This front matter section of this book on the transformation of political culture in Republican Switzerland contains the Table of Contents, List of Maps, List of Abbreviations and Acknowledgments. The list of maps includes those of the Old Swiss Confederation, Districts of Canton Schwyz (1830), and the Swiss Confederation during the Sonderbund War (1847).
Keywords: political culture; Republican Switzerland; Sonderbund War
This introductory chapter presents an overview of the book, which argues that the emergence of modern political liberty in Europe and the modern federal state in Switzerland was the result of political practice over a full century of transformation. It focusses on how political actors and their pragmatic actions challenged and transformed political culture in the territories of Zurich, Schwyz and the Pays de Vaud within the Swiss Confederation. The chapter looks at moments of contestation in these three cantons in order to examine fully the revolutionary transition in Switzerland. In the eighteenth century, full member Swiss cantons were governed according to three basic types of constitution: the patrician-aristocratic constitution in cantons such as Bern, the guild-dominated republican constitution of cities such as Zurich or Basel, and the "pure democratic" Landsgemeinde constitution of the Inner Swiss Cantons.
Keywords:Europe; political culture; Switzerland
Swiss pragmatic republicanism consisted of practice-oriented debates about political reform, debates which served to reinvent Swiss political authority. Natural law was an attempt to explain the popular beginnings of civil society, how man moved from a state of nature to a society and how that society was shaped by a social contract. Natural law theory bears directly on the issues of consent and legitimate resistance, both important aspects of the Swiss republican debate. The debates in Zurich and Geneva over the extent of popular sovereignty allowed in local government demonstrate that the versions of republicanism available to Swiss thinkers and political actors supported popular sovereignty in many different ways. In order to confront decay and corruption Bodmer sought to spread political virtue, especially as practiced by the heroes of the past. In Switzerland, the ideological shift occurred because political reassessment was driven by search for pragmatic solutions to political problems.
Keywords:ideological shift; natural law theory; political virtue; republicanism; sovereignty; Switzerland
In parallel developments, Europeans were forced to respond to the events in France. In Switzerland, as elsewhere, native and cosmopolitan intellectual trends came up against the universalist claims of the French. Although political ideas had been under discussion before the French Revolution, after 1789, inhabitants had to address new conceptions and practical applications of liberty, notions of popular sovereignty, the nature of politics in Europe, as well as the possibility of new borders and political institutions. This chapter looks at three cases of ambivalent localized disputes within the framework of the Helvetic Revolution: events in the village of Stäfa in canton Zurich, the Pays de Vaud, and the Landsgemeinde canton of Schwyz. The importance of mixed rhetorical strategies in these reform movements can be seen in the localized disputes.
Keywords:Europe; Helvetic Revolution; Pays de Vaud; political rhetoric; Schwyz; Stäfa movement
There are three stages within the Bernese-Vaudois debates that addressed broad questions about the post-Napoleonic era. The first concerned the independence or liberation of Vaud itself and the legitimacy of the treaties, agreements and renunciations of 1798-1803. Other authors described how Bern had legitimately acquired Vaud and Aargau, so that the new post-Mediation order should, of course, defend Bern's property and inheritance rights. This second phase questioned whether compensation was due to Bernese citizens who may have been unfairly deprived of their property due to the shift in sovereign authority. A third set of pamphlets argued the question of which regime had more greatly benefited Vaud's population: Bern's centuries-long paternalistic pre-1798 rule or sixteen years of self-rule since January 1798. This third phase of the debate dealt with crucial questions concerning the nature of government: from where do governments receive their authority to rule and what is owed to population?.
Keywords:Bernese-Vaudois debates; post-Napoleonic era; self-rule; sovereign legitimacy
In 1815, at the time of the introduction of the Federal Pact, the canton of Schwyz remained divided into three sections: the Alte Land Schwyz, the pre-1798 center and ruling section of the canton, the five outer districts, and the short-lived tiny republic of Gersau. This chapter examines one aspect of the long-term struggle over the nature of the Swiss state, political culture and liberty: the 1829-33 crisis in Schwyz. The complexities of the early nineteenth-century political situation are demonstrated in Schwyz during this period of unrest. In the home of Swiss direct democracy and the institution of the Landsgemeinde, the canton was split in two because of confl icting visions of the nature of self-rule and the sovereignty of the people. The reconstruction of the public political debate over the rights of Beisassen and the inhabitants of the outer districts illustrates different visions of Swiss republicanism, liberty and self-rule.
