Peace of Westphalia & Sovereignty

• European narratives contrast with that of Africa regarding the history of the modern state system.

Peace of Westphalia

• A series of treaties in 1648 reshaped international politics and laid groundwork for the modern state system.
• Marked the end of the Thirty Years' War, profoundly impacting international relations and state sovereignty.
• Europe before Westphalia was a complex web of political entities intertwined with religious authority.
• The Protestant Reformation challenged the Catholic Church's authority, leading to religious, political upheaval.
• The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 allowed rulers to choose their state's religion and set the stage for Thirty Years' War.
• This was initially a religious conflict within the Holy Roman Empire, evolving into a power struggle across Europe.

Redefining Sovereignty

• The Peace of Westphalia introduced the principle of sovereignty, where each nation-state has authority over its territory and domestic affairs, excluding external interference.
• It established that each state is equal in international law, laying the foundation for the modern state framework.
• This led to territorial adjustments and political alignments, affirming sovereignty for Switzerland and the Dutch Republic.
• Territorial gains were made for Sweden, France, and Brandenburg-Prussia, altering Europe's political landscape.
• Theorists suggest the principle of sovereignty is central to states today.
• The Peace of Westphalia represents a turning point in European history, with lasting impact on state sovereignty and structure of international politics.
• Its principles continue to shape understanding of International Relations, statehood, and global governance.

African History and the State

• Modern state system traces back to the Peace of Westphalia ignoring other parts of the world, like Africa with its own history of state formation.
• In the context of the history of African state systems, understand how the pre-colonial and post-colonial eras in Africa contrast with the Westphalian model. -The Westphalian model of statehood is characterized by sovereign, territorial, and bureaucratized entities with a distinct legal system.
• Africa's political organizations during Europe's consolidation highlight features and challenges to the conventional definition of a state.
• The political landscape of Africa from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century had diversity in forms of governance and social organization challenging the traditional Western concept of the state.
• Senegambia had states, kingdoms, autocracies, vice-royalties, confederations, and theocracies.
• North Africa and Central Sudan had city-states, empires, sultanates, dynasties, and nomadic confederations.
• East Africa had dynasties, statelets, kingdoms, tributary states, clans, and sub-kingdoms.
• Organizational structures of these polities varied.
• What is now Uganda was based on free associations of people in clientelist relations, forming federacies based on kinship or clan ties.
• Houses in the Eastern Niger Delta resembled small city-states of medieval and early modern Europe, where wealth from trade played a role in power dynamics.
• Ethnic-based polities in Africa present an interesting case for analysis of state structures.
• Territoriality for these entities was a secondary consideration.
• Membership and allegiance to the community was tied more to belief than to territory.
• The spread of Islam in the seventh century across territories was not about territorial conquest but about spreading the faith of Islam.
• Non-Islamic groups were often allowed self-governance, recognising the suzerainty of the Islamic Empire and paid taxes.
• The question of the distinction between state and religion in Islamic contexts rose.
• The impact of empires on the current African state system is a topic of historical and political importance.
• The colonial era left a profound imprint on the continent, shaping the countries.
• Colonial rule in Africa was characterized by imposition of external control by multiple European powers simultaneously, forced through coercive and extractive mechanisms, backed by ideologies.
• Colonial rule is also seen as having stunted the growth of African politics, colonial authorities undermined local governance systems.
• The French approach insisted on using native chiefs primarily as instruments of colonial administration, reducing autonomous political power which interfered with the indigenous political landscape.
• However, a revisionist perspective argues African polities only partly absorbed European notions of statehood and political behaviour.
• This says the continuity of pre-colonial structures and practices happened and suggests adaptations to European concepts, rather than complete submission.
• In Buganda, British colonial rule grafted ideas of individual land ownership onto existing social hierarchies, altering but not entirely supplanting traditional structures.
• Colonial rule influenced interests and strategies of the colonised.
• The introduction of concepts like private property created new sets of interests and changed political dynamics.
• The ideology of scientific planning prevalent in the West during the colonial era led to large-scale projects in African colonies, disregarding local knowledge and practices.
• Failures did not deter post-colonial states from similar large-scale transformations, influenced by the colonial legacy or by ideologies like communism.
• The impact of colonialism is conceptual, influencing African political thought and systems of governance.
• European colonial powers superseded indigenous concepts, shaping the post-colonial political landscape.