an Italian Catholic prelate, diplomat and politician who served as the chief minister to the Kings of France Louis XIII and Louis XIV from 1642 to his death. He was made a cardinal in 1641.

After serving as a papal diplomat for Pope Urban VIII, Mazarin offered his diplomatic services to Cardinal Richelieu and moved to Paris in 1640. After the death of Richelieu in 1642, Mazarin took his place as first minister of Louis XIII, and then of Louis XIV, when he succeeded to the throne in 1643. Mazarin acted as the head of the government for Anne of Austria, the regent for the young Louis XIV, and was also responsible for the king's education until he came of age. The first years of Mazarin in office were marked by military victories in the Thirty Years' War, which he used to make France the main European power and establish the Peace of Westphalia (1646–1648). A major uprising against Anne of Austria and Mazarin, called the Fronde and led by the nobles of the Parlement of Paris, broke out in Paris in 1648, followed by a second Fronde, led by Louis, Grand Condé, who had turned from his chief ally to his chief enemy. Mazarin took Anne of Austria and Louis XIV out of Paris and then shifted his base to Germany for a time. Turenne, a general loyal to Louis XIV and Mazarin, defeated Condé, and Mazarin made a triumphal return to Paris in 1653.

The Fronde (French pronunciation: [fʁɔ̃d] ) was a series of civil wars in the Kingdom of France between 1648 and 1653, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635. The government of the young King Louis XIV confronted the combined opposition of the princes, the nobility, the noble regional court assemblies (parlements), as well as much of the French population, and managed to subdue them all. The dispute started when the government of France issued seven fiscal edicts, six of which were to increase taxation. The parlements resisted, questioned the constitutionality of the king's actions, and sought to check his powers.

The Fronde was divided into two campaigns, the Parlementary Fronde and the Fronde of the Princes. The timing of the outbreak of the Parlementary Fronde, directly after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that ended the Thirty Years' War, was significant. The nuclei of the armed bands that terrorized parts of France under aristocratic leaders during that period had been hardened in a generation of war in Germany, where troops still tended to operate autonomously. Louis XIV, impressed as a young ruler with the experience of the Fronde, came to reorganize French fighting forces under a stricter hierarchy, whose leaders ultimately could be made or unmade by the king. Cardinal Mazarin blundered into the crisis but came out well ahead at the end. The Fronde represented the final attempt of the French nobility to confront the king, and ended in its humiliation. In the long run, the Fronde served to strengthen royal authority, but weakened the national economy. The Fronde facilitated the emergence of absolute monarchy.