The Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648 in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück, ended the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War. Its settlements recognised the territorial sovereignty of the many German states and confirmed each ruler's right to determine religion within his own borders. It curtailed the universal claims of empire and papacy in favour of a system of mutually recognising, independent states.
It is conventionally taken as the foundation of the modern sovereign-state system, the political framework within which national governments would later assert the authority to tax, regulate land, and plan and build.