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Historians studying international politics and international relations scholars studying the past are finding increasing points of intersection. At these disciplinary crossroads sit the exploration of new sources, new interpretations of key historical narratives, and reassessments of the significance of the international past for contemporary politics. The IR scholar Thomas Peak’s new account of the Treaty of Westphalia is an important addition to this trend. He examines historical revisionism of what he terms “the myth of 1648” and then adds his own reading of the events of a half–millennium ago and why they still matter. At stake, he argues, is the contemporary fate of humanitarian intervention.

The myth of 1648, as Peak relays it, concerns the peace that brought to an end the devastating and highly deadly Thirty Years’ War on the European continent. In the midseventeenth century, European political actors gathered in the …