Keywords:Beisassen; early nineteenth-century; political culture; Schwyz; Swiss republicanism
The establishment of a rights-based society was not a foregone conclusion in Europe. Only by examining local contexts, such as Zurich, is it possible to gain an understanding of how inalienable individual rights were recognized. Following the July Revolution of 1830 in Paris, some Swiss cantons, including Zurich, implemented constitutional reforms. This contention over the nature of sovereignty and of the Zurich constitution also addressed the understanding of liberty throughout Switzerland; the events in Zurich became Swiss events. This chapter traces the trajectory of these Swiss events and the popular movement that arose in opposition to David Friedrich Strauss's appointment, a movement that eventually toppled the legitimately elected government of Zurich. This conflict over the nature of political authority was intimately related to the interplay between religion and politics. The contestation helped change the terms of the debate over understandings of sovereignty, liberty, and political culture in Zurich and Switzerland.
Keywords:David Friedrich Strauss; sovereignty; Swiss cantons; Zurich constitution
The growing importance of public opinion as a source of political legitimacy shaped the nature of political debates in mid-nineteenth century Europe. In the Swiss Confederation, the near-creation of the half-canton Outer Schwyz, the Strauss Affair and subsequent Züriputsch illuminated debates over the available meanings of liberty and popular sovereignty. In the 1840s, the Swiss national discussion revolved increasingly around the issue of local rights and cantonal sovereignty versus federal prerogatives. Specifically, debate focused on the Aargau cloister issue and the related attempt by leaders of Canton Luzern to recall the Jesuits. As the Jesuit issue heated up federally, so did the discussion in Canton Vaud. The radicals triumphed in Vaud in 1845, due, partially at least, to the hysterical political environment created in the wake of the Jesuits' return to Luzern.
Keywords:Canton Vaud; cantonal sovereignty; Jesuite issue; radical revolution; Swiss Confederation
The prospect of civil war was a legitimate threat to the continued survival of the Swiss Confederation. This chapter examines the very real threat to the survival of the Swiss polity and the successful accommodation that was forged in the wake of armed conflict. Although the war was fought over the legality of the Sonderbund -a separate association formed by seven conservative cantons the battle emerged from the long-term dispute over the nature of Swiss liberty and the Swiss state. The Sonderbund considered itself a legal association, as, according to Article 4 of the Federal Pact, each canton had the right to demand help from others in order to protect itself from internal or external danger. The Sonderbund began the war with approximately 30,000 fewer regular troops than the Federal army. The rebels also had geographical disadvantages, because they were not contiguous cantons.
Keywords:Sonderbund; Swiss Confederation
In 1998, the Swiss government officially celebrated the 150th anniversary of the founding of the modern Swiss state in 1848. It was only the maintenance of federalism in the post-1848 Swiss Confederation that allowed some official recognition of the one-time unitary Swiss republic. Because of the accommodation of a federalist strain of political liberty following the Sonderbund War of 1847, individual cantons were able to celebrate the heritage of the only unitary state to have existed in Swiss history. The new constitution institutionalized political liberty in Switzerland and sanctified a rights-based society. The transformation of Swiss political culture and the making of a modern Switzerland did not happen quickly nor without strife. Through multiple political experiments, the Swiss forged their own political culture.
Keywords:cantons; political liberty; Sonderbund War; Switzerland
The bibliography includes primary and secondary sources related to political culture in Switzerland in the book A Laboratory of Liberty. The entries are arranged in alphabetical order.
Keywords: bibliography; political culture; Switzerland
This index presents a list of terms related to transformation to political culture in Switzerland during 1750-1848 , that occur in this book on A Laboratory of Liberty.
Keywords: political culture; Switzerland