Historiography of Switzerland
Encyclopedia
The historiography of Switzerland is the study of the history of Switzerland
. Up until the late twentieth century, it was largely shaped by the centuries-old traditional account of the founding of the Old Swiss Confederacy
through the Federal Charter of 1291
as a defensive alliance of small republics against European tyrants. More recent Swiss scholarship supplements this tradition's emphasis on political and military events with other approaches such as research into Swiss economic history
, legal history
and social history
.
Swiss historiography received substantial public attention in the 1990s, when controversy over Switzerland's conduct during World War II
, triggered by a U.S. lawsuit
, prompted the Swiss government
to commission a much-publicised report by a board of historians
.
The earliest works of Swiss history are the battle songs and folk songs in which the earliest Confederates celebrated their deeds, as well as the illustrated chronicles
written mostly in the 15th to 17th century on behalf of the authorities of the city-states of Berne
and Lucerne
. While these chronicles were written from the point of view of the individual states
, even the earliest did address issues of all-Swiss significance in some detail.
With the introduction of movable type
in Europe, chroniclers could reach a wider audience and begin to write about Swiss history as a whole. The 1507 Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation
by Petermann Etterlin
exerted great influence on later writers because, as a printed work, it was the first to be generally available. Moreover, Humanist scholars
such as Johannes Stumpf
and Aegidius Tschudi
connected the history of their time with the Roman era of Switzerland and to the accounts of the Helvetii
, giving a greater depth to the emerging discipline of history in Switzerland.
This development came to a close with Josias Simler's 1576 De Helvetiorum republica libri duo, a sober account of the Confederacy's constitutional status and historical background. The work remained the definitive account of Swiss political history for centuries – it saw some 30 editions up until the 18th century, and was immediately translated into German and French. The rest of the world learnt of Swiss history essentially through Simler's treatise.
appetite for curiosa
was allayed by Matthäus Merian
's great engravings.
Historical research bloomed again in the time of the Enlightenment
, when as early as with Johann Jakob Wagner's 1680 Historia naturalis Helvetiae curiosa, the spirit of critical inquiry took hold in Swiss scholarship. Conditions were not optimal – state archives remained mostly closed to private researchers and the zeitgeist
favoured a heroic interpretation of history in a less than heroic present. Still, the early 18th century saw the first critical editions of ancient sources (by Johann Jakob Bodmer
in 1735) and the publication of the first Swiss historical journals (Helvetische Bibliothek, also by Bodmer, and Mercure Helvétique, both in 1735). The century's most significant work of historiography was the country's first historical dictionary, the 20-volume Allgemeines helvetisches eidgenössisches Lexikon in 20 volumes (1743–63), written by scholars from all cantons and edited by Johann Jakob Leu.
The first comprehensive historiography was Gottlieb Emanuel Haller's six-volume Bibliothek der Schweizergeschichte (1785–88). The need for a historical overview was met by François-Joseph-Nicolas d'Alt de Tieffenthal's very patriotic Histoire des Hélvetiens (1749–53), Alexander Ludwig von Wattenwyl's prelude to Swiss criticism Histoire de la Confédération hélvetique (1754) and Vinzenz Bernhard Tscharner's Historie der Eidgenossen (1756–71). These works were complemented by treatises on the early history of Switzerland
, the Reformation in Switzerland
or Swiss military service abroad, as well as an increasing number of reports by foreign travelers
in Switzerland.
All these works, in general, hewed closely to the popular account of the Confederacy's creation as established in the 15th and 16th century. According to that tradition, it was established in 1291 as an alliance between Uri
, Schwyz
and Unterwalden
, the result of a patriotic uprising against Habsburg
occupation, triggered by William Tell
's just tyrannicide
of the brutal bailiff Albrecht Gessler
. When the Bernese Uriel Freudenberger and Gottlieb Emanuel Haller were the first to publicly question the historicity of Tell – not really believed in any more by Enlightenment-era intellectuals – they triggered a political scandal and caused tensions between Berne and Tell's traditional home state, Uri. Their 1760 book Der Wilhelm Tell. Ein dänisches Mährgen, in which they showed the Tell saga to be an adaptation of a Danish legend, was banned and burnt in public. As the rationalist Enlightenment gave way to the more emotional period of Romanticism
, the questioning of popular heroes grew more unpopular still, and the traditional account of Tell was reestablished for generations by Friedrich Schiller
's play William Tell of 1804.
