Gregory A. Fossedal, Direct Democracy in Switzerland, 2002.4
Geodeterminism"Switzerland," avers Alfred Defago, "was made for federalism and democracy." Defago is the Swiss ambassador to the United States and the former head of one of Switzerland's broadcasting services, a sophisticated communicator and politician.
He leans back in a slim, comfortable chair -- ostentation, no; functionality, yes; he is Swiss -- and continues. "I doubt our institutions could simply be copied and replicated elsewhere with the same results. We are a small democracy with certain geographic features, cultural pluralism, and political consensus-building. Others would not enjoy these traditions and this landscape."
This is vintage Swiss: Keep it small. It works for us, but we make no large claims. But before my opportunity to object -- -"Mr. Ambassador, without copying the Swiss system wholesale, surely other countries can adapt your institutions, and profit from your experience" -- Defago seems to recollect himself. He is speaking to an American -- and one interested in the historical overlaps and parallels of "the Sister Republics," as the United States and Switzerland have been called.1 Defago rocks forward.
"Then again, I guess what we did is more or less copy the U.S. constitution." He is right: The Swiss constitution of 1848 was largely based on the U.S. constitution of 1789. (The U.S. constitution in turn drew on the Swiss experience, while avoiding some of the perceived pitfalls by setting up a more coherent central government than the Swiss enjoyed at that time.)
"Then, Mr. Ambassador, perhaps the system can be exported -- provided it is copied from the U.S. and not Switzerland."
Defago relaxes into the smile of both an intellectual patriot, who appreciates his own country being understood, and a satisfied politician, who likes to see a problem solved with a turn of phrase.
The Swiss have benefited of a number of accidents of nature that make them seem, at times, a kind of geographically chosen people. Mountains and ridges offer a defensive redoubt. The Alpine passes make it a natural transportation node, and therefore, a cultural and economic one as well. It would be wrong to infer, however, that Switzerland has enjoyed an "uninterrupted... peace and happiness," as a Baltimore Gazette correspondent gushed in 1788.
This is a common mistake, repeated by visitors in each of the last seven centuries. "The entyre people," as an English merchant put it during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), "seem blessed" with a "felicity ordained from the mountains themselves." This geodeterminism is seductive because it has some truth. Nowhere else in the world, perhaps, is one so aware of the role the land must have played in human activities as in Switzerland. And Switzerland, while by no means always affluent, has traditionally enjoyed a balanced development in which extremes of rich and poor are rare. These facts are abetted by the Swiss, with their self-minimizing temperament: They would rather point to nature or fate as explanations for the country's achievements, than their own skill or that of their ancestors.
The result can be to sell short what has been achieved by statesmanship, leading us to overestimate the forces of nature, and underestimate the potential for human action.
The constitution of 1848 is one example. Its basic arrangements survive today, a tribute to the political acumen of the framers, who had to deal with religious, social, and economic conflicts against a backdrop of foreign meddling in Swiss affairs and a general European revolution. It was not, however, written by rivers or mountains, but by men. If we think in terms of geographic predestination, then we may miss valuable lessons.
The view of Switzerland as a merely fortunate accident of geography, a sort of historical boutique, is simply inaccurate.
One obvious barrier for Switzerland is geography itself -- something that cuts in different directions. To whatever extent the Swiss landscape tends to impose a certain natural federalism, it also frustrates Swiss nationhood. Imagine trying to unite these different communities of aggressively independent farmers and merchants, especially when ties of religion, language, and power were often tempting them to turn outside.
For purposes of review, we can group these entropic forces into several broad categories: economic factors, using the term broadly to cover matters of domestic policy and politics; military-strategic elements; and religious divisions, including those between Christian sects since the Reformation, but also those within the Catholic Church both before and after it.
