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Westphalian Sovereignty Again, Sigh
A friend sent me a link to the following cartoon, which might be the only one I’ve ever seen that references Westphalia. It doesn’t reference the Peace of Westphalia specifically, but it does refer to “Westphalian sovereignty,” which is the thing most people have associated with Westphalia in the past hundred years or so. I …
New Videos and Books
After nearly a year, I finally finished editing and releasing another video, “The Habsburg Dynasty in 5 Minutes.” I also rewatched the video “The Peace of Westphalia: The Setting,” which is actually just me reading a couple of pages (some of my favourite pages, of course) from my book, and decided that it was better …
Peace of Westphalia news
To my surprise, I was referenced in an article in Slate called The Decline of the Nation State. The author says, “As late as the 17th century, the king of Spain was also the king of Portugal, Naples, and Sicily as well as the duke of Milan and Burgundy. The historian Derek Croxton has likened …
Spinoza: Philosopher of the Peace of Westphalia
“Everyone has by nature a right to act deceitfully. and to break his compacts, unless he be restrained by the hope of some greater good, or the fear of some greater evil.” This quotation, which sounds like it could come straight from Queen Christina’s aphorisms, is in fact from Baruch Spinoza’s “A theological-political tract.” I …
Meta-review of “The Last Christian Peace”
I’m the kind of person who can’t help cringing equally when I read praise of my work and when I read criticism, so going through the reviews of this book has been a challenge. This is especially the case because I really poured myself into this book in a way that I didn’t with my …
Reviews are in
It appears that two years is the approximate gestation period for academic reviews: after seeing almost none in the first 24 months after my book was published, there has now been a flurry of them in the past 6 months. I intend to write a “meta-review” of them, summarizing what reviewers have identified as the …
Not exactly a Nobel
I was checking for appearances of my book title in Google today, as I frequently do, on the grounds that there have to be more reviews someday. (So far, I have only seen four.) Most of the results are from resellers, which is nice to see but not exactly interesting in itself, since I doubt …
Paperback cover
I was happy finally to receive my copies of the paperback edition of “Last Christian Peace” last week. Even though I had to settle for the same cover art (for lack of money to pay royalties on the painting I wanted), I am much happier with this version than the last one. The title on …