's epic and lively five-volume Geschichten Schweizerischer Eidgenossenschaft (1786–1806). It helped Switzerland, thrown into turmoil by Napoleon's violent overthrow of the Ancien Régime
and the establishment of the short-lived Helvetic Republic
, to find a sense of national identity and to refound the Confederation
after Napoleon's fall.
The work, which did not go beyond the Swabian War
of 1499 – Switzerland's war of independence – was soon continued in the works of an entire generation of historians. Robert Glutz von Blotzheim and Johann Jakob Hottinger
in the German-speaking part of Switzerland as well as Louis Vuillemin and Charles Monnard
in the Romandie translated and extended Müller's work, providing the new federal state founded in 1848
with a reasonably coherent common national history.
Von Müller's work was eventuall supplanted by Johannes Dierauer's seminal Geschichte der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (1887–1917, with extensions up until 1974), which remains indispensable to modern research thanks to its thorough critical apparatus.
, learning from this national history became a general preoccupation, and dozens of works of popular history
– notably by the educator Heinrich Zschokke
and by the liberal historian André Daguet – were published to meet this demand. The democratic reforms of the 18th century caused a broadening of public education and the publication of innumerable historical textbooks.
Cantonal archives along with the new Federal Archives
were opened to researchers, and chairs of Swiss history were established in Swiss universities. The first historical society in Switzerland was founded in 1841.
, whose discovery was aided by new archaeological methods, and, following European trends, on the medieval period and the Reformation. The conservative Roman Catholic cantons – who had been defeated in the 1847 Sonderbund war – also received little attention from scholars situated in the liberal Protestant mainstream of the time.
's legal history
(Geschichte und System des schweizerischen Privatrechts, 1893), Andreas Heusler's constitutional history (Schweizer Verfassungsgeschichte, 1920; supplanted by Hans Conrad Peyer's Verfassungsgeschichte of 1978) and Paul Schweizer's diplomatic history (Geschichte der schweizerischen Neutralität, 1895; continued by Edgar Bonjour from 1946 on).
, Radical
intellectual mainstream, which viewed Swiss history as a steady progression of liberty culminating in the founding of the 1848 federal state, was dominant.
Some academic attention also shifted to the economic and social history of Switzerland, which began to be treated in substantial monographs by William Rappard
and Eduard Fueter in the 1910s. These developments, inspired by Anglo-American historiographical trends, were however cut short by the World Wars. Attempts by non-historians including Robert Grimm
to write a Socialist history of Switzerland had no impact.
On the other hand, apologists of the Ancien Régime such as Gonzague de Reynold, who praised the perceived enlighted authoritarianism of the Old Confederacy, left an imprint on the generally conservative historiography of the post-World War II
generation. One historian, Karl Meyer, even attempted to rehabilitate the historicity of the national founding legends in a 1933 work. The early Cold War
period's emphasis on geistige Landesverteidigung – "intellectual defense of the country" – did also not encourage a re-thinking of Swiss history.
It was only with the societal upheavals
associated with the year 1968, which in Switzerland as elsewhere in the West began to move the mainstream of academic thought to the political Left, that the approach of Swiss historians began to shift again. Picking up where Rappard and Fueter had left off, historians of the 1960s and 70s published large treatises on the social and economic history of Switzerland. Adapting the newer methods of historical research in the United States, the United Kingdom and France, researchers used disciplines such as historical demographics
and ecology
to support their work. Inspired by the Annales School
, the postulate of "total history" – a comprehensive view of history aiming to understand long-term structures instead of explaining the current state of affairs – is now well-established in Swiss historiography.