If we look at some defining moments of Swiss development, we nearly always find one of these factors present -- usually two or three. It then becomes clear that Switzerland came about because human ingenuity was able, at critical times, to surmount large difficulties
Economics are at the heart of Swiss political development, and not always a positive factor. The potential for passage through the Gotthard and other passes was only economically relevant with the effort of the people of Uri to build the Devil's Bridge. Even this act of community entrepreneurship, how-ever, was only necessary, not sufficient, for significant commercial traffic. Someone would have to supply money, security, lodging, and other services critical to a marketplace and a highway. And provision of these, while in the interest of Uri and indeed all the cantons, was rendered difficult by the very federalism, independence, and do-it-my-way spirit of the Swiss.
As the historian Arthur Mojonnier noted, even after the Napoleonic occupation ended in 1815, the route to and through the Devil's Bridge was a tangled thicket of regulations, special charges, and other expensive complexities.2 Linen manufacturers of St. Gallen often sent their wares all the way through Strassburg to reach the Western parts of Switzerland, rather than across their own country. Foreign companies in the 1820s and 1830s sometimes bypassed the country entirely, at a cost of many added days, rather than pass through a number of its competing twenty-two cantons. A piece of cloth, cheese, or other item passing through the Gotthard was liable to some 400 taxes on the transport of goods. The Ticino alone, one Swiss canton, managed to apply thirteen taxes and tolls. At each stop, merchants had to take their goods, unload them, and allow customs bureaucrats to weigh them. The cantons grew vexed at one another, each one wishing its neighbors would leave the revenue collection to it and stop clogging the road with competing taxes; trade and tax wars were set off as each one tried to dream up new charges.
Taxes weren't the only problem. "Money," as one historian put it, "was a mess." Before 1848 each canton, many cities, and even some ecclesiastical lords had the right to issue currency. There were more than fifty such authorities in Switzerland, producing an estimated 700 different pieces of gold, silver, and other types of coinage. The only saving grace for the Swiss was that their own little currencies were of such limited use that most cantons by statute, and the entire country as a matter of practice, tended to accept the French franc and ecu as legal tender. From time to time, the currencies of Bavaria and Wurttemberg were also accepted. Still, acceptance of the franc, along with associated free trade and other privileges extended to France, created other problems, making the Swiss economy more vulnerable to the swings in value of the French economy and monetary authorities.
Money and taxes were only two of the most visible downsides of radical federalism. Legal codes were distinct from canton to canton and even town to town. Some descriptions make the cantons sound like an accumulation of speed traps and rigged courts. Cloth was measured according to more than five dozen units of length; liquid volume stated in some eighty-one different measures. There were, of course, four languages, and many different subdialects of the most common, German.
France's invasion of Switzerland in 1798 suggests weaknesses in the Swiss position of a military and strategic nature. Perhaps just as impressive, the French occupied the country until 1815. These facts illustrate the fact that not all geography works in favor of Swiss independence.
The French made substantial preparations, illustrating some of Switzerland's vulnerabilities as a multicultural hub. For months prior to the invasion, the Directorate flooded Western Switzerland with pamphlets, newspapers, and speaker-agitators, urging its comrades to take arms against the aristocrats, particularly in the frankly oligarchic cities of Lausanne, Bern, and Fribourg. These arguments played to an already strong and fast-growing community of expatriate dissidents and Swiss fellow travelers -- a subsidized Fifth Column -- present since the run-up to the 1789 revolution. "The Swiss loved these fugitives," a French nobleman living in England remarked as the juggernaut pointed East. "Now they will be reunited."
The campaign began on an inauspicious note when several regiments from the city of Geneva, assigned by the Swiss Diet or cantonal congress to aid in the defense of Bern, declined to take an oath of allegiance to the confederation. There were few or no outward demonstrations against I'ancien regime de Suisse, but many of the people were lukewarm in their support. French troops marched down off the heights West of Switzerland and into Vaud, proclaiming liberation. History books barely even speak of the battles in this war. Some Swiss troops tried to make a stand and were out-maneuvered; many dissolved as units and returned home; a small number, perhaps two or three percent, joined the French. The canton of Vaud fell without a shot being fired, and on January 28, the French occupied the important city of Lausanne without resistance. In late February, French forces occupied most of Fribourg and the canton of Bern; General Schauenburg entered Solothurn on March 5. On March 14, after being issued an ultimatum by Brune without a fight, the Great Council of Bern abdicated. Zurich and Basel did not fight, and though proud Schwyz and later Nidwalden made a stand, it was not a memorable one. On March 28, Lecarlier, commander-in-chief of the occupation forces, could inform the French government that he had assumed "the full powers of government over the whole of Helvetia." By May, he was generally in control.
