A study of how the Swiss gradually defined their national identity in the nineteenth century.

Autorentext
Oliver Zimmer was educated at the University of Zurich (Lic. Phil. I) and at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Ph.D.), and he began his academic career at the University of Durham in 1999. In 2005 he took up a University Lectureship (CUF) at Oxford. Previous publications include Nationalism in Europe, 18901940 (2003) and Power and the Nation in European History (edited with Len Scales, Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Klappentext

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 nationalising 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.

Zusammenfassung
This book examines the ways in which the Swiss came to define their national identity. It explores why the nation became a theme of public concern, how different social actors created and re-created Swiss nationhood, and why they embraced some definitions rather than others.

Inhalt
List of illustrations; List of tables; Preface; Introduction: history, memory and the politics of national identity; 1. Confederate identity before nationalism - events, politics, symbols; Part I. Towards the Cult of the Nation: 2. Dreaming of the wider fatherland - the nation of the patriots; 3. Contentious unity - the rise and fall of an indivisible nation; 4. 'The nation has had her say at last'; Part II. The Birth of the Modern Mass Nation: 5. 'We have become a people'; 6. Competing visions of the nation's past; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.