The principal ongoing project of Swiss historiography is the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
, which as of 2008 has reached its seventh volume (letters J to L). It is also accessible online, as are more and more topical historical dictionaries, including SIKART
(a biographical dictionary of Swiss artists) and the Culinary Heritage of Switzerland
project (a historical encyclopedia of Swiss food).
History of Switzerland
Since 1848, the Swiss Confederation has been a federal state of relatively autonomous cantons, some of which have a history of confederacy that goes back more than 700 years, arguably putting them among the world's oldest surviving republics. For the time before 1291, this article summarizes...
. Up until the late twentieth century, it was largely shaped by the centuries-old traditional account of the founding of the Old Swiss Confederacy
Old Swiss Confederacy
The Old Swiss Confederacy was the precursor of modern-day Switzerland....
through the Federal Charter of 1291
Federal Charter of 1291
The Federal Charter or Letter of Alliance documents the Eternal Alliance or League Of The Three Forest Cantons , the union of three cantons in what is now central Switzerland. It is dated in early August, 1291 and initiates the current August 1 national Swiss holiday. This agreement cites a...
as a defensive alliance of small republics against European tyrants. More recent Swiss scholarship supplements this tradition's emphasis on political and military events with other approaches such as research into Swiss economic history
Economic history
Economic history is the study of economies or economic phenomena in the past. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations and institutions...
, legal history
Legal history
Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and is set in the wider context of social history...
and social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
.
Swiss historiography received substantial public attention in the 1990s, when controversy over Switzerland's conduct during World War II
Switzerland during the World Wars
During both World War I and World War II, Switzerland managed to keep a stance of armed neutrality, and was not involved militarily. However, precisely because of its neutral status, Switzerland was of considerable interest to all parties involved, as the scene for diplomacy, espionage, commerce,...
, triggered by a U.S. lawsuit
World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks
The World Jewish Congress lawsuit against Swiss banks was launched to retrieve deposits made by victims of Nazi persecution during and prior to World War II.-Negotiations:...
, prompted the Swiss government
Swiss Federal Council
The Federal Council is the seven-member executive council which constitutes the federal government of Switzerland and serves as the Swiss collective head of state....
to commission a much-publicised report by a board of historians
Bergier commission
The Bergier commission in Bern was formed by the Swiss government on 12 December 1996. It is also known as the ICE ....
.
Early works
Swiss illustrated chronicles
Several illustrated chronicles were created in the Old Swiss Confederacy in the 15th and 16th centuries. They were luxurious illuminated manuscripts produced for the urban elite of Bern and Lucerne, and their copious detailed illustrations allow a unique insight into the politics and daily life of...
written mostly in the 15th to 17th century on behalf of the authorities of the city-states of Berne
Berne
The city of Bern or Berne is the Bundesstadt of Switzerland, and, with a population of , the fourth most populous city in Switzerland. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 43 municipalities, has a population of 349,000. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000...
and Lucerne
Lucerne
Lucerne is a city in north-central Switzerland, in the German-speaking portion of that country. Lucerne is the capital of the Canton of Lucerne and the capital of the district of the same name. With a population of about 76,200 people, Lucerne is the most populous city in Central Switzerland, and...
. While these chronicles were written from the point of view of the individual states
Cantons of Switzerland
The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the federal state of Switzerland. Each canton was a fully sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency from the Treaty of Westphalia until the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848...
, even the earliest did address issues of all-Swiss significance in some detail.
