Switzerland in the unification wars of Italy and Germany

People in peripheral regions always prefer to be a small but distinct part of a "foreign" state, over being an insiginificant part in a "co-ethnic" state. It's just natural... even if they have to put up with different languages, so long as no assimilation is demanded from them and they can have their own laws, they are fine with that and prefer it 1000x over being swallowed up by a neighbouring country that shares their language. Language is vastly overrated.

Example: Belgium has a small German community of maybe 60,000 people, who live in the easternmost districts of the country. They have their own language laws so they can have German schools, a provincial administration of their own and even a prime minister, all under the Belgian nation. When they go to higher education or into professional jobs they all have to speak French but that's no bother at all for them. If you asked them whether they wanted to become part of Germany, they'd always refuse - in Belgium, they're an autonomous community, but in Germany they would just be one tiny little district among hundreds.

Same with the Luxemburghers. They have their own local dialect/language which they speak at home and in primary to secondary school, but they more or less have to learn either high German or French in order to get anywhere professionally. Yet it's no bother at all for them, they so much prefer being independent over anything else even when it brings some linguistic inconveniences. In fact their independence is so popular that if Belgium ever was to split up, the German community in Belgium would definitely choose to join Luxemburg rather than Germany, even if it meant having to learn the weird Luxemburgher language.

Instead of asking why the German Swiss didn't want to join a united Germany, perhaps we should be asking why Prussians, Saxons and Rhinelanders did?

Eusebio said:

Instead of asking why the German Swiss didn't want to join a united Germany, perhaps we should be asking why Prussians, Saxons and Rhinelanders did?

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They weren't really asked, were they?

Rhinelanders especially were never asked whether they wanted to be part of France (1792), Prussia (1815) or Germany (1871). We were traded back and forth like sheep. Not that we minded much... the French gave us Rhinelanders modern laws and freed us from feudalism, the Prussians gave us nothing directly but provided for peace, stability and economic development. It could have been worse, I guess? Although I doubt many would have minded if we had been given to the Dutch or French instead, that wouldn't have been that much worse except we'd all speak some different language today. Ideally they'd have turned the whole Rhineland into a state of its own, but that wasn't really feasible in 1814/15, with us being right in the middle of the Franco-Prussian tensions and having no real national unity.

Generally if people don't have much to lose (no autonomy, no security, no economic development) they don't mind much if they are taken over by a neighbouring country.

For example in the years after WW2, there were many in Schleswig-Holstein who would have welcomed a Danish annexation - Germany at the time had nothing to give to the people except hunger, poverty and occupation. Denmark was much better off and if there had been a plebiscite in, say, 1946, I am sure there would have been a large pro-Danish turnout in Schleswig despite there being very few ethnic Danes.

However once West Germany got off the ground that feeling faded quickly and people forgot about Denmark again. But if West Germany had remained a basket case (or worse: Schleswig Holstein been put into the Soviet occupation zone) I am sure the movement for Danish annexation would have remained strong.

The Saarland also had a brief period of relative autonomy, after WW2. This was supported by many in the population in the immediate postwar years. But in the 1950s the opinion shifted dramatically (it became obvious that West Germany was becoming better off economically than France) and when they held a plebiscite in 1956 where the choice was either continued autonomy, or joining West Germany, people voted overwhelmingly for Germany.

The Germans in Belgium probably would have voted the same way, if given a choice, because the Belgian state only started to give them autonomy in the 1960s. However no one asked them, so they remained where they had been (again) since 1945.

Rey said:

Well, in the 19th century and well into the early-mid 20th century, all the neighbouring nations of Switzerland were, at some time, economic-industrial powerhouses, with much to offer to the swiss. Also, this was the period when nationalism was on the rise in many countries of Europe. In other countries, inside ethnic mixed regions, there were visible groups calling for unification with their cultural kin (even if the greatest part of that specific "ethnic group" in the area was not interested in that, like Austria).

Why didn't this happen in Switzerland?

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Neither the French, nor the German or Italian regions bordering Switzerland saw much of an economic-industrial boom, actually. And Switzerland itself wasn't all that poor either... they started out fairly poor at the beginning of the 19th century, but their rural population never really were as poor as, say, the rural people in southern Italy under the Bourbons, or the rural people in some regions Württemberg/Baden where there was real hunger in the mid 19th century.

