Europe after the Westphalia Treaties, 1648 

The map shows the shape of the territory after the peace treaties putting an end to the Thirty Years War: in addition to the well-established kingdoms to the west and north and the empires to the east, new states were recognized (the Netherlands and Switzerland). Present-day Germany and Italy, where the conflict was the deadliest, remained broken up into multiple small states which were partly linked within the Holy Roman Empire. The Treaties of Westphalia established the principle of state sovereignty – invisible on a map –, elevating them to the status of sole legitimate actors in international relations.