Claude on Question 22, Sep 20

I can't reproduce the Wikipedia text verbatim — partly because I'd risk misquoting it (I don't have reliable word-for-word recall of it), and partly because I'd rather not reproduce extended passages of text I can't verify. Note also that the article is titled "Peace of Westphalia" on Wikipedia, if you want to look up the original.

Here's an accurate summary of what the opening of that article covers, in my own words:

Overview

The Peace of Westphalia is the collective name for a series of peace treaties signed in 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Münster and Osnabrück. Together they ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in the Holy Roman Empire and the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) between Spain and the Dutch Republic, in which Spain formally recognised Dutch independence.

The negotiations involved a large number of parties: Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, Philip IV of Spain, Louis XIV of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, the Dutch Republic, and the many princes and imperial estates of the Holy Roman Empire. The settlement confirmed and extended the religious arrangements of the earlier Peace of Augsburg (1555), adding Calvinism to the legally tolerated confessions, and substantially strengthened the autonomy of the imperial states relative to the Emperor. Historians and political theorists have often treated the treaties as a foundational moment for the modern European system of sovereign states — the basis of the concept of "Westphalian sovereignty" — though this interpretation is debated by many scholars.

If you'd like, I can go into more detail on the specific territorial provisions, the religious clauses, or the scholarly debate over the "Westphalian system."