Historiography of Switzerland

The historiography of Switzerland is the study of the history of Switzerland. Up until the late 20th century, it was largely shaped by the centuries-old traditional account of the founding of the Old Swiss Confederacy through the Federal Charter of 1291 as a defensive alliance of small republics against European tyrants. More recent Swiss scholarship supplements this tradition's emphasis on political and military events with other approaches such as research into Swiss economic history, legal history and social history.

Swiss historiography received substantial public attention in the 1990s, when controversy over Switzerland's conduct during World War II, triggered by a U.S. lawsuit, prompted the Swiss government to commission a much-publicised report by a board of historians.