A contested nation : history, memory and nationalism in Switzerland, 1761-1891
"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, and it challenges both functionalist and constructivist approaches to the study of nationalism." "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 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. The principal actors involved in these public controversies often held a variety of beliefs (as manifested in the clash between anti-statist regionalists and proponents of a strong state), but all accepted the nation as the central moral and normative frame of reference."--BOOK JACKET
History
xviii, 269 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
9780521819190, 0521819199
52286615
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.