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Republican Senators’ Letter to Iran and the Congress of Westphalia
The recent letter that 47 Republican Senators sent to Iran concerning President Obama’s authority to negotiate has a distant echo in events leading up to the Congress of Westphalia. At the Diet of Regensburg in 1641-42, Imperial estates were disappointed with Emperor Ferdinand III’s unwillingness to accept negotiations with France and Sweden to end the …
Republican Senators’ Letter to Iran and the Congress of WestphaliaRead More
First (?) book excerpt
After a year and a half, I finally read a short excerpt from my book “The Last Christian Peace,” added some images, and put the resulting video on YouTube. It took a lot longer than I had expected, and it isn’t perfect by any means, but I think it is an improvement over my last …
Christmas Shopping and Westphalia
I just noticed that you can buy the letter signed by Emperor Ferdinand III (shown left) at Amazon.com. My first thought was, who would want a letter signed by Ferdinand III? Charles I, maybe, or Louis XIV, or Richelieu, but Ferdinand III? He is not exactly a monarch whose name is known to a lot …
Logo
Today I came up with a logo, left, and am beginning to incorporate it into the site. The letters are “epw” and stand for “Everything Peace of Westphalia.” The post horn that makes up part of the letter “p” is for the “peace rider” (Friedensreiter) motif, a postillion riding into towns to bring news of …
Comparative Religious Wars
Last Friday was Peace of Westphalia Day — the 366th anniversary of the signing of the treaties. I was, appropriately enough, delivering a paper on the Peace of Westphalia. I was at a conference at Columbia University that brought together specialists to compare early modern Europe’s religious wars with the current religious conflicts in the …
The Peace of Westphalia and…the Constitution?
I’ve been reading The Federalist Papers recently, and I was a little surprised to find that they talk about the Holy Roman Empire, and, peripherally, the Peace of Westphalia. I expected them to mention the Dutch and Swiss constitutions, but I did not expect the Imperial constitution. Publius (Madison and Hamilton) offers the Imperial confederation …
More history garments
In addition to the nerd onesie (see below), we now have the arrogant history-major t-shirt. You don’t get much else from a history major, so in that sense, this shirt is entirely understandable. One of my professors told me that everyone else wants to be an historian, which is the consolation for going into a …
H-Net Review
We are approaching a year since my book’s publication, and we are still awaiting the first review in a printed journal. However, we at least do have a scholarly review available on H-Net. This is also probably the only review that will be available for free on-line. The review brazenly asserts that Westphalia has faults, …
Syria and Westphalia
[Note: This post originally appeared on my blog on February 9, 2014.] The idea of linking Syria and Westphalia had never occurred to me until I stumbled across it on an unrelated search last week. I found that it was not a new or isolated connection, but one that has been going since the beginning …
Westphalia for Nerds
I was fascinated to discover the onesie on the left recently (yes, it really is available for sale — click on the image to go to the site). Apparently the Peace of Westphalia defines nerdiness these days. (Sadly, the image appears to be gone forever, but the page can still be viewed on the wayback …