With the introduction of movable type
Movable type
Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document ....
in Europe, chroniclers could reach a wider audience and begin to write about Swiss history as a whole. The 1507 Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation
Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation
The Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation is the oldest printed chronicle of Switzerland.The Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation was written by Petermann Etterlin’s from Lucerne...
by Petermann Etterlin
Petermann Etterlin
Petermann Etterlin was born in Lucerne as the son of Egloff Etterlin, who served as chronicler of the city of Lucerne from 1427 to 1453. Although his parents had destined him for an ecclesiastical career, Etterlin never became a clergyman...
exerted great influence on later writers because, as a printed work, it was the first to be generally available. Moreover, Humanist scholars
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...
such as Johannes Stumpf
Johann Stumpf (writer)
Johann Stumpf was an early writer on the history and topography of Switzerland.He was born at Bruchsal , and was educated there and at Strasbourg and Heidelberg. In 1520 he became a cleric or chaplain in the order of the Knights Hospitaller...
and Aegidius Tschudi
Aegidius Tschudi
Aegidius Tschudi was an eminent member of the Tschudi family, of Glarus, Switzerland....
connected the history of their time with the Roman era of Switzerland and to the accounts of the Helvetii
Helvetii
The Helvetii were a Celtic tribe or tribal confederation occupying most of the Swiss plateau at the time of their contact with the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC...
, giving a greater depth to the emerging discipline of history in Switzerland.
This development came to a close with Josias Simler's 1576 De Helvetiorum republica libri duo, a sober account of the Confederacy's constitutional status and historical background. The work remained the definitive account of Swiss political history for centuries – it saw some 30 editions up until the 18th century, and was immediately translated into German and French. The rest of the world learnt of Swiss history essentially through Simler's treatise.
17th and 18th century
As the Swiss city-states grew more stratified and oligarchical, and as confessional, social and political barriers became more pronounced, the 17th century saw a shift of focus in historical writing from the affairs of the Confederacy to that of the individual state. The continuation of the last great work of Swiss humanist historiography, Franz Guilliman's De rebus Helvetiorum sive antiquitatum, was thwarted by partisan politics. The baroqueBaroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
appetite for curiosa
Curiosa
Curiosa is the name of a 2004 concert tour in the United States and Toronto , organized by Robert Smith of The Cure. It began with a concert in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 24 and ended in Sacramento, California on August 29....
was allayed by Matthäus Merian
Matthäus Merian
Matthäus Merian der Ältere was a Swiss-born engraver who worked in Frankfurt for most of his career, where he also ran a publishing house.-Early life and marriage:...
's great engravings.
Historical research bloomed again in the time of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, when as early as with Johann Jakob Wagner's 1680 Historia naturalis Helvetiae curiosa, the spirit of critical inquiry took hold in Swiss scholarship. Conditions were not optimal – state archives remained mostly closed to private researchers and the zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
favoured a heroic interpretation of history in a less than heroic present. Still, the early 18th century saw the first critical editions of ancient sources (by Johann Jakob Bodmer
Johann Jakob Bodmer
Johann Jakob Bodmer was a Swiss-German author, academic, critic and poet.-Life:Born at Greifensee, near Zürich, and first studying theology and then trying a commercial career, he finally found his vocation in letters...
in 1735) and the publication of the first Swiss historical journals (Helvetische Bibliothek, also by Bodmer, and Mercure Helvétique, both in 1735). The century's most significant work of historiography was the country's first historical dictionary, the 20-volume Allgemeines helvetisches eidgenössisches Lexikon in 20 volumes (1743–63), written by scholars from all cantons and edited by Johann Jakob Leu.
The first comprehensive historiography was Gottlieb Emanuel Haller's six-volume Bibliothek der Schweizergeschichte (1785–88). The need for a historical overview was met by François-Joseph-Nicolas d'Alt de Tieffenthal's very patriotic Histoire des Hélvetiens (1749–53), Alexander Ludwig von Wattenwyl's prelude to Swiss criticism Histoire de la Confédération hélvetique (1754) and Vinzenz Bernhard Tscharner's Historie der Eidgenossen (1756–71). These works were complemented by treatises on the early history of Switzerland
Early history of Switzerland
The early history of Switzerland begins with the earliest settlements up to the beginning of Habsburg rule, which in 1291 gave rise to the independence movement in the central cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden and the Late Medieval growth of the Old Swiss Confederacy.-Prehistory:Archeological...
