After Westphalia: Introduction
Kicking off a new essay series on the nation state
Part of my After Westphalia series
When I first visited Western Europe as a backpacking graduate student in 1998, everything looked like a picture postcard of itself. It is a quality that has survived in the less forgiving age of Instagram. Perhaps I lack the refined eye of a photographer, but Europe in reality looks to me like it does on Instagram.
It w…