Generations of international relations students have absorbed the idea
of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia as a pan-European charter that created
the political structure that now spans the entire globe: a system of
legally (if not materially) equal sovereign states. Along with this
political structure, this story goes, came other important features,
from the doctrine of non-intervention, respect of territorial integrity,
and religious tolerance to the enshrinement of the concept of the
balance of power and the rise of multilateral European diplomacy. In
this light, the Peace of Westphalia constitutes not just a chronological
benchmark but a sort of anchor for our modern world. With Westphalia,
Europe broke into political modernity and provided a model for the rest
of the world.
Over the last few decades, scholars working on the history of
international order—in a variety of disciplines, including global
history, international relations, and international law—have shown that
this traditional account is not only false but diametrically opposed to
historical reality.
[…] how did the misleading story become so popular? The treaties were only
properly mythologized in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, when European historians turned to the early modern period in
order to craft stories that served their own worldview. As scholars such as Richard Devetak and Edward Keene
have explained, conservative historians of the period—particularly the
Göttingen-based German historical school—were keen to depict the
pre-1789 European continent as an orderly system of states,
characterized by restraint and mutual respect, that had come to be
threatened by Napoleon’s expansionist imperialism. This reinvention of
early modern European history was part of a larger and now well-studied
trend that sought to make both the rise of the states-system and of
global European power seem like a linear, inevitable, and laudable
process. Europeans, the story went, were uniquely modern in their
political organization, and they would bring this gift to the rest of
the world. As Osiander explains, the Peace of Westphalia came to be given pride
of place in this new historical narrative by means of recycled
seventeenth-century propaganda. Looking for a story of states fighting
for their sovereignty against imperial domination, nineteenth-century
historians found exactly what they needed in the anti-Habsburg
fabrications that had been disseminated by the French and Swedish crowns
during the Thirty Years’ War.
On this day, 4 June 2020, over 30 workers of colour at the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper called in “sick and tired” to work in protest at their employer using a headline equating Black lives with buildings.
Amidst a wave of protests against the police murder of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people under the slogan Black Lives Matter, the paper published a story on June 2 entitled “Buildings Matter, Too.” After journalists of colour wrote a letter complaining and announcing they would be walking out the following day, the newspaper apologised. The letter stated: “We are tired of seeing our words and photos twisted to fit a narrative that does not reflect our reality. We are tired of being told to show both sides of issues there are no two sides of.”
On the day of the walkout, over 30 of the 210 journalists at the paper participated, seemingly all workers of colour, as some of their white colleagues on Twitter posted statements in support of the action but stating they were attending work as usual.
On the same day, over a dozen workers at the New York Times newspaper also staged a sick-out in protest at the newspaper publishing an editorial from a far-right lawmaker making numerous false statements and advocating military action against Black Lives Matter protesters. The Times originally defended its publication, but later admitted it “did not meet editorial standards.” https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1731828283668981/?type=3
![ultrafacts:
“Source: [x]
Click HERE for more facts”](https://64.media.tumblr.com/a31b98391236a36010d2d3adf463a520/42f86cf684abb161-36/s500x750/6119583cdbfb83b46d9b4b1fc82864b281f2ce83.png)
