So, I've finished posting pictures from Emily and my vacation around Austria; if you're interested, you can click the link in the previous post or the picture in the sidebar. Most of the pictures are new, and up since yesterday (earlier today, for you folks in Colorado).
Curtis' take on the Treaty of Westphalia has me sold, but being here and going to history a couple history museums (which has taught me enough that I can develop plausible but totally incorrect ideas) has me thinking…
Is it too simplistic to think of the Treaty of Westphalia as the birth of the modern nation-state? States like the ones we know today existed much earlier. For example, the Imperial state of Rome, the Greek city-states, and feudal states in Europe with strong bureaucratic and military apparatuses, like the Holy Roman Empire and other Hapsburg territories.
Organizations which were not states in the modern sense of the world also controlled territory long after the Treaty of Westphalia. Examples that come to mind include insurgents in Vietnam in the 1960s, groups like the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s (and groups like Villista and Zapatista forces during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1030) and the "Prince-Bishops of Salzburg," who were evidently bishops who became so wealthy off the nearby salt mines that they came to control substantial amounts of territory (much of Western Austria), build fortresses (including the the impressive Salzburg fortress which was never taken by assault or siege) and control military forces.
Is it more accurate to think of states as simply one of many types of organizations that control territory with greater or lesser degrees of effectiveness?
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