Box 1.8 Developing a collective identity

Successful nation-building also needed some kind of cultural cement: the development of collective identity.

Unlike nations as France, Germany and Italy, Switzerland could not rely on one common culture, language or ethnicity, which were the prevailing bases of European nation-building in the nineteenth century. Therefore, it may have been difficult to find a common thread to bind together people from different cantons and thus identify themselves as 'Swiss'. The development of patterns of collective identity therefore relied on such different elements as national symbols, history and myths, and federal polity.

After 1848 one can observe a search for identity, for a common denominator.15 Historians offered an integrating view of the past. The many local battles in the old peasant cantons to defend their independence against invasions by the 'Habsburg hordes' were part of a glorious heritage that all Swiss could be proud of. Historians told that the Swiss elites went back as far as 1291. Three local leaders swore an oath of political independence and mutual help - an act of will was especially emphasised - and this is thought to have been the birth of Switzerland. In 1891 this contract of 1291 was for the first time celebrated on a national basis on 1 August. History was personalised so as to improve the opportunity for identification. Legendary and symbolic figures such as William Tell and Helvetia (the mother of the nation) were omnipresent on postal stamps, on popular pictures and on hundreds of pub and inn signs. Today historians give a much more sober account of Swiss history when trying to distinguish between the facts and the myths. Some of them claim that William Tell never existed, and that the events in 1291 are fictions. From the point of national identification, this misses the point. Symbolic figures and myths gave life to the idea of a common Swiss culture probably more than actual events because they were independent of a particular social structure and allowed people with different backgrounds to identify with them.

The Alps were another element of national identification. The picture of a nation - consisting mainly of farmers and shepherds living in isolated mountain chalets or small villages - was drawn to distinguish Switzerland from other countries, despite the fact that large parts of Switzerland had already been industrialised by the nineteenth century.16

From the very beginning, therefore, Swiss identity relied not only on what its people shared together, but on Swiss specificities17 - things that allowed the Swiss to feel different from their neighbours in other countries. Most important in this respect was the Swiss polity itself. Swiss direct democracy is different from others, and it has also become the most precious element of its common culture. The fact that all men are legally bound to serve in the army is not only a means of social integration. Until 1971, when voting was the privilege of male citizens only, duty of serving in the army was considered to be correlative with having political rights - and was also used as an argument against women's suffrage. The ideology of all male citizens defending their country, and identifying with this task, was said to be the 'cement' of Swiss male society.