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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

“The Peace of Westphalia ended the reign of theology over the European mind and left the road obstructed but passable for the tentative of reason.” Comment.

  • UPSC 1997
  • Enlightenment and Modern Ideas

The Peace of Westphalia (1648), ending the devastating Thirty Years' War, is often read as the moment European politics stopped being organised primarily around confessional truth and began, however imperfectly, to make room for secular reason.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Devastation That Forced a New Settlement
  • How Westphalia Curtailed Theology's Political Reign
  • Why the Road Remained "Obstructed"
  • The Road as "Passable"

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