Challenge - Switzerland a great power/superpower

Conditions:
PoD: 1599-1899
Location of PoD: Europe
Objective: Make Switzerland a world power militarily, politically, economically and culturally
Deadline: Before 2009
Note 1: Must retain world power status for minimum of 50 years
Note 2: No Deus ex Machina (eg. nuclear holocaust, ASBs, etc)

Can it be done?
 
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Sure It is easy, Shortly after The Swiss complete their Civil Defense system, a Malfunction in the Computers, causes the Button to be pushed.
When the Swiss come out of their Shelters they are the only intact functioning Nation in the world.
This makes them De Facto the World's Superpower.
 
Conditions:
PoD: 1599-1899
Location of PoD: Europe
Objective: Make Switzerland a world power militarily, politically, economically and culturally
Deadline: Before 2009
Note 1: Must retain world power status for minimum of 50 years
Note 2: No Deus ex Machina (eg. nuclear holocaust, ASBs, etc)

Can it be done?

No, it can't be done.
 
The thing is, with a POD potentially so far back, you could simply posit the birth of a Great Man who unites the Cantons and builds an expanded Switzerland into a lower tier Great Power. (ie like Brandenburg-Prussia) Then with centuries to play with, Superpower status is easy.
 
The thing is, with a POD potentially so far back, you could simply posit the birth of a Great Man who unites the Cantons and builds an expanded Switzerland into a lower tier Great Power. (ie like Brandenburg-Prussia) Then with centuries to play with, Superpower status is easy.

So Switzerland gets a ball of charisma like Hitler/Napoleon, or a political chessmaster like Bismarck? Plausible enough, I suppose.
 
The thing is, with a POD potentially so far back, you could simply posit the birth of a Great Man who unites the Cantons and builds an expanded Switzerland into a lower tier Great Power. (ie like Brandenburg-Prussia) Then with centuries to play with, Superpower status is easy.

No, you can't. It just can't happen. I posted this in a thread recently, but I can't be bothered to find the thread so I'll just reiterate the main points:

The Swiss created an identity for themselves out of their wars with the Hapsburgs. This identity was not an expansionist identity. Their expansionism was incidental, it was necessary to eject the Hapsburgs from the areas they viewed both as innately Swiss and which they thought the Hapsburgs had no right to interfere with, especially with the Hapsburgs trying to exert their domination - this is what the Swiss objected to, and this is what caused the formation of the Swiss state. What didn't happen is the Swiss getting together one day and saying "hey, wouldn't it be great if we went on a glorious conquest, and conquered this entire region". The Swiss expansion stopped where it did for several reasons:

1 - they had pushed the Hapsburgs back as far as they felt it necessary;
2 - the Swiss had no claim to any other areas - France, Savoy, Germany, wherever. The people there weren't Swiss and they didn't want them. They also couldn't just march in and conquer the territory because that's simply not how countries worked in those days.
3 - one of the big points in the Swiss' defensive ability was the mountains. The Swiss state covers the vast majority of the Alps, or at least the bits they were likely to cover (see point 1). If they went down out of the mountains, they would lose this great defensive bonus and be pushed back again, they would never hold territory for long. This is also in part due to -
4 - the Swiss subjected the territories they conquered, Sparta style, to second class citizen status. Really the Swiss had a very small population, and still do. They simply didn't have the manpower to press on with more offensive wars. And even if they didn't subject their territories' citizens, those citizens weren't Swiss and would have to be co-opted into fighting, they had no natural drive to fight for the Confed. until several centuries later, when they had been Swiss subjects so long that it was their very identity. History is full of examples of where states which expand too far collapse on themselves because of this idea.

But really the important thing to take from this is this: forget Napoleon or Bismarck figures. The Swiss formed their identity because they were Swiss. The Swiss wanted nothing to do with other territories, and they didn't want to expand anywhere. Those places weren't Swiss, so they didn't want them.
 
No, you can't. It just can't happen. I posted this in a thread recently, but I can't be bothered to find the thread so I'll just reiterate the main points:

The Swiss created an identity for themselves out of their wars with the Hapsburgs. This identity was not an expansionist identity. Their expansionism was incidental, it was necessary to eject the Hapsburgs from the areas they viewed both as innately Swiss and which they thought the Hapsburgs had no right to interfere with, especially with the Hapsburgs trying to exert their domination - this is what the Swiss objected to, and this is what caused the formation of the Swiss state. What didn't happen is the Swiss getting together one day and saying "hey, wouldn't it be great if we went on a glorious conquest, and conquered this entire region". The Swiss expansion stopped where it did for several reasons:

