A Contested Nation: History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761–1891

by Oliver Zimmer

• ISBN13: 9780521039802
• ISBN10: 0521039800
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book examines the ways in which the Swiss defined their national identity in the long nineteenth century, in the face of a changing domestic and international background. Its narrative begins in 1761, when the first Swiss patriotic society of national significance was founded, and ends in 1891, when the Swiss celebrated their 600-year existence as a nation in a monumental national festival. While conceding that the creation of a nation-state in 1848 marked a watershed in the history of Swiss nation-formation, the author does not focus one-sidedly - as many others have done - on the activities of the nationalizing state. Instead, he attributes a key role to the competitive and contentious struggles over the shaping of public institutions and over the symbolic representation of the nation. These struggles, to which the nation-state and civil society contributed in equal measure, were framed increasingly along national lines.

Author Biography

Oliver Zimmer is Fellow in Modern History, University College, Oxford University

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. x
List of tables	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Introduction: History, memory, and the politics of national identity	p. 1
Confederate identity before nationalism - events, politics, symbols	p. 17
Towards the cult of the nation
Dreaming of the wider fatherland - the nation of the patriots	p. 41
Contentious unity - the rise and fall of an indivisible nation	p. 80
'The nation has had her say at last'	p. 119
The birth of the modern mass nation
'We have become a people'	p. 163
Competing visions of the nation's past	p. 209
Afterword	p. 237
Bibliography	p. 246
Index	p. 264
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