Diplomacy, dynasty and confession: the Thirty Years' War and the birth of foreign policy in early modern Europe

Diplomacy was one of the pillars upon which was built the idea of the modern state. The monopoly of a territory's exterior activity accompanied other monopolies such as the exercise of violence (army and police), justice, laws and taxation. Hegel established in the construction of the state the storyline of the development of human progress, and this argument was accepted by the various historiographical schools of the 20th century until the crisis of the political history in the mid-century. This critical literature no longer situated the birth of modern diplomacy and international relations themselves within the Renaissance, but during the transformations in Europe between 1618 and 1670, amidst the long chain of wars known as The Thirty Years' War, which began in a world dominated by Christianity as a regulatory framework and concluded in another different world, ruled in a different manner, with the secularization of politics, opening the doors to new conceptions of sovereignty, diplomacy and international relations.