, the Reformation in Switzerland
Reformation in Switzerland
The Protestant Reformation in Switzerland was promoted initially by Huldrych Zwingli, who gained the support of the magistrate and population of Zürich in the 1520s. It led to significant changes in civil life and state matters in Zürich and spread to several other cantons of the Old Swiss...
or Swiss military service abroad, as well as an increasing number of reports by foreign travelers
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
in Switzerland.
All these works, in general, hewed closely to the popular account of the Confederacy's creation as established in the 15th and 16th century. According to that tradition, it was established in 1291 as an alliance between Uri
Canton of Uri
Uri is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland and a founding member of the Swiss Confederation. It is located in Central Switzerland. The canton's territory covers the valley of the Reuss River between Lake Lucerne and the St. Gotthard Pass. German is the primary language spoken in Uri...
, Schwyz
Schwyz
The town of is the capital of the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland.The Federal Charter of 1291 or Bundesbrief, the charter that eventually led to the foundation of Switzerland, can be seen at the Bundesbriefmuseum.-History of the toponym:...
and Unterwalden
Unterwalden
Unterwalden is the old name of a forest-canton of the Old Swiss Confederacy in central Switzerland, south of Lake Lucerne, consisting of two valleys or Talschaften, now organized as two half-cantons, an upper part, Obwalden, and a lower part, Nidwalden.Unterwalden was one of the three participants...
, the result of a patriotic uprising against Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
occupation, triggered by William Tell
William Tell
William Tell is a folk hero of Switzerland. His legend is recorded in a late 15th century Swiss chronicle....
's just tyrannicide
Tyrannicide
Tyrannicide literally means the killing of a tyrant, or one who has committed the act. Typically, the term is taken to mean the killing or assassination of tyrants for the common good. The term "tyrannicide" does not apply to tyrants killed in battle or killed by an enemy in an armed conflict...
of the brutal bailiff Albrecht Gessler
Albrecht Gessler
Albrecht Gessler was a probably legendary Habsburg bailiff at Altdorf, whose brutal rule led to the William Tell rebellion and the eventual independence of the Swiss Confederacy....
. When the Bernese Uriel Freudenberger and Gottlieb Emanuel Haller were the first to publicly question the historicity of Tell – not really believed in any more by Enlightenment-era intellectuals – they triggered a political scandal and caused tensions between Berne and Tell's traditional home state, Uri. Their 1760 book Der Wilhelm Tell. Ein dänisches Mährgen, in which they showed the Tell saga to be an adaptation of a Danish legend, was banned and burnt in public. As the rationalist Enlightenment gave way to the more emotional period of Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
, the questioning of popular heroes grew more unpopular still, and the traditional account of Tell was reestablished for generations by Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
's play William Tell of 1804.
Building a national history
The 19th century's most influential work of historiography was Johannes von MüllerJohannes von Müller
Johannes von Müller was a Swiss historian.-Biography:He was born at Schaffhausen, where his father was a clergyman and rector of the gymnasium. In his youth, his maternal grandfather, Johannes Schoop , roused in him an interest in the history of his country...
's epic and lively five-volume Geschichten Schweizerischer Eidgenossenschaft (1786–1806). It helped Switzerland, thrown into turmoil by Napoleon's violent overthrow of the Ancien Régime
Early Modern Switzerland
The early modern history of the Old Swiss Confederacy , lasting from formal independence in 1648 to the French invasion of 1798 came to be referred as Ancien Régime retrospectively, in post-Napoleonic Switzerland.The early modern period was characterized by an increasingly...
and the establishment of the short-lived Helvetic Republic
Helvetic Republic
In Swiss history, the Helvetic Republic represented an early attempt to impose a central authority over Switzerland, which until then consisted mainly of self-governing cantons united by a loose military alliance, and conquered territories such as Vaud...
, to find a sense of national identity and to refound the Confederation
Restauration (Switzerland)
The periods of Restoration and Regeneration in Swiss history last from 1814 to 1847. "Restoration" refers to the period of 1814 to 1830, the restoration of the Ancien Régime , reverting the changes imposed by Napoleon Bonaparte with the centralist Helvetic Republic from 1798 and the partial...
after Napoleon's fall.
