The customary chronology in the discussion of war and its causes was that of a decline in ideological factors between the ‘Wars of Religion’ and the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792, although bellicosity remained a key factor. However, this is very much an agenda that is set by Western concerns and developments. In that, it focuses not only on the Western interest in Western history, but also on a teleological focus on a state system supposedly created by the ‘Westphalian Settlement’, the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 that brought to an end the Thirty Years War. That settlement is commonly presented as a triumph of reason and restraint, in the shape of an agreement to operate an international system based on the mutual respect of sovereign powers and, in particular, an agreement to accept confessional plurality, at least in the form of different types of Christianity, as sole state religions.