The swiss cantons would be very peripheral regions in any state they joined, so their likely economic development would not have been that of Turin, Paris or Stuttgart but that of French Jura, the Piedmontese mountains or the Bodensee region in Württemberg. This is what people in Switzerland would compare themselves against. And even if these border regions were to turn into models of economic development, there would still be the (for a Swiss) extremely unattractive political situation in Germany and Italy to deal with... in Germany, political repression against liberal thinkers was widespread until the 1860s, and in Italy like in the German states you would have to accept becoming a subject of a monarchy. Both Germany and Italy saw massive emigration for those and other regions throughout the 19th century, especially from their rural regions. Switzerland also had some emigration but certainly not worse than Germany or Italy in that time. You can look at that as a gauge for how attractive life in those countries was for "the common man".

For the German unification movement you also have to take into account that it wasn't attractive at all to get involved in it prior to 1866/71. Germany (i.e. the German confederation) had an impossibly deadlocked political structure where Prussia and Austria were locked in perpetual struggle, and I doubt either German great power would have been in a mood to deal with the complex political problems that would ensue if a Swiss canton desired to break from the Swiss Confederation and join the German confederation in some shape or form.

Mr_B0narpte said:

In England it's much more about understanding the different accents then the dialect. I've been able to understand everyone I've encountered in Britain, so long as they can speak English.

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Really? Have you ever been to Glasgow?

There is an error at the base.

The Italian was not a national unification but a colonial conquer of Naples, Sicily and Rome by a French family (the Savoy), as any other conquest in Africa.

So I don't see why a Swiss should ask to join into. Anyway, Italy historically needs Swiss banks to launder money.

JayKenton said:

There is an error at the base.

The Italian was not a national unification but a colonial conquer of Naples, Sicily and Rome by a French family (the Savoy), as any other conquest in Africa.

So I don't see why a Swiss should ask to join into. Anyway, Italy historically needs Swiss banks to launder money.

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Someone's still mad about it 150 years later, hm?

Need just the last twenty, to be it.

However, that kind of brutal military occupation has been the basis of any subsequent issue and, again, lacking a sense of national unity, I do not see why a Swiss had to join the Kingdom of Savoy.

Regarding the Ticino as italian part, it is not so far away from Milan, which was in the 19th century part of the industrial region in Italy (Torino-Genova-Milano). In fact, the italian region of Switzerland had the most important industrial region of the Kingdom at its feet.

For many persons of the so-called Risorgimento, Switzerland was a refuge. The motive, why Garibaldi didn't conquer the Ticino, is likley the same as he didn't claim San Marino.

It was Mussolini, who claimed the Ticino for the first time. The inhabitants of the italian/lombard part had no intend - as far as I know - to become "italian".

And a last word considering the Rhinelander question - the movement of 1923 was much stronger and influential than many think. It is no coincidence, that the German government made a nationalist festival (1000 years German Lotharingia) two years later, searching to eleminate every seperatist influence.

Marco Dandolo said:

Regarding the Ticino as italian part, it is not so far away from Milan, which was in the 19th century part of the industrial region in Italy (Torino-Genova-Milano). In fact, the italian region of Switzerland had the most important industrial region of the Kingdom at its feet.

For many persons of the so-called Risorgimento, Switzerland was a refuge. The motive, why Garibaldi didn't conquer the Ticino, is likley the same as he didn't claim San Marino.

It was Mussolini, who claimed the Ticino for the first time. The inhabitants of the italian/lombard part had no intend - as far as I know - to become "italian".

And a last word considering the Rhinelander question - the movement of 1923 was much stronger and influential than many think. It is no coincidence, that the German government made a nationalist festival (1000 years German Lotharingia) two years later, searching to eleminate every seperatist influence.

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I never heard of that festival. :huh:

The Rhineland separatist movement didn't have many supporters. Those who supported it were low life goons on the French payroll, people with huge debt who thought a political upheaval was just what they needed to have their slate wiped clean, and people who wanted to "show it to those idiots in Berlin". Certainly not anybody who thought it was time for the Rhineland people to discover their true identity as a nation.

That being said, countries have been founded on less, so if the French had been more ballsy about it, it could have worked for a while.