The Westphalian System From The Perspective Of Political Economy

In recent years,more and more international relations scholars have questioned the international system divide by the Western War and the post-war peace treaty,believing that this staging method has the distinctive characteristics of the "Western Center" and "Power Center." As the beginning of the history of modern international relations,the Westphalia system is of great significance in the history of Western international relations,so it is of great significance to reanalyze it.This article attempts to re-examine the Westphalia system from a political and economic perspective,by combing and explaining the political and economic contradictions between European powers and their political and economic relations with the marginal areas such as colonies,to reveal and break the Western center Perspective.According to the development and changes of the domestic political economy of the European powers and the political and economic contradictions of their expansion overseas,this article mainly discusses two political and economic contexts.First,the anti-feudal process in continental Europe.With the development of capitalism,the emerging commercial countries and the traditional feudal countries launched a duel,starting the anti-feudal process.Since then,the bourgeois power of Western European countries has continued to grow,fighting for political rights through a bottom-up revolution and weakening feudal forces;Eastern European countries have promoted the development of capitalism through top-down reforms.But the bourgeoisie,which is dominated by commercial capital,does not yet have the ability to completely eliminate feudal forces.Under the joint strangulation of European feudal forces,Europe once returned to the embrace of feudal conservatism.Second,Contradictions in continental Europe shift to contradictions in expansion at sea.With the development of capitalist production methods,Western European countries actively engaged in overseas colonies activities.Among them,France opened up a land and sea hegemony,while the United Kingdom counterbalanced France by balancing the European continent,thereby combating the French maritime expansion.Thus the contradictions at sea between Britain and France have gradually become the main political and economic contradictions in Europe.Afterwards,the coordination mechanism created by the Vienna Conference further exported European rivalries and conflict states to the periphery,forming a "center-edge" structure of "land and sea space opposition".According to the changes of the above two political and economic contexts,this article divides the traditional Westphalia system into five stages of origin,formation,transformation,rebalancing and termination.On this basis,it reflects on the influence of the "Westphalia tradition" on the study of international relations and the influence of the "powerful logic" on today's international community.