An older tradition of Swiss historiography liked to portray the Confederation as
subsisting within boundaries which (at least in retrospect) might appear as the
result of topographical or geopolitical circumstances. This was the approach that
coloured Karl Meyer’s essay on the geographical preconditions of Switzerland’s
statehood which, had Savoy not regained its territories in 1564, would in his view
have enabled Bern and the Valais to incorporate the Chablais permanently within
the Confederation. In recent years Meyer has with some justice been accused of
geographical determinism,1 as a glance northwards demonstrates. Not only can
the Rhine no longer be regarded in any useful sense as a frontier; the contacts—
commercial and political—across Lake Konstanz, at the eastern end between the
Swabian cities and St Gallen, for instance, continued without major interruption,
just as to the west Schaffhausen, located north of the Rhine, became the tranship-
ment point for Swabian and Franconian exports southwards, not forgetting its role
as the distribution centre for Bavarian or Tirolean salt.
Historians are nowadays keen to emphasize these points of contact and inter-
change or else networks which ignored or transcended supposed frontiers. In the
case of Switzerland this narrative is customarily couched in terms of emigration—
the mercenaries recruited into foreign armies, or the wandering artisans, often with
specialized skills, who journeyed throughout Europe in the early modern period. 2
But too readily overlooked is the immigration in the fifteenth century into the
Swiss cities on a large scale, especially by craftsmen3—and, to a lesser extent, that
held good for Alsace as well.4 In short, Switzerland cannot be regarded as commer-
cially isolated or remote. A similar judgement can be applied to its geopolitical
position within the Holy Roman Empire. Hans Conrad Peyer described Switzerland
1 Thomas Meier, ‘Territorialisierung der Gesellschaft? Überlegungen zu Raum und Raumstruktur
aus mediävistischer Sicht’, Dokumente und Informationen zur Schweizerischen Orts-, Regional- und
Landesplanung, 92 (1988), 29–35, here at 29–30.
2 André Holenstein, Mitten in Europa. Verflechtung und Abgrenzung in der Schweizer Geschichte
(Baden, 2014), 30–57.
3 Rainer Christoph Schwinges, ‘Bern, die Eidgenossen und Europa im späten Mittelalter’,
in Rainer Christoph Schwinges, Christian Hesse, and Peter Moraw (eds), Europa im späten Mittelalter.
Politik—Gesellschaft—Kultur (Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft 40) (Munich, 2006), 167–89, here
at 176–7.
4 Tom Scott, ‘Der Oberrhein als Wirtschaftsregion in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit.
Grundsatzfragen zur Begrifflichkeit und Quellenüberlieferung’, in Peter Kurmann and Thomas Zotz
(eds), Historische Landschaft—Kunstlandschaft? Der Oberrhein im späten Mittelalter (Vorträge und
Forschungen, 68) (Ostfildern, 2008), 91–112, here at 109.