The Peace of Westphalia failed to establish a comprehensive order, but it did include some elements of a hypothetical international order. There was a primitive system of governance (Swedish and French guarantees), the assimilation of the Holy Roman Empire, and in particular, some important territorial allocations that were to provide benchmarks of legitimacy.

Did Westphalia provide important sources of stability for international politics in succeeding decades? The reality probably lies somewhere between Giraud's claim that post-Westphalia Europe constituted “a community of destinies and of interests,” a “system, born of facts but consecrated by law,” (1847:12–13), and Zeller's comment (1955:111, 16) that Westphalia did not reveal “the shadow of a constructive idea,” and that the statesmen and diplomats of the later seventeenth century had no conception of a common good, or of a concern for the future of Europe. Westphalia sanctified anarchy, to be sure, but it also drew a map of Europe that defined the bounds of legitimacy, one that was commonly regarded as drawn for eternity (Rabb 1975:78).