The work, which did not go beyond the Swabian War
Swabian War
The Swabian War of 1499 was the last major armed conflict between the Old Swiss Confederacy and the House of Habsburg...
of 1499 – Switzerland's war of independence – was soon continued in the works of an entire generation of historians. Robert Glutz von Blotzheim and Johann Jakob Hottinger
Johann Jakob Hottinger
Johann Jakob Hottinger was the son of the Swiss philologist and theologian Johann Heinrich Hottinger.He became professor of theology at Zürich in 1698, and was the author of a work against Roman Catholicism, Helvetische Kirchengeschichte .----...
in the German-speaking part of Switzerland as well as Louis Vuillemin and Charles Monnard
Charles Monnard
Charles Monnard was a Swiss historian. He was from Lausanne, and expanded to Romandy the national-historical movement in Swiss history that had been promoted by German-speaking Swiss historians such as Johannes von Müller and Heinrich Zschokke...
in the Romandie translated and extended Müller's work, providing the new federal state founded in 1848
Switzerland as a federal state
The rise of Switzerland as a federal state began on September 12, 1848, with the creation of a federal constitution, which was created in response to a 27-day civil war in Switzerland, the Sonderbundskrieg...
with a reasonably coherent common national history.
Von Müller's work was eventuall supplanted by Johannes Dierauer's seminal Geschichte der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (1887–1917, with extensions up until 1974), which remains indispensable to modern research thanks to its thorough critical apparatus.
Popularization of history
In the period of historicismHistoricism
Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...
, learning from this national history became a general preoccupation, and dozens of works of popular history
Popular history
Popular history is a broad and somewhat ill-defined genre of historiography that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis...
– notably by the educator Heinrich Zschokke
Heinrich Zschokke
Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke was a German author and reformer. Most of his life was spent, and most of his reputation earned, in Switzerland...
and by the liberal historian André Daguet – were published to meet this demand. The democratic reforms of the 18th century caused a broadening of public education and the publication of innumerable historical textbooks.
Cantonal archives along with the new Federal Archives
Federal Archives of Switzerland
The Federal Archives of Switzerland were created in 1798 following the creation of the Helvetic Republic. They are located in Berne.-External links:*...
were opened to researchers, and chairs of Swiss history were established in Swiss universities. The first historical society in Switzerland was founded in 1841.
Publication of official documents
An important foundation for later research was laid in the later 19th century through the edition and publication of official documents, including those of the Old Confederacy and the Helvetic Republic, in voluminous series whose publication was not completed until 1966. This tradition is being continued in the ongoing publication of Swiss diplomatic archives by several Swiss universities starting in 1979.Focus on early history
With the 17th and 18th century seen by later 19th century historians as uninteresting periods of stagnation, academic interest focused on the early history of SwitzerlandEarly history of Switzerland
The early history of Switzerland begins with the earliest settlements up to the beginning of Habsburg rule, which in 1291 gave rise to the independence movement in the central cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden and the Late Medieval growth of the Old Swiss Confederacy.-Prehistory:Archeological...
, whose discovery was aided by new archaeological methods, and, following European trends, on the medieval period and the Reformation. The conservative Roman Catholic cantons – who had been defeated in the 1847 Sonderbund war – also received little attention from scholars situated in the liberal Protestant mainstream of the time.
Topical histories
The early 20th century saw the publication of great topical histories of Switzerland, including Eugen HuberEugen Huber
Eugen Huber was a Swiss jurist and the creator of the Swiss civil code of 1907.-Biography:Huber was born in Swiss Canton of Zürich on July 31, 1849. His father was a physician...
's legal history
Legal history
Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and is set in the wider context of social history...
(Geschichte und System des schweizerischen Privatrechts, 1893), Andreas Heusler's constitutional history (Schweizer Verfassungsgeschichte, 1920; supplanted by Hans Conrad Peyer's Verfassungsgeschichte of 1978) and Paul Schweizer's diplomatic history (Geschichte der schweizerischen Neutralität, 1895; continued by Edgar Bonjour from 1946 on).
