The Peace of Westphalia – II

                Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

                Content: Religion is one of the most primitive impulses known to humans. It can be a source of great enlightenment, progress, and peace. It can also provoke the most bitter and vicious human behavior. Often it remakes ordinary economic, social and political conflict between men and women, spawning actions shocking in their barbarity. The nations of Europe in 1618 began thirty years of some of the most destructive conflict in the history of the continent. All the natural rivalries - dynastic, national, economic, commercial and political - were given greater severity and intensity by the conflict between the states associated with the Protestant Union and those of the Catholic League. Each side was determined to take territory possessed by the other and protect those areas they already held.