Unveiling Switzerland’s Hidden Past
Switzerland’s image as a peaceful Alpine haven, a beacon of neutrality and prosperity, belies a more complex and oft-overlooked past. Beyond the pastoral postcards and efficient public services lie chapters of history that challenge national myths: involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, mercenary enterprises, the slow march toward women’s suffrage, the betrayal of refugees during World War II, and systemic discrimination against minorities. Confronting these uncelebrated episodes not only enriches our understanding of Swiss identity but also offers important lessons on how even small nations can be complicit in global injustices.
1. Mercenaries for Hire: The Birth of a Military Export
Long before Swiss bankers cemented the country’s reputation for confidentiality, Switzerland’s economic lifeblood included the sale of its soldiers as mercenaries. From the 15th through the 18th centuries, Swiss cantons routinely contracted contingents to foreign powers—most famously to the French crown—to supplement professional armies. Although celebrated in folklore for their bravery, these regiments often fought wars that had little to do with Swiss interests, effectively exporting Swiss lives in exchange for money and political favour.
This trade in manpower had deep social implications at home: in poorer cantons, the promise of mercenary wages drew many young men away, disrupting agrarian communities and binding rural families to international conflicts. The mercenary legacy also left a moral quandary: how could a land famed for its freedom and neutrality derive wealth from wars waged elsewhere?
2. Colonial Shadows and the Slave Trade
Contrary to the narrative that Switzerland “never had colonies,” Swiss individuals and corporations played a significant role in colonial exploitation. From the 17th to the 19th century, Swiss financiers invested in plantation economies in the Americas and the Caribbean. They organised slave-hunting expeditions, owned plantations, and profited handsomely from forced labour—activities that only came to light in the last two decades as historians shed light on forgotten records.
Swiss banks, now celebrated for their discretion, were complicit in laundering profits from the slave economy. A landmark investigation by The Guardian revealed that Swiss institutions handled transactions linked to human bondage, further entangling the country’s financial ascent with egregious human rights abuses. This colonial conscience has prompted initiatives—museum exhibitions, academic symposia, and parliamentary inquiries—to acknowledge and apologise for past complicity.
3. The Long Road to Women’s Suffrage
Among the richest nations, Switzerland shockingly granted women the federal vote only in 1971, decades after most Western democracies. Cantonal resistance lingered even longer: Appenzell Innerrhoden, the last holdout, extended voting rights to women only in 1991 after a Federal Supreme Court ruling compelled compliance.
This delayed progress stemmed from a conservative ethos that conflated political enfranchisement with traditional gender roles. Rural cantons, in particular, feared that women voters would disrupt established social orders. The protracted struggle underscored how direct democracy—lauded as Switzerland’s democratic jewel—could also be weaponised to resist social change.
4. Neutrality and the Betrayal of Refugees
Switzerland’s neutrality during World War II is often celebrated, yet this stance came at a moral cost. As tens of thousands fled Nazi persecution, Swiss policies increasingly closed borders. Between 1938 and 1942, Swiss authorities turned away approximately 30,000 Jewish refugees at the border—a humanitarian crisis known as “the refusal policy”.
Internally, Switzerland did grant “protected power” status to Axis and Allied states, overseeing Red Cross visits to POW camps, but this diplomatic balancing act often sacrificed moral clarity. Only in recent decades have archives revealed the extent to which Swiss immigration officers and border guards complied with Germany’s anti-Jewish edicts, forcing Switzerland to reckon with a legacy of complicity and missed opportunities for compassion.
5. Persecution of Minorities: The Yenish, Roma, and Jenische
Switzerland’s direct-democratic zeal also targeted itinerant “foreign” communities—particularly the Yenish and Roma populations. Under early-20th-century “anti-vagrancy” laws, authorities abducted Yenish children from their families in a decades-long programme of forced adoption and assimilation, known as the “Kinder der Landstrasse” policy. Approximately 8,000 children were separated from their parents between 1926 and 1973, with the Swiss Roman Catholic charity Pro Juventute overseeing their placement in foster care or institutions.
It was not until the late 1970s that public outrage forced an official inquiry, culminating in a 2014 parliamentary apology and compensation scheme. Yet the intergenerational trauma lingers, offering a stark illustration of how democratic processes can nevertheless enable grave injustices against marginalised minorities.
6. Forced Sterilisation and Eugenics
In the first half of the 20th century, Swiss cantons instituted eugenics-based policies to “improve” the national stock. Between 1928 and 1978, more than 6,000 individuals—mostly women—were sterilised without genuine consent, targeting the mentally ill, unmarried mothers, and the economically disadvantaged.
Promoted by leading scientists and implemented at the cantonal level, these programmes reflect a disturbing intersection of medical authority and state power. Only in 2014 did Switzerland formally apologise for these practices, establishing a fund to compensate survivors and their descendants. Yet public awareness remains limited outside affected communities.
7. The 1918 General Strike and Class Conflict
Often glossed over in patriotic narratives, the 1918 Swiss General Strike was the country’s most significant labour upheaval. Sparked by food shortages and inspired by the Russian Revolution, up to 400,000 workers across German-speaking cantons demanded an eight-hour day, women’s suffrage, and proportional representation.
The authorities mobilised the army to suppress strikes in Zürich and elsewhere, resulting in several deaths and hundreds injured. In its aftermath, the government implemented modest social reforms but also suppressed revolutionary sentiments. Today this episode underscores that Switzerland’s famed social harmony has been secured only through sometimes brutal interventions.
8. Economic Crises and Popular Unrest
Switzerland’s late-20th-century economic downturns—triggered by oil shocks and global recessions—provoked social unrest seldom remembered today. In 1973, the country experienced its first peacetime recession in decades, leading to mass layoffs in watchmaking and textile industries. Unemployment climbed, and hunger marches emerged in industrial towns such as Biel and La Chaux-de-Fonds.
These struggles catalysed the formation of robust social safety nets—unemployment insurance (1948) and welfare measures—but also revealed the fragility of Swiss economic success. Revisiting these crises offers a cautionary perspective on how small, export-oriented economies remain vulnerable to global shocks.
9. Reckoning with Colonial Amnesia
Only within the last decade has Switzerland begun academic and cultural excavations of its colonial entanglements. The 2024 exhibition “Quand la Suisse fait son examen de conscience colonial” at the Musée National Suisse in Zurich confronted Switzerland’s four-century involvement in slavery and mercenary ventures, presenting 11 “fields of action” that mapped Swiss complicity in the transatlantic slave trade and broader imperialism.
These initiatives signal a critical shift: from national amnesia—embodied in former President Doris Leuthard’s claim that “Switzerland never participated in slavery or colonization”—to a sober acknowledgement that even nations without formal colonies can be key actors in colonial systems.
10. Towards an Inclusive Memory
As Switzerland confronts these unpopular histories, the goal is not to indict contemporary Swiss citizens but to integrate uncomfortable truths into the national narrative. Educational reforms now encourage curricula that include the Kinder der Landstrasse, forced sterilisation, and colonial economics alongside Alpine folklore and direct-democratic pride. Civil society organisations, such as the Swiss Initiative for Reparations and Recognition, lobby for further restorative measures.
This process mirrors trends in other European countries—Germany’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung or France’s colonial memory debates—underscoring that historical reckoning fosters social cohesion rather than fracture. By weaving these dark chapters into collective memory, Switzerland can demonstrate true neutrality: not merely the absence of military alliances, but an honest engagement with moral responsibility.
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