Shifts in approach
On the whole, Swiss historiography up until the early 20th century was focused on the political and military history of Switzerland. The liberalClassical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
, Radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
intellectual mainstream, which viewed Swiss history as a steady progression of liberty culminating in the founding of the 1848 federal state, was dominant.
Some academic attention also shifted to the economic and social history of Switzerland, which began to be treated in substantial monographs by William Rappard
William Rappard
William Emmanuel Rappard was an influential academic and diplomat of the interwar-period, a passionate defender of the international scene....
and Eduard Fueter in the 1910s. These developments, inspired by Anglo-American historiographical trends, were however cut short by the World Wars. Attempts by non-historians including Robert Grimm
Robert Grimm
Robert Grimm was the leading Swiss Socialist politician during the first half of the 20th century.As a leading member of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland he opposed the First World War. Grimm was the main organiser of the Zimmerwald Movement and the chairman of the International...
to write a Socialist history of Switzerland had no impact.
On the other hand, apologists of the Ancien Régime such as Gonzague de Reynold, who praised the perceived enlighted authoritarianism of the Old Confederacy, left an imprint on the generally conservative historiography of the post-World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
generation. One historian, Karl Meyer, even attempted to rehabilitate the historicity of the national founding legends in a 1933 work. The early Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
period's emphasis on geistige Landesverteidigung – "intellectual defense of the country" – did also not encourage a re-thinking of Swiss history.
It was only with the societal upheavals
Protests of 1968
The protests of 1968 consisted of a worldwide series of protests, largely participated in by students and workers.-Background:Background speculations of overall causality vary about the political protests centering on the year 1968. Some argue that protests could be attributed to the social changes...
associated with the year 1968, which in Switzerland as elsewhere in the West began to move the mainstream of academic thought to the political Left, that the approach of Swiss historians began to shift again. Picking up where Rappard and Fueter had left off, historians of the 1960s and 70s published large treatises on the social and economic history of Switzerland. Adapting the newer methods of historical research in the United States, the United Kingdom and France, researchers used disciplines such as historical demographics
Demographics
Demographics are the most recent statistical characteristics of a population. These types of data are used widely in sociology , public policy, and marketing. Commonly examined demographics include gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and even location...
and ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
to support their work. Inspired by the Annales School
Annales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...
, the postulate of "total history" – a comprehensive view of history aiming to understand long-term structures instead of explaining the current state of affairs – is now well-established in Swiss historiography.
Contemporary works
Dierauer's seminal work of 1887–1917 was eventually supplanted as the leading work of Swiss historiography by the Handbuch der Schweizer Geschichte, a collaborative work of 1972–77, which remains largely rooted in the conservative mainstream of the early 1960s. A historians' "committee for a new history of Switzerland", avowedly following the new "total history" approach, published its three-volume Nouvelle histoire de la Suisse et des Suisses in 1982/83; a condensed one-volume edition (Geschichte der Schweiz und der Schweizer, last reprinted 2006) is currently the standard university textbook of Swiss history.The principal ongoing project of Swiss historiography is the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland is an encyclopedia on the history of Switzerland that aims to take into account the results of modern historical research in a manner accessible to a broader audience....
, which as of 2008 has reached its seventh volume (letters J to L). It is also accessible online, as are more and more topical historical dictionaries, including SIKART
SIKART
SIKART is a biographical dictionary and a database on visual art in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It is published online by the Swiss Institute for Art Research...
(a biographical dictionary of Swiss artists) and the Culinary Heritage of Switzerland
Culinary Heritage of Switzerland
Culinary Heritage of Switzerland is a partially multilingual online encyclopedia of traditional Swiss food and produce.-History:The project was initiated through a parliamentary motion of Swiss MP Josef Zisyadis in 2000...
project (a historical encyclopedia of Swiss food).