[Sidenote: In Europe in Sixteenth Century]
During the sixteenth century the Italian ideas of statecraft and inter-
state relations, ably championed by Machiavelli, were communicated to
the nations of western Europe. Permanent embassies were established in
foreign countries by the kings of Spain, Portugal, France, and England.
Customs of international intercourse grew up. Diplomacy became a
recognized occupation of distinguished statesmen.
[Sidenote: Thirty Years' War and International Law]
Two institutions might have thwarted or retarded the development of
international law: one was the Catholic Church with its international
organization and its claim to universal spiritual supremacy; the other
was the Holy Roman Empire, with its claim to temporal predominance and
with its insistence upon the essential inequality between itself and
all other states. But the Protestant Revolt in the sixteenth century
dealt a severe blow to the claim and power of the Catholic Church. And
the long struggle between Bourbons and Habsburgs, culminating in the
Thirty Years' War, reduced the Holy Roman Empire to a position, in
theory as well as in fact, certainly no higher than that of the
national monarchies of France, England, and Spain, or that of the Dutch
Republic.
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