Specialists from every European country analyze peace treaty practice from the late fifteenth century to the 1919 Peace of Versailles in this collection. Emphasizing the doctrinal debate about peace treaties and the influence of older, Roman and medieval, concepts on modern practices, the book recalls the reader to before the epochal Peace Treaties of Westphalia of 1648. Its broader perspective allows for a reassessment of the role of the sovereign state in the modern international legal order.