Alpha Book

From the treaties of Westphalia emerged a real state-system in Europe,
based on the theory of the essential equality of independent sovereign
states, though admitting of the fact that there were Great Powers.
Henceforth the public law of Europe was to be made by diplomats and by
congresses of ambassadors. Westphalia pointed the new path.
Another aspect of international relations was emphasized in the first
half of the seventeenth century. It was the Thirty Years' War, with its
revolting cruelty, which brought out the contrast between the more
humane practice of war as an art in Italy and the savagery which
disgraced the Germanies. The brutality of the struggle turned thinkers'
attention to the need of formulating rules for the protection of non-
combatants in time of war, the treatment of the sick and wounded, the
prohibition of wanton pillage and other horrors which shocked the
awakening conscience of seventeenth-century Europe. It was the
starting-point of the publication of treatises on international law.


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