1 - they had pushed the Hapsburgs back as far as they felt it necessary;
2 - the Swiss had no claim to any other areas - France, Savoy, Germany, wherever. The people there weren't Swiss and they didn't want them. They also couldn't just march in and conquer the territory because that's simply not how countries worked in those days.
3 - one of the big points in the Swiss' defensive ability was the mountains. The Swiss state covers the vast majority of the Alps, or at least the bits they were likely to cover (see point 1). If they went down out of the mountains, they would lose this great defensive bonus and be pushed back again, they would never hold territory for long. This is also in part due to -
4 - the Swiss subjected the territories they conquered, Sparta style, to second class citizen status. Really the Swiss had a very small population, and still do. They simply didn't have the manpower to press on with more offensive wars. And even if they didn't subject their territories' citizens, those citizens weren't Swiss and would have to be co-opted into fighting, they had no natural drive to fight for the Confed. until several centuries later, when they had been Swiss subjects so long that it was their very identity. History is full of examples of where states which expand too far collapse on themselves because of this idea.

But really the important thing to take from this is this: forget Napoleon or Bismarck figures. The Swiss formed their identity because they were Swiss. The Swiss wanted nothing to do with other territories, and they didn't want to expand anywhere. Those places weren't Swiss, so they didn't want them.

I don't buy this argument. A swiss superpower would bear little resemblance to OTL Switzerland, and their definition of Swiss would be radically different as well, but so what? The Swiss identity was gradually built overtime from widely differing nationalities, not set in stone. Look at the Netherlands. They too started out as squabbling provinces who mainly existed to push out the Spanish and had little desire for expansion, but it didn't take too long for them to become practically a Monarchy with a monarch playing power politics. Sure they were no Great Power, but they certainly had the potential to be, especially if you go the DoD route and have them embrace their German-ness.
 
But that's the thing. Unlike the Dutch (who, I'll point out, also never expanded beyond their borders because they had no cause to) the Swiss developed an identity and a political structure very quickly. And their states didn't squabble much, certainly until religion came into it. The state existed for about 400 years as a purely defensive alliance, unlike the Dutch who were kind of jammed together by a progressively-encompassing set of personal unions, I just don't see how it could have turned out any other way, aside from increasing or decreasing the amount of which they defeated the Hapsburgs.
 
But that's the thing. Unlike the Dutch (who, I'll point out, also never expanded beyond their borders because they had no cause to) the Swiss developed an identity and a political structure very quickly. And their states didn't squabble much, certainly until religion came into it. The state existed for about 400 years as a purely defensive alliance, unlike the Dutch who were kind of jammed together by a progressively-encompassing set of personal unions, I just don't see how it could have turned out any other way, aside from increasing or decreasing the amount of which they defeated the Hapsburgs.

They squabbled plenty once religion came along, and there were a couple (failed) attempts to create a more unified state under Protestant leadership. From the end of the 1500s to the Napoleonic invasion, Swiss unity was a very feeble thing, mostly a matter of being unified in a desire to _not_ be incorporated in some other state. I'd say the Napoleonic occupation was almost as important for the creation of a more unified Swiss state in the 19th century as it was for German nationalism. A "Swiss" identity may have emerged over time, but at the start of the peiriod ones identity was religious and cantonal, or based on your city: the Confederation was a club your homeland was part of, which brought benefits, but not something which had a higher claim on your loyalties.

Re something referred to earlier, Switzerland was a wierd mix of full allied states, associated states, and conquered territories, some of which were jointly adminstered by more than one member state. Also, some states, especially the more rural ones, were rather more democratic than others: the city-centered ones tended to have sharp divisions between urbanites and countryside, with the city of Berne essentially running it's own mini-empire, in which the peasant majority had little in the way of rights. Another reason Switzerland did not expand further was that it would have overthrown whatever balance of power existed between the more rural and democratic member states and the more urban, oligarchic or even petty-nobility dominated states.

Switzerland strikes me as too loosely and conditionally joined together, especially after the Catholic-Protestant split compounded the existing divisions, to serve as the basis for an expanding empire: after Luther, the Swiss are just not going to agree on a unified policy for expansion, and will have enough trouble maintaining even a necessary degree of solidarity against foreign enemies. If they hadn't been useful as a source of foreign mercenaries, Louis XIV probably would have carved off a chunk or two of the Confederation.

Now, a Switzerland where the urban cantons and protestantism had won out might have had some chances to expand among the cities of S. Germany (early modern German nobility, secular or clerical, were hardly enlightened philosopher-kings), or in N. Italy if catholicism had won out. But it would be a rather different sort of animal.


Bruce
 
PS - I think you exaggerate the importance of the Alps. True, they made it harder to get at the Swiss in the first place, but the Swiss also were the first "lower class" military force in Europe able to meet the armored cavalry of the nobility on an equal playing field and beat them. They didn't win most of their victories by standing on a slope and rolling rocks down on their enemies!

Bruce
 
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