Description:
A pivotal event in early modern history, the Congress of Westphalia gave birth to our contemporary international political system. While bringing peace to Germany after the Thirty Years' War, it created a new order in Europe and resolved longer lasting problems, including religious divisions and the relationship between emperor and estates. It was one of the longest and most complex, peace conferences in history. This book provides an essential reference for anyone wishing to sort out the complicated negotiations.
The significance of the European order established in 1648 extends far beyond the paragraphs of the treaty. The Congress alone--the first of its kind--became a standard for future diplomacy and negotiation. Even today, historians are finding new aspects of this extraordinarily complex Congress and Peace. With over 300 detailed entries, covering a wide variety of topics from the relevant people, places, and influential battles to critical concepts and technical terms, the book will be useful both to scholars and to students interested in the Peace of Westphalia, the Holy Roman Empire, or the events of the 1640s.
Review Quotes: "Ýa¨n indispensable aid to anglophone scholars.... Croxton and Tischer are to be commended....Their bibliography is up-to-date and, like the entries themselves, broadly international in scope, and includes not only the expected German, French, Spanish, and Dutch literature, but also the latest historiography in Danish, Swedish, Polish, and even Russian. This reviewer has tried, without success, to find and visable gaps in the book's coverage....Croxton and Tischer have provided students of early modern diplomatic history with a resource of immense utility. I would suggest that scholars delving into the primary sources on the peace- like the Acta Pacis Westphalicae seies-do so with this dictionary close at hand."-The International History Review