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SWITZERLAND

SWITZERLAND. The region and the state known as Switzerland took shape during the late medieval and early modern periods. Before 1300, the country north of the central Alps simply lay within the Swabian and Burgundian parts of the Holy Roman Empire. By 1789, in contrast, the Swiss Confederation possessed a distinct national identity and enjoyed sovereignty under international law. The confederation included thirteen self-governing Orte or cantons, several subsidiary but autonomous allies, and various subject territories. Geography played a considerable role in shaping Switzerland over these centuries. The region's central location, spanning western Europe's major language boundaries and containing mountain passes used by traders and travelers, ensured that the Swiss experienced all of Europe's major political and cultural movements. Yet the difficult terrain of the Alps and the area's relative poverty also left Switzerland marginal to Europe's great centers of power and wealth.

Modern Switzerland is known for being multi-lingual, democratic, neutral, and wealthy. The early modern confederation acquired these characteristics only slowly. All but one of the ruling cantons were German-speaking, although they did have French- and Italian-speaking subjects. Voting by male citizens played an important role in some cantons, but political control mostly rested with a few families, while the subject territories and many areas outside city walls had limited political rights. Especially before 1550, the confederation was also warlike, playing a major role in the Burgundian Wars of the 1470s and the Italian Wars after 1494. Finally, most early modern Swiss were poor, and even the richest had only modest fortunes by European standards.

POLITICS

Three related processes shaped the Swiss Confederation during the late Middle Ages: the growth of overlapping alliances among the cantons and their associates, the consolidation of internal regimes that controlled well-defined territories, and the development of shared responsibilities and institutions. Switzerland's development also depended on changing relations with the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg family of dynasts and emperors, and powerful neighbors to the west and south. The local economy rested on agriculture (including cattle and dairy products for export), transit, and mercenary services; by the eighteenth century, proto-industrial production of textiles and other goods provided further sources of wealth.

The confederation acquired its thirteen full members in two major waves, one before 1360 and the second after 1480. The first took place in an era of weak imperial authority and constant feuding among the region's nobility. This spurred communities to form alliances that could defend the public peace and increase local autonomy. The earliest known Swiss alliance linked Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden in 1291; though unusual in having only rural members, it resembled similar leagues across the region. Further alliances with Lucerne in the 1330s and with Zurich, Zug, Glarus, and Bern in the 1350s produced a substantial confederation of rural and urban communities that proved its significance by defeating the key regional dynasts, the Habsburgs, in the Sempach war of 1386.

Internal consolidation in each canton accompanied the growth of the Swiss system. In the rural cantons, the political base broadened as local nobles yielded power to communal assemblies after the 1360s. In Zurich and Basel, guild regimes took power; various accommodations widened political participation in other towns as well. Across the countryside during the 1400s, peasant communes became better organized and increased their economic and judicial authority. Both the urban and rural cantons sought to expand their influence, though they used very different strategies. Towns like Zurich and Bern became lords over the countryside outside their walls through purchase, mortgage, or conquest. The rural cantons, above all Schwyz, allied themselves with regional peasant movements against lords, notably in Appenzell, thus gaining allies for further expansion. The two methods came into conflict in the 1440s, when the confederation nearly collapsed during a bitter territorial war between Zurich and Schwyz.

The growth of shared institutions helped mute such rivalries. In 1415 and 1460, the Swiss seized the Aargau and the Thurgau from the Habsburgs. Shared rule over these territories led to intensified interaction among the cantons, as did military efforts to expand south of the Alpine passes. Regular meetings of a diet, the Tagsatzung, began after the 1430s. Although the diet had little power to enforce its decisions, it did provide a forum for negotiation as the confederation faced new challenges. The alliance's growing power also attracted five new cantons in the late 1400s (Schaffhausen, Fribourg, Solothurn, Basel, and Appenzell) as well as a series of "associates" ranging from rural valleys to the Abbey of St. Gallen. Tensions between the urban and rural cantons led to a 1481 agreement, mediated by Switzerland's later patron saint, Niklaus von der Flüe (1417–1487), that guaranteed each canton's internal autonomy and provided for mutual support in case of social turmoil.

