The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 marked the end of the Thirty Years War in continental Europe and...
Whoa - hold it right there. This is supposed to be a travel blog, not a history lesson!
Bear with me, because that was one treaty that has implications for travelers right down to the present day. History influences everyday life and politics, and few events in history have had such an effect on the modern world as the Treaty of Westphalia, relatively unknown though it is.
The Thirty Years War is actually the name given to a series of upheavals that beset Europe during the first half of the seventeenth century and which had their roots in wars that had started in the sixteenth, most notably the revolt of the Dutch against their Spanish overlords. Nearly every state in Europe was involved at one point or another, and major players such as Spain and France spent decades ostentatiously subverting and trying to control each other's policies and peoples - sometimes by guile, sometimes by diplomacy and sometimes by outright force of arms. It wasn't a continuous fight - a 'total war' in the modern sense. It was rather a series of conflicts: one long, cold war that grew hot from time to time.
The Treaty of Westphalia came about when all the combatants were just about worn out with endless fighting and espionage. It laid down some important principles. Prominent among these were the ideas that one country should not go messing around with the internal affairs of another, nor should they invade their neighbors unless they themselves or their allies were directly threatened. It also laid down the principle that each country, no matter what its relative power and wealth, is equal with all other countries - in the same way that citizens in a democracy are nominally equal, whatever their differences in status.
What has this given us? Well, the modern idea of the nation state, for a start - a political entity composed of a single government ruling a set area of land which is inhabited by one or more ethnic groups. The idea that each country is nominally equal is upheld to this day in the composition of such bodies such as the United Nations. Most importantly from the point of view of the traveler, Westphalia was the beginning of the modern system of diplomacy and care of national citizens traveling abroad.
Today, with neoconservative doctrines of regime change, increased migration and a globalized economy, many scholars think that the principles enshrined in the Treaty of Westphalia are under threat. Nevertheless, the next time you go through customs, cross a national border, visit a consulate or have to show your passport, you're living the legacy of those war-weary Europeans of three-and-a-half centuries ago.