History Of Switzerland
Since 1848, the Swiss Confederation has been a federal state of relatively autonomous cantons, some of which have a history of confederacy that goes back more than 700 years, arguably putting them among the world's oldest surviving republics. For the time before 1291, this article summarizes events taking place on the territory of modern Switzerland. From 1291, it focuses mainly on the fates of the Old Swiss Confederacy, at first consisting of only three cantons (Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden) in what is now central Switzerland, and gradually expanding until it encompassed the present-day area of Switzerland in 1815.
Read more about History Of Switzerland: Early History, Old Confederacy (1291–1523), Reformation (1523–1648), Ancien Régime (1648–1798), Napoleonic Era (1798–1848), Switzerland As A Federal State (1848–1914), World Wars (1914–45), After 1945
Famous quotes containing the words history and/or switzerland:
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)