Where were the country's unassailable mountains, not to mention the fighting spirit of its militia, as the French strolled across Switzerland?
One answer is that while most of the country in terms of square miles consists of mountains and is highly defensible, the bulk of the population and economic output are located in the crescent-shaped valley that runs across the Northwest, from Geneva across to Zurich. One need only seize control of perhaps 20 percent of Swiss territory to have control of most of its population and economy.
Another answer can be found in the cultural affinity between Switzerland and France. This is particularly evident in the French-speaking region in the West, but extends East by tradition and psychology. For hundreds of years Swiss mercenaries, largely from the poorer German-speaking cantons in the center and East, earned a small fortune from the kings of France by offering their services on the country's behalf. That the communities could be tempted into this sort of arrangement is another illustration of Switzerland's sometimes precarious position; the country is always vulnerable not only to the cultural pull of the great nations around it, but to economic and military manipulation.
Switzerland was also somewhat divided by political and economic class. In fits and starts but for centuries, the cities of Bern, Zurich, and Geneva had undertaken gradual political reforms to enfranchise the burghers and the guildmen. In the early and middle eighteenth century, however, this progress in voting rights, due process, and other democratic reforms had been halted and, in many cases, reversed. When Russian and Austrian troops marched in from the East and South, they were treated as forces of freedom. There was, however, a substantial minority, the disenfranchised and the radical, who welcomed the French invasion. And the majority, while certainly patriotic, was lukewarm.
Switzerland was not sharply divided, but it was not unified to the extent required for tiny countries to resist large-scale invasions. The Swiss lacked the fighting spirit they showed when the mountain men resisted the Austrians in the fourteenth century and booted them across the Rhine in the fifteenth century; the people did not fear and loathe the French leadership as they would Bismarck in 1870 and Hitler in 1935. The Diet barely began military preparations-even though it had debated defense improvements at almost every session from 1793 on.
Geographically, Switzerland was and is divided and small. Three distinct language and economic zones are separated by mountains as if they were a television dinner tray. "The natural conditions," as James Bryce writes, "might seem most unfavorable to the creation of a State or even of a nation. The Swiss people lA dwell on different sides of a gigantic mountain mass V* separated from one another by craggy heights and widespread snow-fields. [Given the easy crossing at many points of the Rhein,] no natural boundary marks them off from the Germans to the north and east, from the French to the west, and from the Italians to the south."
By virtue of its historic tolerance, and its relatively recent social consensus, Switzerland is often wrongly perceived as having missed the religious quarrels of the rest of Europe. "The cantons of Switzerland," as the Reverend John Witherspoon wrote during the American Constitutional Convention, "have never broken among themselves, though there are some of them Protestants, and some of the Papists, by public establishment."
In fact, Switzerland has suffered its share of religious divisions. From the intra-Catholic disputes of the Middle Ages through the strife of the Reformation, Switzerland sometimes escaped the fury of the times -- it came nearly unscathed through the Thirty Years War -- but more often did not. Figure 4.1 lists just some of the large-scale religious conflicts experienced by Switzerland.
A recurring theme of these conflicts is the presence of, indeed manipulation by, foreign interests. Switzerland's geopolitical position at once excites the interest of these powerful states, and, at the same time, exerts a certain cultural pull on the people toward them.
This is not to say that Switzerland was overcome by these difficulties; this would be geodeterminism merely redirected. The Swiss were able to conquer their challenges, for the most part. The point is, they did, in fact, have to conquer them.
The Defensionale of 1647 -- which helped cement Switzerland's independence and growing prosperity from 1600 to 1800 -- was written and concluded not by rivers but by men, and approved by a referendum-like popular assembly in the Landsgemeinde cantons. Likewise the declaration of neutrality in Baden on May 3, 1764, despite its flaws, was a helpful instrument and guide to the future in helping the Swiss avoid some of the entanglements of European affairs. But it was a man-made instrument.