In the late 1400s, a national mythology of liberty and community emerged in Switzerland, centered on the figure of William Tell. In songs, chronicles, popular dramas, and stained-glass decorations the Swiss celebrated how they had expelled their corrupt lords during the 1300s. Often bitterly critical of aristocracy, the liberation sagas praised peasant liberty and virtues and expressed loyalty to the empire. No historical evidence supports Tell's existence, nor did Swiss calls for peasant liberty lead them to abolish serfdom among their own subjects. Nevertheless, this historical mythology reflected a growing awareness that the confederation differed fundamentally from the princely states taking shape around it.

Between 1460 and 1513, Swiss troops played an important role on Europe's battlefields. Unbeatable during the Burgundian Wars (1474–1477), they were in high demand as mercenaries during the Italian Wars (1494–1559). In the Swabian War of 1499, a string of Swiss military victories ended Habsburg ambitions south of the Rhine and brought outlying regions such as Graubünden and the Valais closer to the confederation. The Peace of Basel in 1501 also confirmed that the Swiss were exempt from most imperial laws and courts. Military and political developments after 1500 soon reduced Switzerland's international importance, however, even as long-term treaties with France and the Habsburgs stabilized Switzerland's place in the international system. After 1530, moreover, the Swiss split into Catholic and Reformed parties that threatened to tear the confederation apart. From the 1520s until 1798, therefore, Swiss politics were dominated by internal social and religious conflict, while the confederation withdrew from foreign entanglements. Although tempted to help coreligionists on both sides, the cantons managed to stay out of the Thirty Years' War, unlike their allies in Graubünden. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 formally recognized the cantons' sovereignty within the Holy Roman Empire, and neutrality became their official policy during the long wars that followed—easier to maintain because of the declining importance of Swiss mercenaries. The pre-modern confederation was finally conquered by the French in 1798.

Switzerland became an early center of the Protestant and the Radical Reformation after Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) began preaching in Zurich in 1519. Zwingli's theology rested on evangelical ideas similar to Martin Luther's, but he also stressed the reform of Christian society along communal lines, in keeping with the region's values. In the confederation, he called for an end to mercenary service and rejection of the pensions that foreign rulers paid Swiss politicians. Zwingli quickly gained adherents in many Swiss and south German towns; his ideas spread to Bern, Basel, and Schaffhausen during the 1520s, and gained support in many allied towns and rural areas. Some of Zwingli's associates sought even deeper changes in church and society, laying the groundwork for the early Anabaptist movement. However, the rural cantons in central Switzerland, together with Lucerne, opposed the Reformation. The population there valued the old ceremonies and had confidence in their locally appointed clergy, while their magistrates resented Zwingli's attacks on a main source of their income, foreign pensions.

Zwingli's efforts to evangelize the subject territories provoked rising tensions within the confederation. Civil war was delayed by a 1529 religious peace, but finally broke out in 1531. Lukewarm support from its allies led to Zurich's defeat at the Battle of Kappel, where Zwingli lost his life. The Second Religious Peace of Kappel in 1531 created a lasting framework for religious coexistence. The thirteen ruling cantons and their self-governing allies could choose between Catholic and Reformed adherence; in the subject territories, existing Reformed congregations were tolerated although Catholic worship was often restored. Ultimately, four cantons and two half-cantons became Reformed, while seven and two halves remained Catholic. The close coexistence between two faiths that followed produced endless wrangling that sometimes threatened the confederation's survival. In 1656 and 1712, local conflicts led to significant religious wars. The first preserved the status quo of 1531, but a Reformed victory in the second increased Zurich and Bern's influence.

Religious struggles coincided with growing social tensions in Switzerland. In both cities and countryside, a minority of families increasingly monopolized wealth and political participation. Oligarchy was most visible in the cities, where ever fewer families qualified to sit in the city councils. City authorities also eroded the autonomy of peasant communes under their lordship, despite occasionally violent resistance. In the countryside, high citizenship fees barred many residents from voting or using communal economic resources. In 1653, peasants around Lucerne and Bern rose up against urban domination, calling for a new "peasant's league" to combat their rulers. The urban elites in Reformed Zurich and Bern and Catholic Lucerne cooperated fully in suppressing the peasant movement.

