Early modern Switzerland
The early modern history of the Old Swiss Confederacy (Eidgenossenschaft, also known as the "Swiss Republic" or Republica Helvetiorum) and its constituent Thirteen Cantons encompasses the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) until the French invasion of 1798.
The early modern period was characterized by an increasingly aristocratic and oligarchic ruling class as well as frequent economic or religious revolts. This period came to be referred to as the Ancien Régime retrospectively, in post-Napoleonic Switzerland.
The loosely organized Confederation remained generally disorganized and crippled by the religious divisions created by the Swiss Reformation.[1] During this period the Confederation gained formal independence from the Holy Roman Empire with support from France, and had very close relations with France.
The early modern period also saw the growth of French-Swiss literature, and notable authors of the Age of Enlightenment such as the mathematicians of the Bernoulli family and Leonhard Euler of Basel.
Treaty of Westphalia[edit]
At the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the Swiss Confederacy attained legal independence from the Holy Roman Empire, although it had been de facto independent since the Swabian War in 1499. With the support of the Duke of Orléans, who was also prince of Neuchâtel and the head of the French delegation, Johann Rudolf Wettstein,[6] the mayor of Basel, succeeded in getting a formal exemption from the empire for all cantons and associates of the confederacy.
During the Thirty Years' War, the Drei Bünde (Graubünden, an associate state of the Swiss Confederation) had been caught in the middle of internal and external conflict. Because the Leagues were very decentralized, conflicts over religion and foreign policy broke out during the war (known as the Bündner Wirren or Confusion of the Leagues).[6] Following the war the League took steps to strengthen itself. The Valtellina, which had broken from the Three Leagues, became a dependency once again after the Treaty and remained so until the founding of the Cisalpine Republic by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797.
Age of Enlightenment[edit]
The Age of Enlightenment was well received in Swiss cities, in spite of contemporary tendencies towards political conservatism. The early modern period was a time when Swiss science and literature flowered. In Zürich the scholar and physician Johann Jakob Scheuchzer wrote about Swiss history, geology, geography and science. In Basel the Bernoulli family and Leonhard Euler worked on mathematics and physics, coming up with some fundamental concepts in these fields.[6] Albrecht von Haller and Jean-Jacques Rousseau praised the natural beauty and unspoiled state of Switzerland and triggered an early wave of tourism (notably, Goethe's visit to Switzerland in 1775).
Zürich at the time was home to a number of internationally known scholars, such as Johann Jakob Bodmer, Salomon Gessner, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Johann Caspar Lavater, styling itself as "Republic" (after the great city states of the time, such as the Republic of Venice).