The set of treaties signed in 1648 in the German towns of Munster and Osnabruck that ended the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War — a vast multilateral settlement that redrew Europe's map, confirmed each ruler's right to set their territory's religion among Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist, and recognized the independence of the Dutch and the Swiss. Later memory turned it into the founding charter of the sovereign state and 'Westphalian sovereignty,' a reputation that historians now treat as a myth read backward onto the documents.
In 1648, after thirty years of war that had killed a large share of the people in the German lands, exhausted diplomats in two Westphalian towns signed a peace. It redrew borders, let each ruler set their realm's faith, and recognized new states. Centuries later, scholars of international politics decided this was the moment the modern world began — the birth of the sovereign state, of nations that answer to no higher power and do not meddle in each other's affairs. They called it 'Westphalian sovereignty,' and built a theory of world order on it. Then other historians went back to the actual treaties and found that the famous principle is not really in them. The settlement was real, and enormous. The legend wrapped around it is something the documents never said.