Buffer States, Part 3: Switzerland

Part 1: Himalayas – Part 2: Afghanistan

Like the Himalayas, the rocky Alps complicate how countries demarcate their borders, which brings us to Switzerland. Switzerland has four distinct communities that have kept their cultural and linguistic identity even after four centuries of living within the same borders. There is little common identity among the Swiss people, with the exception that they hold a long record of neutrality.

Is it not peculiar that this tiny mountain state has four distinct ethnic groups after four hundred years of common history? What ever happened to the melting pot? Through war and peace, native Romantsch, German, French, and Italian communities have maintained their language, culture, and heritage seperate, because their union is artificial.

It’s an interesting history, but Switzerland existed in several forms in the 13th and 14th centuries. The modern state was created in 1648 by the Treaty of Westphalia (which also created the Netherlands), carving the state out of the Holy Roman Empire by the Hapsburgs. The purpose? To prevent cross-border conflict by keeping the mountains neutral and independent. Like the Himalayas, mountains make borders tough to delineate, and it was thought that a neutral Switzerland would stop future conflicts between France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. It worked—even Hitler respected the country’s neutrality.