All of these factors -- economic, political, and religious fissures, abetted by foreign meddling -- came together in 1847 in Switzerland's civil war, the SonderBund War.
The war was rooted not only in Swiss internal factors, but in the effort of European statesmen to build stability after the ravages of the Revolution and Napoleon. European maneuvering to control, influence, or simply divvy up Switzerland began as early as the first grand coalition. In 1813, as the troops of Austria and Russia swept across Switzerland, all the powers had ideas about the proper shape of a new regime. Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia disliked Swiss liberal tendencies, but was concerned about French influence of any sort. Even with Napoleon gone, maps, institutions, and sympathies had been rewritten in the generation since 1789, and he feared a strong France. Tsar Alexander I of Russia felt neither great sympathy nor enmity toward the Swiss, but as a practical matter, favored a buffer state against the French dominated by him and his fellow royalists. Britain felt a certain natural sympathy for the Swiss as a democratic republic and a victim of continental meddling. Robert Peel was serving as Ambassador to Bern for Palmerston's government and developed a deep respect for the Swiss. The British also viewed a strong Switzerland -- armed and neutral -- as a bulwark against aggression in any of several directions. More than most of the other diplomats, Peel and Palmerston understood that Switzerland's high ideals and democratic institutions were helpful, if not essential, to the country's ability to play this role.
Animating and shaping the approach of the great powers for the first half of the nineteenth century, however, was Metternich of Austria. Though seen as a dispassionate diplomat of the chessboard school, Metternich was anything but cool and analytical regarding the Swiss. His memoirs, private correspondence, and accounts of his conversations with the British suggest a contempt bordering on fury. He loathed the way this "Germanic people" showed historic sympathy to the French. He disdained the "former strength" of Swiss arms in the divided nation and was vexed that the Swiss were not more grateful for their liberation from Napoleon by the Austrians. Perhaps, too, like a suitor somewhat scorned, Metternich knew that Switzerland's ancient mistrust of the Hapsburg Empire to the East had never really disappeared.
Above all, though, and simply put, Metternich seethed at the Swiss democracy. He loathed its toleration of intellectuals and dissidents -- loathed it, and feared it. He blamed Switzerland, in part, for harboring some of the revolutionists that had brought chaos to Europe for thirty years. He seems to have been determined, even passionate, to bring this mysterious and uppity renegade -- "perhaps the greatest threat to peace in Europe" -- to heel.
Insisting that others abstain from involvement in Austria's internal affairs, Metternich meddled liberally in Swiss domestic politics. In 1830, the Swiss made efforts to revise their constitution in a manner that would have strengthened the central government but, naturally, reduced somewhat the autonomy of the original Waldstatte. Metternich growled that respect for Swiss neutrality was dependent upon the constitutional state of affairs as of 1815, strongly suggesting armed intervention. He encouraged the Catholic cantons of Innerschweiz-to toy with the usual special leagues in 1830 and again in 1845. When the Swiss declined a French demand that they extradite Prince Louis Napoleon, Austria and Russia encouraged the French to mobilize 25,000 troops. The Swiss prepared for battle. War was avoided only when Louis Napoleon voluntarily left Switzerland in 1838.
By 1845, developments within Switzerland had the country on a path to civil war. In the canton of Aargau, newly molded after the French occupation and precariously balanced between Protestant and Catholic, Reformed forces gained the upper hand and began demanding taxation, regulation, and expulsion of the monasteries. Nearby, Luzern and other cantons wanted to accept the offer of the Jesuits to provide teaching in the schools, based on both sectarian grounds and economic: the Jesuits cost far less to maintain than regular public school teachers. Under the constitution and the practices of many years, both efforts were probably within the legal competence of the cantons in question, but they were resented by opponents. Both sides began to get jumpy. In 1844 and again in 1845, radicals from the Reformed cantons formed a small private militia and attempted an assault on Luzern. The threat was marginal but the fears and suspicion aroused were not.
