In spite of these earlier challenges, however, Westphalian sovereign statehood remained hypothetically realizable in the territorialist world of old. A state could, by strengthening its means, graduate from mere legal sovereignty to approximate full substantive sovereignty. Major states could generally make good their claims to supreme, comprehensive, unqualified and exclusive governance over a territorial space. Moreover, the principle of sovereign statehood enjoyed largely unquestioned acceptance in Westphalian times. The few cosmopolitans around were normally dismissed as misguided utopians.