The changingstructure of European order poses, for any student of international relations,some fundamental questions about the evolution of world politics. Concepts of European order and of the Europeanstate system are, after all, central to accepted ideas of internationalrelations. Out of the series of conflicts and negotiations—religious wars,coalitions to resist first the Hapsburg and then the Bourbon attempt at Europeanhegemony—developed ideas and practices which still structure thecontemporary global state system: the equality of states; international law asregulating relations among sovereign and equal states; domestic sovereignty asexclusive, without external oversight of the rules of domestic order. The‘modern’ state system, modern scholars now agree, did not springfully-clothed from the Treaty of Westphalia at the close of the ThirtyYears' War; it evolved through a succession of treaties and conferences,from 1555 to 1714. It remains acceptable, nevertheless, to describe the Europeanstate order as built around the Westphalian system.