Probably been done before but the challenge is to create a great Swiss Empire in Europe (non-colonial) with a POD of 1820.
AH Challenge: Switzerland as a European Empire
- Thread starter Razors are for Fish
- Start date
It could maybe done with a POD before 1648 or 1798-- Mulhouse was associated with, but not an incorporated part of, Switzerland up until 1798. Get Mulhouse into Switzerland before the Frenchmen finally swallow it up, and that could be used as a starting point for gradual and amiable expansion in the upper Rhine.
I think an aggressive Swiss government after the Napoleonic wars that absorbs smaller states, then expands into Italy all the while building an impressive and well trained army, all the while backed by an empire (France or Austria) could be achieved with a POD of 1815.
The problem is that Switzerland's very structure makes aggressive expansion dashedly difficult to do. The collective power system means that every canton provides input on national decisions, and mass expansion would result in the rapid incorporation of tons of new cantons which the original Swiss cantons probably wouldn't be keen on. The self-government of cantons also means that there's little Switzerland could do to force these new states to stay within the federation if they wanted to split-- which they likely would, since they would've somehow been brought in by force-of-arms in the first place.
Not much of a difference.
You could have the Swiss deciding not to become neutral, but that would require a medieval PoD.
Not quite that far back-- the general policy of neutrality only really started to develop during the Thirty Years' War, when the Swiss (canton or confederation government, I forget which) refused Austrian and Swedish requests to use some Alpine passes. Of course, the Austrians simply occupied some of the Swiss villages after that and marched their troops through anyway, but that was still one of the earliest recorded instances of the Swiss seriously attempting to be neutral in a conflict.