Abstract

The Protestant Reformation was a crucial spring of modern international relations. Had it never occurred, a system of sovereign states would not have arrived, at least not in the form or at the time that it did at the Peace of Westphalia. This is the counterfactual the author seeks to sustain. He first advances an elaborated but qualified defense of the conventional wisdom that Westphalia is the origin of modern international relations. He then accounts for how Protestant ideas exerted influence through transforming identities and exercising social power. Structural theories, emphasizing changes in material power, are skeptical of this account. The author roots his empirical defense of ideas in the strong correlation between Reformation crises and polities' interests in Westphalia. A description of the historical causal pathways running from ideas to political interest then follows. Germany and France are brought as cases to illustrate two of these pathways. Finally, the author shows the evidentiary weakness of alternative structural material explanations.

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