As fears mounted, the cantonal governments began to take preemptive action, while the relatively weak federal government was paralyzed, in effect divided within. The Protestant cantons formed an economic league that had no formal religious purposes but had strong anti-Catholic overtones. Uri, Schwyz, Luzern, and other central Catholic cantons formed a mutual defense league, the SonderBund. The Bund aimed narrowly at protecting their distinctive religious preferences. More broadly, the agreement was viewed as a secessionist arrangement by the other cantons that violated the spirit of the confederation. In effect, the SonderBund was a Catholic version of the Protestant alliances already aligned against it. Elements of the old rural peasants versus urban elites were involved, along with economic issues (such as taxes) and regional disputes (very roughly, Austria and France with the Catholics, versus Britain and Germany with the Protestants).
While all this was going on, the political and economic power of Switzerland was gradually shifting back to the cities, thanks largely to the appearance of steam engines and other advances. Center-left coalitions favoring a stronger federal union won elections in both Zurich and Bern. Politicians in the Diet realized there would soon be enough votes to pass a measure discussed in 1846 and early 1847, mandating the dissolution of the SonderBund. The vote took place in July 1847, with Swiss military leaders on both sides already making plans for armed conflict. The confederation chose Henri Dufour to head its army and, on November 4, passed a resolution instructing him to bring the rebel cantons into compliance by force of arms.
The war itself, viewed in retrospect, was anticlimactic. The cities were larger, better armed, and better prepared. The forest cantons wanted their independence, but the invaders were not foreign enemies; in this war, they were marching not against French or Austrian troops, but against other Swiss. The federal forces under Dufour won a pair of relatively minor skirmishes and a truce was called before the end of the year. The business lasted twenty-six days and produced 435 wounded and 128 killed in battle. If estimates of participation by different immigrant groups are accurate, there were probably more Swiss killed in the American Civil War than in their own. Dufour won the appreciation of the rebellious cantons, and the respect of his own side, by insisting that there be no reprisals, lootings, or other such acts. "The men we are fighting," Dufour reminded his troops, "are Swiss."
The war did not end without a final spasm of interventionism. Twice in December the continental powers -- France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia -- wrote to the Diet expressing their concern and threatening to intervene. Metternich reasserted Austria's view that the peace of 1815 gave them the right to do so. The Swiss politely informed the powers, to the bemusement of Peel and the British, that they would need no assistance putting their affairs in order as the civil war had been ended. In less than a year, Metternich himself was ousted in a civil coup and became a refugee, as the revolutions of 1848 swept Europe. The Swiss, meanwhile, had drafted a new constitution, strengthening the federal government but wisely conciliating the defeated forest cantons.
Swiss today are mildly proud of their civil war. For although it followed upon and was sparked by abuses and errors, it also removed those abuses. In fact, the Swiss civil war of 1847 was the catalyst for the new constitution, a constitution that finally reconciled the Swiss love of cantonal and community autonomy with a coherent (but limited) central government. The basic framework survives today, a tribute to those who were able to construct it under the press of domestic religious quarrels, economic and cultural debates, and the interference of foreign states.
It is fruitless to debate whether men govern forces, or forces govern men. Obviously, the two act and react upon one another; history in some sense is merely this reciprocal action. Geography did not write the Bundesbrief or unite the forest cantons with Zurich and Bern; it never wrote a single constitution. Yet it played a role in the development of Switzerland.
Perhaps the highest tribute one can give to statesmen is to say that they conformed their actions intelligently to these factors -- accepting the material they are given, but shaping it too. If the design works, we may learn from it.
Notes 1. The phrase was probably coined by Johann Rodolph Valltravers, councilor of Bienne, in a letter to Benjamin Franklin dated 14 April 1778. An excellent book on this subject is published by the Library of Congress: See James H. Hutson, The Sister Republics: Switzerland and the United States from 1776 to the Present.
2. In E. T. Rimli (ed.), Histoire de la Confederation. Stauffacher, 1967.