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Tag: Middle East

Not A Westphalian Moment

History repeats itself, and historians repeat each other.  We are witnessing a case of one or the other in the current situation in Syria, where religious conflict has called to mind the religious conflicts of 16th and 17th century Europe. If Europe ended its religious wars with the Peace of Westphalia, the thinking goes, a …

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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 …

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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 …

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