CULTURAL MOVEMENTS

Swiss thinkers absorbed the main intellectual movements of early modern Europe. Renaissance humanism appeared late in the 1400s. Authors such as Albrecht von Bonstetten (c. 1442–1504) and Felix Hemmerli (c. 1388–1458) described the confederation's political system by mixing humanist-style historiography with the region's rich chronicle tradition, while later Swiss humanists such as the two Glarus scholars Heinrich Loriti ("Glareanus," 1484–1563) and Aegidius Tschudi (1505–1572) wrote polished Latin treatises based on classical sources. Meanwhile, the confluence of Basel's thriving printing industry, its university, and the city's trade links made it the only canton where humanism really flourished, as illustrated by Erasmus of Rotterdam's choice to live there.

The Reformation disrupted the confederation politically and forced thinkers and artists to choose between the faiths. In St. Gallen, the well-known humanist and physician Joachim Watt ("Vadianus," 1484–1551) returned home to lead the local Reformation, while the painter and playwright Niklaus Manuel (c. 1484–1530) of Bern dedicated his work to the cause. In Basel, the Reformation divided the humanists after the city turned Protestant in 1528. Both Erasmus and Glareanus chose to leave, but the city's intellectual life later benefited from learned Protestant refugees such as Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563). Religious questions fully occupied Swiss intellectuals by the mid-1500s as Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich and John Calvin in Geneva struggled to define Reformed Protestant doctrine. Their efforts shaped the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566, and helped make Switzerland an important center for the Reformed church. English, Polish, and Hungarian scholars studied there, often in exile, while Italian dissidents escaped persecution by fleeing through Switzerland.

Increasingly rigid social and religious boundaries after 1600 stifled cultural innovation until the early 1700s, when Swiss thinkers began receiving Enlightenment ideas. Zurich authors such as Albrecht Haller (1708–1777) and Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698–1783) participated actively in the literary debates of the German Enlightenment; Genevan social philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (1694–1748) and, above all, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) made major contributions to the French Enlightenment. The presses of French Switzerland became a major source for books banned by French censors, and French intellectuals such as Voltaire found refuge in the Vaud when threatened by the French authorities. Within Switzerland, Enlightenment ideas eventually undermined the barriers between Catholic and Reformed elites through the formation of the Helvetic Society, a forum for intellectual discussion that met annually in Bad Schinznach after 1761.

SWITZERLAND AND EUROPE

Switzerland's existence puzzled many early modern Europeans. Jean Bodin condemned it as anarchic and disorderly, while Niccolò Machiavelli saw it as a model for free and armed city-states. After Swiss troops killed and despoiled Charles the Bold of Burgundy in 1477, aristocratic thinkers encouraged criticism of the "cow-Swiss" who dared to violate the natural order of lords and subjects. In the end, however, Switzerland was less important as a model, positive or negative, than as a crossroads. Neutral, divided by religion, and fragmented politically, the Swiss Confederation offered a haven to many refugees and dissidents, most notably the founders of the Reformed movement. Even if little of what passed through seemed to rub off on the Swiss, the confederation still went through changes parallel to the ones that transformed all of early modern Europe.

See also Calvin, John; Enlightenment; Geneva; Habsburg Dynasty: Austria; Reformation, Protestant; Thirty Years' War (1618–1648); Westphalia, Peace of (1648); Zwingli, Huldrych.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergier, Jean-François. Histoire économique de la Suisse. Paris, 1983. Authoritative synthesis of the economic history of Switzerland by an early modern specialist.

Bonjour, Edgar, H. S. Offler, and G. R. Potter. A Short History of Switzerland. Oxford, 1952. Concise introduction by a major Swiss historian, although dated.

Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte. Zurich, 1972–1977. Contains substantial articles with extensive references on the late medieval period, the Renaissance and Reformation, and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz. Basel, 2002–. Most recent encyclopedic guide to Swiss history and biography, replacing the 1931 edition. An online edition, with articles in German, French or Italian, is available at http://www.snl.ch/dhs/externe/index.html.

Mesmer, Beatix, ed. Geschichte der Schweiz, und der Schweizer. Basel, 1982–1983. Produced to fill the need for an up-to-date survey of Swiss history based on the best recent scholarship.

Schneider, Boris, and Francis Python, eds. Geschichtsforschung in der Schweiz: Bilanz und Perspektiven—1991. Basel, 1992. Critical review of Swiss history writing, produced in the wake of the controversial seventh centennial of 1291.

Sablonier, Roger. "The Swiss Confederation." In The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 7, c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand, pp. 645–670. Cambridge, U.K., 1998. Succinct comparative discussion of the politics and society of late medieval Switzerland.

RANDOLPH C. HEAD