Foreign Relations of the Republic

The Republic of San Marino could not have endured without its capacity to manage external relations. Its survival as a sovereign polity is the outcome of a historical process which, between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, produced two interconnected results that define modern international life: the emergence of the State as the central political actor and the formation of a system of states – in- itially local, then European, and ultimately global – sustained by their reciprocal dealings, collectively termed international relations. This long and often turbulent evolution established the fundamental political organization of humankind: division into sovereign states. San Marino is one such entity. Its historical consonance with that development conferred the legitimacy to exist as a sovereign state among others.